If you’re at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field, your hunches about worthwhile pursuits are more likely to be correct.
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Robert Pirsig’s "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" offers an intriguing perspective: "You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally." While this advice may seem unrelated to painting, it aligns well with startup ideation. Empirically, the key to generating good startup ideas is becoming the kind of person who conceives them.
Being at the forefront of a field doesn’t necessarily mean you’re pushing its boundaries. You can also be at the forefront as a user. Mark Zuckerberg’s initial attraction to Facebook wasn’t solely because he was a programmer; it was because he extensively used computers. Similarly, many 40-year-olds in 2004 would have been aghast at the idea of publicly sharing their lives online. However, Mark, who was already deeply engaged online, found it natural.
Paul Buchheit suggests that individuals at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field "live in the future." Combining this with Pirsig’s concept yields: "Live in the future, then build what’s missing." This approach characterizes the origins of many successful startups. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook were not envisioned as companies initially; they emerged from voids identified by their founders.
Successful founders often have their ideas sparked by external stimuli, which strike a chord with their prepared minds. Bill Gates and Paul Allen, upon hearing about the Altair, believed they could create a Basic interpreter for it. Drew Houston’s idea for Dropbox stemmed from forgetting his USB stick and realizing the need to store files online. Many heard about the Altair and forgot USB sticks, but these stimuli led these founders to start companies due to their preparedness to recognize the opportunities.
Rather than "thinking up" startup ideas, the verb you should be using is "noticing." Ideas that naturally arise from founders’ experiences as "organic" startup ideas. Nearly all successful startups originate this way.
This may not be the advice you were seeking. You may have expected a formula for generating startup ideas, but the reality is that the key is developing a prepared mind. Despite its potential disappointment, this approach is the truth. It’s a form of recipe, albeit one that, at its worst, may take a year instead of a weekend.
If you’re not at the forefront of a rapidly changing field, you can get there. Anyone reasonably intelligent can likely become proficient in a domain with a year’s effort. Considering a successful startup demands at least 3-5 years of commitment, a year’s preparation is a reasonable investment, especially if you’re seeking a co-founder.
While learning programming isn’t essential to be at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field, for the foreseeable future, it’s sufficient. As Marc Andreessen noted, software is transforming industries, a trend with decades of momentum.
Being able to program means that when you have ideas, you can implement them. This isn’t essential (Jeff Bezos couldn’t program), but it’s advantageous. It’s even more beneficial when you’re both a programmer and the target user. In this scenario, the cycle of generating new versions and testing them on users can occur within one mind.
Once you’re living in the future in some respect, noticing startup ideas involves identifying what’s missing. If you’re truly at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field, you’ll likely spot obvious gaps. What won’t be apparent is that these gaps represent startup ideas. To find startup ideas, don’t just ask "What’s missing?" Also, turn off every other filter, particularly "Could this be a big company?" Save that test for later. Focusing on it initially may filter out good ideas and steer you toward bad ones.
Most missing elements take time to recognize. You’ll need to trick yourself into noticing the ideas around you. But rest assured, the ideas are out there. It’s highly improbable that this is the exact moment when technological progress halts. By turning off the filters that typically prevent you from seeing them, you’ll eventually uncover valuable ideas.
The most powerful filter you can turn off is assuming the current state of the world is fixed. Even the most open-minded among us largely take the present for granted. If you’re seeking startup ideas, be willing to question things. Why is your inbox overflowing? What problems are people trying to solve by sending you email? Are there better solutions? By examining things that annoy you, you may be living in the future without realizing it.
When you discover the right type of problem, you should be able to describe it as obvious, at least to you. Generating startup ideas is about recognizing the obvious. It’s about seeing things that are obvious but that you hadn’t seen.
Since this approach involves loosening your mind, it’s best not to directly attack the problem by sitting down and trying to think of ideas. Instead, keep a background process running. Work on challenging problems driven by curiosity while maintaining a secondary focus on gaps and anomalies.
This approach requires some patience. While you have control over the rate at which you prepare your mind, you have less control over the stimuli that spark ideas. If Bill Gates and Paul Allen had constrained themselves to conceive a startup idea within a month, what if they’d chosen a month before the Altair’s release? They likely would have worked on a less promising idea. Similarly, Drew Houston initially worked on a less promising idea—an SAT prep startup—before pivoting to Dropbox, a far better idea that also aligned with his skills.
As you develop expertise in a field, be on the lookout for missing elements. If you’re truly at the forefront, you’ll likely spot obvious gaps. What won’t be apparent is that these gaps represent startup ideas. To find startup ideas, don’t just ask "What’s missing?" Also, turn off every other filter, particularly "Could this be a big company?" Save that test for later. Focusing on it initially may filter out good ideas and steer you toward bad ones.
In conclusion, generating startup ideas is not about coming up with something new out of thin air. It’s about recognizing the obvious problems and gaps that others have missed. To do this, immerse yourself in a field, live in the future, and be willing to challenge the status quo. By preparing your mind and staying alert to opportunities, you can increase your chances of finding a successful startup idea.
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