[HN Gopher] How to brainstorm great business ideas
___________________________________________________________________
How to brainstorm great business ideas
Author : jhow15
Score : 93 points
Date : 2020-02-28 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.indiehackers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.indiehackers.com)
| harrydry wrote:
| great post
| aSplash0fDerp wrote:
| In a roundabout kind of way, if you find the solution first, its
| called learning and if your mindset is aligned to this article,
| its defined as research.
|
| Though in a monkey see, monkey do world, there is no shortage of
| mimicked expertise and flattery, so plan accordingly.
| cryptoz wrote:
| It's a good article I guess, but a bit over-optimistic about
| execution.
|
| > You can build anything.
|
| Not really, though. The article suggests that there are no
| constraints to what can be built, but there on constraints to
| what people want / need, how you'll make money, etc.
|
| There are significant constraints around what can be built. They
| change over time, and in fact, finding ideas that were rejected
| for being too hard in the past can be a good indicator of
| something that could be built now.
|
| And many great business ideas that solve huge problems with clear
| distribution channels can fail, because the solution that works
| isn't possible or feasible to build yet.
| irjustin wrote:
| Fantastic post. Lots of weight on the problem discovery area
| which is the right move and engineers turned entrepreneurs skip
| this step a lot. I know I did.
|
| A book recommended by YC's Aaron Epstein is The Mom Test[0]. The
| first 50-60% of the book is dedicated to how to discover problems
| with end clients/users that are worth tackling.
|
| I have used the techniques personally and it's great to see what
| users say is a huge problem vs a problem they're willing to pay
| for.
|
| It is easy to get stuck in a self-fulfilling trap that a user
| complains is a big problem. I recently spoke with a customer:
|
| - "What's your biggest problem?" (book says this question is a no
| no)
|
| - He replies, "If I sell 3 cars at the same time, I'm out of
| available float (cash) while I wait for those deals to close.
| This is a HUGE problem for me!"
|
| - "How do you solve this today?" I ask.
|
| - "I have other, larger car sales company who will lend me money
| at XX rates."
|
| Right there, it's a solved problem. The end user figured out
| their own way. Turns out other smaller dealers like him rely on
| large trade line companies.
|
| The only way I could complete is either on lower cost of
| financing or speed. At which point, for me, it's not a problem
| worth solving. The problem isn't so big for him where he's
| willing to throw cash at me for it.
|
| Talk to users.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
| everyone-...
| cdiamand wrote:
| Seconding this. Mom test is an essential read. People will say
| positive things about your product in order to protect your
| feelings, and this can lead you along the wrong path. When you
| ask them to purchase though, the conversation becomes really
| clear.
| frequentnapper wrote:
| egghead founder downloaded a bunch of youtube vids and zipped
| them up and sold them to a mailing list? Weren't there copyright
| issues? I'm not sure if that sort of advice is sound, but the
| rest of the article resonated nicely.
| tossmeout wrote:
| from what i know of the story he had the creators permission
| and later they worked together as cofounders
| notlukesky wrote:
| It's a nice framework for many ideas I suppose, but there too
| many examples of "non-obvious" "stupid ideas" with no market or
| problem to solve that eventually succeed. And plenty of successes
| that were not innovative but had great execution.
|
| Like most things in life timing is everything and we only know
| the right timing and "ideas" in hindsight.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-02-28 23:00 UTC)