[HN Gopher] Idea Generation
___________________________________________________________________
Idea Generation
Author : awaxman11
Score : 119 points
Date : 2020-05-28 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.samaltman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.samaltman.com)
| rl3 wrote:
| Ideas become better when refined. Sometimes over the course of
| _years_. You can assemble a larger composite idea under the
| umbrella of a single vision, comprised of many smaller ideas.
|
| There's of course a balance to be struck depending on the idea's
| scope and urgency. Both may change with refinement.
|
| Idea generation is both a learned skill and intrinsic to a
| person's circumstance and psychology. Ample unstructured time,
| low amounts of stress, and an affinity for day dreaming tend to
| help. Over time you grow to actually enjoy deep thinking as
| recreation.
|
| I've noticed whenever I'm focused in on a particular idea, it
| kind of forms a lens that shapes my world view. Anything I then
| encounter I view as a puzzle piece, which my mind attempts to
| reconcile into the larger puzzle that is the foremost idea on my
| mind at the time. It's a very similar dynamic to PG's musings on
| the subject.[0]
|
| [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I don't know how it works for other people but I don't search for
| really great ideas, really great ideas find me. And once they
| latch on they don't let go.
|
| Most things I would classify as "really great ideas" are emergent
| patterns in industries I know very well. Also, most of these are
| not abstract product ideas _per se_ , you can usually see a
| direct and plausible path to generating large quantities of
| revenue and profit.
| imedadel wrote:
| How do you manage your ideas? I'm using a combination of Google
| Sheets, Notion, and a notebook. I rate each idea in Sheets using
| colors and I keep Notion and a notebook for research so that I
| don't think about an idea twice.
| cdiamand wrote:
| I have a massive email chain I keep replying to anytime I have
| an idea.
| x32n23nr wrote:
| I find this odd. Have you worked on any of those ideas?
| searchableguy wrote:
| I do the same. I bookmark complaints from people and feature
| requests. Those that I want to research more gets pushed to
| notion or email with a specific tag.
| imedadel wrote:
| Oh yes. And it feels good to go back and mark an idea as
| done!
|
| Whenever I have a thought, I write it down. If I got that
| thought again, I might do a quick Google search and then give
| a rating to the idea. If I kept constantly thinking about it,
| I start researching it.
|
| The research part might take maybe an hour a week. The other
| steps don't really take much time.
|
| I find this to help with procrastination or losing focus.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I keep most public: https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas. A few
| are in my WorkFlowy, but only because I haven't written them
| down properly. And then I have a section in my notebook for
| ideas. Stuff graduates from there to my GitHub (or gets built)
|
| I've always believed in swombat's quote on HN[1]:
|
| >There's no such thing as an original idea. Every idea worth
| having has been had thousands of times already.
|
| No point in keeping ideas private. Keeping them public lets
| other people build things I would like to see, even if I may
| not have the resources (time/energy/motivation/expertise) to
| actually do it. It's a win for me either way.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250793
| cryptoz wrote:
| I use Sheets and Docs extensively for idea tracking and project
| kickoff. Docs for a scrachpad of ideas, lists, links. When I
| start working on something, it gets its own Sheet with a
| backlog, estimates, progress columns. Once it is published it
| will likely use GitHub issues or Trello or something a bit more
| robust. I use Slides to make mini pitch decks and keep all the
| related files in the same folder on Drive. Next to the main
| list in Docs.
|
| I am also working on an idea management platform, because I
| like Sheets but it is also a limiting experience. I'm making
| automated question-answer with TTS and speech recognition, and
| hoping to make automatic pitch deck starter kits from question-
| answer sessions in app. Maybe it'll be a product some day.
| baxtr wrote:
| Good old trello with new, discarded etc lists
| jameslk wrote:
| Having failed the startup game my fair share of times, I've found
| a more reliable way to come up with good ideas is to let others
| who need something give you ideas. Work in a specific industry
| long enough that you learn about the trade and type of problems
| and solutions needed.
|
| I currently focus on providing services to ecommerce companies,
| and I get to hear all the time about their pain points and things
| they wish they had. It's given me a lot of ideas for products to
| work on and the bonus to that is I already have established
| relationships with my market, making it much easier to iterate,
| build case studies, and sell.
|
| A lot of the demographic on HN is engineers. That is an industry.
| You can start with asking your engineer friends and colleagues
| what painful engineering problems they face, why nothing they use
| is good enough, and what they wish they had to fix it. If you
| find enough people saying the same thing, then you've found a
| potential market. And luckily engineers are early adopter too.
| mdorazio wrote:
| > Work in a specific industry long enough that you learn about
| the trade and type of problems and solutions needed.
|
| The problem with this is that the recent grads with effectively
| no practical experience to speak of can't start startups with
| VC funding and dreams of grandeur this way. But I agree that
| this is the best path to start a company that's actually likely
| to succeed based on actual long-term profitability and
| legitimate problem solving.
