Paul Graham: How to find idea for a startup (part four)

This is the fourth part, she is the final translation of an article Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, one of the most Uspaskich startup accelerators about how to find your idea for a startup. First, second and the third part of the link.
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Recipes

Although the best way to discover startup-idea — to become the type of people who have it and then to create interest, whatever it is, however, often is a luxury that we cannot afford. Sometimes you need an idea right now. For example, you work on a startup and your initial idea turns out to be unsuccessful.

The remainder of the essay I will dedicate the above to help you find startup idea on demand. And although, in my experience, it is better to use an organic way, this method can also lead you to success. You just need more self-control. When you use the organic approach, you don't even notice an idea unless she declares publicly that something truly was missing. But when you make a conscious effort to think about the idea for a startup, you need to replace your natural limitations on self-control. Then you will see much more ideas; most of them bad. So you should be able to filter them.

Organic ideas are fraught with danger, as they felt inspired. There are lots of stories about successful startups that began when the founders had what seemed like a crazy idea but "just knew" that their idea is promising. When you have such a feeling against the idea you were trying to invent, probably, you're wrong.

When looking for the idea, focus on the areas where you have expertise. If you are an expert on databases, do not create the chat app for teenagers (unless you're not a teenager). Maybe that's a good idea, but you can't trust your own judgment relative to this, so ignore it. There must be other ideas with databases, on which you can judge. You think it's hard to find a good idea using a database? It is because your experience and knowledge to raise the standards. But your judgments about the app chat are so bad, you just let yourself go in this field, using effect of Dunning — Kruger.

But the correct place to start the search for ideas is things you need. There are always things that you need.

A good trick is to ask yourself, did it happen on your previous work, what would you say, "Well why doesn't someone make X? If someone did, we would have bought it the very next moment." If you can think of about this X, about which people said, maybe you already have idea. You know that there is a demand, and people wouldn't beat yourself up about things that are impossible to create.

In General, try to ask yourself if there's something unusual about you that makes your needs different from the needs of other people. Perhaps, you are not alone. Especially good if you differ with what people is inevitable, but will gradually come.

If you change idea, one unusual thing you already have — the idea, on which you worked before. Did you have any needs while working on it? Several well-known startups began this way. Hotmail began as something its founders wrote to talk about their previous startup while in the main work.
A particularly promising way to be unusual is to be young. Some of the most valuable ideas are rooted in adolescence (13-20) and 20 years of age. And while young founders have some disadvantages, they are the only ones who really understand their peers. It would be very difficult to someone who never went to College, think of Facebook. If you're a young founder (under 23), are there things that you and your friends would like to do, but which do not make current technology?

But it is better of your personal unmet needs — the unmet need of someone else. Try to talk with everyone you can, about the gaps that they found in this world. What is missing? What would they like to do but can't? What tedious and irritating, especially in their work? And let the conversation will be fairly General, not too zealous in search of startup ideas. You just look for anything that can light you idea. You may find a problem that they didn't realize, because unlike them, you know that it could be resolved.

When you find an unmet need, others, it may seem at first very blurred. People who need something, may not know what it is. In these cases, I recommend that the founders act as consultants to act as if they were invited to solve the problem of the user. People's problems are similar enough, so code written this way can be used again for another person. And that is not useful, it will be a small price for the assurance that you have reached the bottom of the well.

One of the ways to make sure that you really solve other people's problems, make them your own. When Rajat Suri of E la Carte decided to write software for restaurants, he found work as a waiter to learn how restaurants. This may sound extreme, but the startups themselves are extreme. We love it when founders do such things.

In fact, one of the strategies that I recommend to people looking for a new idea, not just to get rid of the filter of "unattractiveness" and "hemorrhoids", but should look for ideas that are unattractive and hemorrhoid. Do not attempt to create Twitter. These ideas are so rare that you cannot find them searching. Do something "unattractive", for which people will pay you.

A good technique to circumvent the filter of "hemorrhoids" in some degree "unattractiveness" is to ask that you wanted someone else created, and you could use. And how much you would be willing to pay for it?

Because startups often dispose of the bankrupt company and industry, a good technique is to look to those who are dying, or deserve it, and try to imagine what type of company could benefit from their death. For example, journalism is now in free fall. But maybe you can make a profit from something similar to journalism. What type of company might cause people in the future to say "it's the new journalism" in some aspect?

But imagine asking that in the future, but not now. When one company or industry replaces another, it usually occurs unexpectedly. So do not look for a substitute for something; looking for something, what people then say that it was a substitute for X. And use your imagination on those dimensions in which to occur these changes. Traditional journalism, for example, is a way for readers to get information and to kill time for journalists to make money and to attract attention, and besides a mechanism to accommodate multiple types of advertising. And she could evolve in any of these measurements (in fact, the process has already begun and in all directions).

When startups are eaten by the giants, they usually begin with small but important market that the big players ignore. Especially good if there is a certain disregard in the position of a great player, because it often confuses them. For example, after Steve Wozniak created the computer that became the Apple I, he felt obligated to pass his then-employer Hewlett-Packard the option to produce it. Fortunately for him, HP refused. And one of the reasons the computer used a TV as a monitor, which seemed an unacceptable reduction of class to a company that produces high-quality iron, like HP at the time.
But is there a group of unkempt, but sophisticated users, as were fans of the early microcomputers, which are now ignored by the big players? A startup with an eye on bigger things can often easily capture a small market, spending efforts that will be justified by one of the market.

Since the most successful startups usually catch a wave, which is greater than themselves, can be a good trick the search of such waves and the question of how to benefit from them. The value of genome sequencing and 3D printing is slowly reduced, by analogy with Moore's law. What are the things we can do in the new world in which we live in 5 years? We subconsciously rule out as impossible, but that will be possible soon?

Organic matter

But, if we talk about linear search of these waves, I would like to clarify that this recipe is plan "B" in finding startup ideas. Search waves — is essentially an imitation of the organic approach. If you are on the cutting edge of a fast-changing sector, you don't need to look for waves; you are the wave.

Search for startup ideas is a subtle business, and why so many people, from those who try, fail. You can't just come up with a good startup idea. If you do, then you are probably a bad idea, which seems plausible, but only more dangerous. The best way is less direct: if you have the right background, good startup ideas will seem obvious to you. But even then — not immediately. Will take some time to face a situation where you notice that something is missing. And often these gaps won't seem ideas that can become companies, they are simply things that will be fun to build. For this reason, it is good to have the time and inclination to build things just because they are interesting.

Live in the future and build what seems interesting. As if it may sound strange: this is the real recipe.

that's it. Scheherazade Graham ends. The article turned out long, but I hope that you found the strength to read all four parts. It definitely worth it! I will be very glad if it will encourage you to meditate and will help with the project. But there is more: visit 42startups.ru and subscribe to new articles!

UPD: Alex Kulagin did a good thing and consolidated all Russian articles: Paul Graham in the ibooks format. iPad-gadflies — recommended for consultation)

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru