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1/ Most really good startup ideas look like bad ideas at first, and many of those look bad specifically because some change in the world just switched them from bad to good.
2/ Instead of trying to point yourself in the right direction, admit you have no idea what the right direction is, and try instead to be super sensitive to the winds of change.
3/ The way to come up with new ideas is not to try explicitly to, but to try to solve problems and simply not discount weird hunches you have in the process.
4/ If you're sufficiently expert in a field, any weird idea or apparently irrelevant question that occurs to you is ipso facto worth exploring.
5/ Surround yourself with the sort of people new ideas come from.
6/ I think people believe that coming up with ideas for startups is very hard-- that it must be very hard-- and so they don't try do to it.
7/ The initial idea is just a starting point-- not a blueprint, but a question. Treating a startup idea as a question changes what you're looking for.
8/ Instead of saying that your idea is to make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet, say: could one make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet? A few grammatical tweaks, and a woefully incomplete idea becomes a promising question to explore.
9/ One valuable way for an idea to be wrong is to be only a partial solution.
10/ Perhaps letting your mind wander is like doodling with ideas.
11/ You're not just looking for good ideas, but for good new ideas, and you have a better chance of generating those if you combine stuff from distant fields.
12/ I find that to have good ideas I need to be working on some problem.
13/ You have to start with a problem, then let your mind wander just far enough for new ideas to form.
14/ Good ideas and valuable ideas are not quite the same thing; the difference is individual tastes.
15/ The most productive way to generate startup ideas is also the most unlikely-sounding: by accident.
16/ Evolving your idea is the embodiment of understanding your users.
17/ If you're not a domain expert, you can be as convinced as you like about your idea, and it will seem to investors no more than an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
18/ Usually you can find this someone else already done it? Ideally the answer is that it only recently became a good idea, because something changed, and no one else has noticed yet.
19/ The biggest ideas seem to threaten your identity: you wonder if you'd have enough ambition to carry them through.
20/ One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations.
21/ It's harder to judge startups than most other things, because great startup ideas tend to seem wrong.
22/ A good startup idea has to be not just good but novel.
23/ It's not so important to be able to solve predefined problems quickly as to be able to come up with surprising new ideas.
24/ The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests you, and in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea can take roost.
25/ Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
26/ Any really good new idea will seem bad to most people; otherwise someone would already be doing it.
27/ A startup has to make something it can deliver to a large market, and ideas of that type are so valuable that all the obvious ones are already taken.
28/ Usually successful startups happen because the founders are sufficiently different from other people that ideas few others can see seem obvious to them.
29/ It's a particularly good combination both to be good at technology and to face problems that can be solved by it, because technology changes so rapidly that formerly bad ideas often become good without anyone noticing.
30/ Most fairly good ideas are adjacent to even better ones.
31/ Counterintuitive point: that the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas.
32/ Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort.
33/ The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be such outliers that your conscious mind would reject them as ideas for companies.
34/ (1) Learn a lot about things that matter, then (2) work on problems that interest you (3) with people you like and respect.
35/ So when you find an idea you know is good but most people disagree with, you should not merely ignore their objections, but push aggressively in that direction.
36/ The thing about ideas, though, is that they lead to more ideas. Working to implement one idea gives you more ideas.
37/ If you want ideas for startups, one of the most valuable things you could do is find a middle-sized non-technology company and spend a couple weeks just watching what they do with computers.
38/ No matter what your idea, there's someone else out there working on the same thing.
39/ No idea for a product could ever be so clever as the ones you can discover by smashing a beam of prototypes into a beam of users.
40/ I have a general idea of the direction I want to go in, and I choose the next topic with that in mind.
41/ We've always encouraged founders to see a startup idea as a hypothesis rather than a blueprint.
42/ People don't realize how hard it is to judge startup ideas, particularly their own.
43/ One reason people overreact to competitors is that they overvalue ideas.
44/ If most of your ideas aren't stupid, you're probably being too conservative.
45/ That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable.
46/ If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved.
47/ The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing.
48/ Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas.
49/ When you have an idea for a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? Who wants this so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one made by a two-person startup they've never heard of? If you can't answer that, the idea is probably bad.
50/ How do you tell whether there's a path out of an idea? How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company, or just a niche product? Often you can't.
51/ The most important thing to understand about paths out of the initial idea is the meta-fact that these are hard to see.
52/ So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an idea, how do you choose between ideas? The truth is disappointing but interesting: if you're the right sort of person, you have the right sort of hunches.
53/ If you look at the way successful founders have had their ideas, it's generally the result of some external stimulus hitting a prepared mind.
54/ So if you want to find startup ideas, don't merely turn on the filter "What's missing?" Also turn off every other filter, particularly "Could this be a big company?" There's plenty of time to apply that test later.
55/ Since what you need to do here is loosen up your own mind, it may be best not to make too much of a direct frontal attack on the problem — i.e. to sit down and try to think of ideas.
56/ Work on hard problems, driven mainly by curiosity, but have a second self watching over your shoulder, taking note of gaps and anomalies.
57/ A good way to trick yourself into noticing ideas is to work on projects that seem like they'd be cool.
58/ Just as trying to think up startup ideas tends to produce bad ones, working on things that could be dismissed as "toys" often produces good ones.
59/ Worrying that you're late is one of the signs of a good idea.
60/ So better a good idea with competitors than a bad one without.
61/ There are two more filters you'll need to turn off if you want to notice startup ideas: the unsexy filter and the schlep filter.
62/ If you're at the leading edge of a field that's changing rapidly, your ideas about what's sexy will be somewhat correlated with what's valuable in practice.
63/ When searching for ideas, look in areas where you have some expertise.
64/ Maybe it's a good idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it.
65/ The place to start looking for ideas is things you need.
66/ What's missing? What would they like to do that they can't? What's tedious or annoying, particularly in their work? Let the conversation get general; don't be trying too hard to find startup ideas.
67/ Taking time to come up with an idea is not merely a better strategy in an absolute sense, but also like an undervalued stock in that so few founders do it.
68/ There's comparatively little competition for the best ideas, because few founders are willing to put in the time required to notice them.
69/ Whereas there is a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, because when people make up startup ideas, they tend to make up the same ones.
70/ Paul Buchheit points out that trying to sell something bad can be a source of better ideas:"The best technique I've found for dealing with YC companies that have bad ideas is to tell them to go sell the product ASAP (before wasting time building it).
71/ Not only do they learn that nobody wants what they are building, they very often come back with a real idea that they discovered in the process of trying to sell the bad idea.
72/ Most good startup ideas seem a little crazy; if they were obviously good ideas, someone would have done them already.
73/ "Not much new" is a real achievement when you're talking about the most general ideas.
74/ n idea with a small amount of novelty could lead to one with more.
75/ The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you?
76/ You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas.
77/ It's not that people think of grand ideas but decide to pursue smaller ones because they seem safer.
78/ The other reason you need to launch is that it's only by bouncing your idea off users that you fully understand it.
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