| Swizec wrote:
| This is how you start a real company with actual potential
| that investors will love.
|
| But it doesn't feed into the Silicon Valley career mill. So
| it doesn't get talked about.
|
| SV's assumption is that you want to "get signed" and start
| your path. Acquihire by acquihire you build a career. Some
| outliers get rich and motivate the others.
|
| The whole thing is a self-sustaining finance market. Failed
| founders provide the workforce, outliers provide the funds.
| And the mill keeps turning.
|
| (the real winners are GPs and LPs, the VCs are just as much
| hamster wheel runners as the rest of us, just later in the
| career)
| sc90 wrote:
| Skin in the game.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| From my somewhat limited experience, working as a consultant
| (management, etc.) is great for identifying problems, and
| subsequently coming up with ideas (solutions).
|
| Reason is that you work very closely with companies, often many
| different in the same sector, and get to see all the various
| aspects, quirks, and flaws at nearly every level of operation.
| Just the act of getting exposed to all this, can work as a great
| catalyst for ideas and brainstorming - much better (imo) than
| just sitting around and trying to think up something, where one
| can easily fall for the "solution looking for a problem" trap.
|
| Now, unfortunately, most people can't just walk into those jobs -
| and you're not there to brainstorm solutions for every flaw you
| see. But if you ever get the chance to be in such a position, do
| try it out.
|
| A lot of profitable entrepreneurship revolves around "boring"
| business problems.
| [deleted]
| austincheney wrote:
| I have always found that entire scenario very odd. How are you a
| start up founder if you don't know what you want to start up?
|
| I always look at that like a soldier jacked up on adrenaline
| wearing an arsenal of ammunition ready to destroy the enemy
| having forgotten to ask who the enemy is or where they are. Lost.
| Maybe if they just start spraying ammo at everybody the enemy
| will suddenly make themselves known and something will stick.
|
| This entire scenario is completely at odds with Indie Hackers who
| continually stress to refine a good idea until you have both
| revenue and product/market fit before quitting your day job. This
| advise is well suited to people who have the reality of personal
| finances and time constraints, so I guess there are some people
| who have unlimited funding and time to burn in search of
| something they should already have.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I am sceptical too but it's not an unusual idea to think that
| perhaps you can just put smart people together and they'll work
| something out.
|
| God knows that much of that attitude is often lauded on HN for
| other things.
| kgin wrote:
| That's a funny cultural thing about silicon valley. You're not
| incidentally an entrepreneur only if you've started something,
| you're an entrepreneur simply because you're the type of person
| who entrepreneues.
| aklemm wrote:
| It's a form of entitlement. Similar to calling oneself a
| "keynote speaker" absent any mention of one's area of
| expertise. To consider one's self a founder without an idea is
| to ignore the importance of vision. Might be ok for a
| franchise, but these are always the same people talking about
| disrupting this and that.
| elliekelly wrote:
| And ignores the importance of execution altogether. It's hard
| to do $thing before you even know what it is.
| dunkelheit wrote:
| The problem with this way of thinking is that existing markets
| are probably efficient enough - meaning all easy ways to make a
| lot of money have already been exhausted. This means that any
| idea that you generate by encountering a problem and thinking
| of a solution is probably either too hard to implement or will
| generate relatively puny revenue stream (nothing to sneeze at,
| but probably not of much interest to VCs and founders chasing
| big bucks).
|
| What's the alternative? To wait for tectonic shifts in overall
| environment and circumstances, look for vacant ecological
| niches and pounce when you see one. To the outside view this
| will look exactly like a founder who doesn't know what to start
| up.
|
| Here is an example I like: John Carmack. The conventional view
| is that he is a brilliant game programmer (which is undoubtedly
| true). But the alternative point of view is that his shtick was
| to capitalize on the period of incredible advances in consumer
| hardware. Each of his games fully showcased what the best
| hardware of that time was capable of (order of magnitude more
| than the previous generation) which made them instant hits. Not
| coincidentally, he quit making games around the time this
| period of advancement stopped.
|
| Here is a post by @defmacro making a similar point:
| http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html
| austincheney wrote:
| John Carmack's success is due to id Software incubated at
| Softdisk. The reality of that success, at least in the
| beginning, was an already established stream of revenue, a
| ready assembled team, and proper leadership. The brilliance
| and innovation of Carmack came later. They had day jobs,
| revenue, and product/market fit already established before
| spinning out of Softdisk to launch id. That isn't enough to
| account for the super stellar success they would later enjoy,
| but it fully explains launching a successful business. There
| isn't any magic or secret sauce there.
|
| > The problem with this way of thinking is that existing
| markets are probably efficient enough
|
| Oh, that's certainly not true. The challenge there is the
| expertise to see the current dysfunction versus the risk of
| solving for it. Solving for the dysfunction often comes at
| competition for the limited resources required for current
| practice of art and rejection from just about everybody.
