How to get and evaluate startup ideas

[blackmarch103]

I just finished watching a video from YC's playlist about how to get and evaluate startup ideas and I wanted to share with you the notes I took.

Four most common mistakes with startup ideas:

1. Not solving a real problem (solution in search of a problem) : it’s dangerous because you’ll find a made up problem that people don’t care about rather than a real problem that people care about. Instead fall in love with a problem.
2. Getting stuck on “tarpit ideas” : ideas that a lot of founders get stuck on and never seem to find a solution. What causes tarpit ideas ?? Widespread problem that a lot of founders encounter, seems like it could be easily solvable with a startup but there is a structural reason why it’s very difficult to solve. Ideas like this are very dangerous. How to identify a tarpit idea ?? Google it, find if people have already worked on this and what are the hard parts they encountered.
3. Not evaluating an idea
4. Waiting for the perfect startup idea

You should think of your idea as a good starting point

Now let’s say you have an idea and you want to know if it’s good

10 key questions to ask about a startup idea:

1. Do you have founder market fit : most important question, are you the best team to be working on this problem ? Pick a good idea for your team.
2. How big is the market ? Big now, small or rapidly growing. Example: coinbase
3. How accute is this problem ?
4. Do you have competition ?
5. Do you want this ?
6. Did this only recently become possible ?
7. Are there good proxies for this business ? A proxy is a large company that goes something similar to you but not a direct competitor
8. Is this an idea you’d want to work on for years ?
9. Is this a scalable business ?
10. Is this a good idea space ? An idea space is one level of abstract from a startup idea

3 things that make your startup idea seem bad, but actually make them good

The reasons these things make them good is that founders will shy away from ideas likes this which leaves them on the table for smarter founders to go and grab them

Here there are:

1. Hard to get started
2. Boring space
3. Existing competion

How to come up with startup ideas

You can’t come up with good startup ideas in command. Most good ideas come organically.

But you can set yourself up to have good startup ideas

Become an expert on something valuable

Work at a startup

Build things that you find interesting

But what if your life depended on coming up with a good startup idea right now

Here are 7 recipes:

• Start with what your team is good at and pick ideas that benefit from your expertise (automatic founder market fit)
• Start with a problem you’ve encountered.

using recipes 1 and 2 : think if every job you had, what are problems or opportunities you’ve been in a special position to see ?

• Think of things you personally wish existed (this recipe is most dangerous because it leads to tarpit ideas)
• Look of things in the world that changed recently that might have created a new opportunity
• Look for new variants of successful companies
• Talk to people and ask them what problems they have (it’s recommended to start with a fertile idea space and then start talking to people within that idea space) Talk to potential customers as well as founders in that space
• Look for big industries that seem broken

Bonus recipe: find a cofounder that already has an idea

It’s often hard to tell if a startup idea is good or not, the only way to be sure is to launch it and find out