| Knowing this there is a choice to be made:
|
| 1. Sustain the current practice with current income and no
| change in risk
|
| 2. Proceed with the solution knowing that failure is probable
| and that a startup begins with a financial valley of death
| (burns cash without the revenue to make up for it) while
| knowing the greatness of the idea is financially irrelevant.
|
| I say the greatness of the idea is financially irrelevant,
| because disruption requires some degree of originality and
| originality scares the shit out of people. That means the
| idea will burn money churning in frequent rejection until it
| achieves some manner of market assistance.
| benjaminsuch wrote:
| Agree. I think it's a very bad sign if someone asks for ideas.
| You don't ask for ideas, you encounter problems and based on
| those problems you make ideas on how to solve them.
|
| That's also the reason why one should make a prototype very
| fast and validate by a potential user/customer that you solve
| the problem the right way.
| peterwoerner wrote:
| I knew I wanted to build my own company before I had a good
| idea for one. When I was in grad school I went out and executed
| a themed bottle opener which at best guess could make a few
| thousand dollars simply for practice and experience.
|
| Regardless of whether you are a founder or not, figuring out
| the important problems to solve is important to ones career.
| fredsters_s wrote:
| > YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders
| with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed
|
| ...coinbase was a 'no idea' startup
| eigen-vector wrote:
| This goes hand in hand with writing. (Good) Writing involves
| thinking deeply about an idea or a topic. Many good writers
| appreciate critical feedback, this involves getting your ideas
| validated or invalidated.
|
| It is quite easy to be in an environment of smart people thanks
| to the internet. By thinking deeply about a problem or ten,
| trying to write a clear essay on it helps with this.
| dzonga wrote:
| ideas beget ideas. yeah, waves tectonic shifts are real. and
| hyper-iteration begets ideas. & filters good ideas from bad ones.
| godot wrote:
| > (By the way, it's useful to get good at differentiating between
| real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new
| platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a
| little by a lot of people.)
|
| As a one-time founder, I feel embarrassed to have to ask this;
| but in the spirit of no-stupid-question and also that there's
| gotta be someone else wondering the same -- which one is the real
| trend and which one is the fake trend?
|
| By way of interpreting sentences in a normal way, I would assume
| "used a lot by a small number of people" is the real trend and
| "used a little by a lot of people" is the fake trend (going by
| order of mentions in both sentences).
|
| However, I struggle with this a bit. Dapps were used a lot by a
| small number of people as of a few years ago (think the
| cryptokitties trend), but it didn't exactly pan out as a real
| trend IMO. In other cases, yes, when early adopters love a
| product and use it a lot, that tends to become a real trend. On
| the other hand, Facebook apps in 2008 (when they were smaller
| apps like Superwall and such, before games took over) were
| somewhat "used a little by a lot of people" at the beginning. I
| think it wasn't until games took over where the "used a lot" (by
| a large number of people in that case) really took off.
| zem wrote:
| at least for your specific example, I would argue that
| "facebook apps" never took off. facebook _games_ did, but they
| are a qualitatively different class of application that just
| happened to use the same platform that the facebook apps did.
| multiplayer online games were always popular, and facebook
| happened to implement them well enough to catch on within the
| platform.
| maxov wrote:
| Nah, I think you're asking a good question! I think your
| interpretation is correct - a good sign for a platform is if it
| has a small base of passionate users who love the product.
|
| For some more context, the How to Start a Startup course is
| pretty good -- here is the lecture I think is most relevant:
| http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec06/
|
| Any statement like this isn't going to apply in all cases, and
| you bring up some good examples. But it's a good general
| principle.
| npalli wrote:
| new platform "used by a lot of small number of people" is
| usually the real trend. As new platforms are quirky and buggy
| only people who use it a lot can power though all the issues
| and guide you to a product that works for a large market. They
| also have enough emotional connection that they can evangelize
| your product to the wider market.
|
| The "used a little by a lot" people don't have the attachment
| or deep need to work through issues and they give up after some
| time. They also can't be bothered to evangelize for you.
|
| Of course, sometimes there is no market beyond the small group.
| Even then, it is easier to make a business (revenue > cost) in
| the small "used a lot" market than the other case where people
| won't pay.
| bko wrote:
| > It's better to have 100 users love you than 1 million kinda
| like you. The true seed of scale is love, and you can't buy it,
| hack it, or game it. A product that is deeply loved is one that
| can scale
|
| Interview with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, Altman goes
| more into his reasoning [0]
|
| https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-a...
| minimaxir wrote:
| Legit surprised Sam didn't recommend using an AI to generate
| ideas. :P
| lordnacho wrote:
| > YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders
| with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track
| failed.
|
| How many people did they try this with? Most startups fail, so it
| will be interesting to see whether they funded enough of these. I
| think there's a rule of thumb about the upper limit on a
| probability that isn't observed, but I can't remember what it is.
|
| As for generating ideas, the founders I've come across have
| tended to know some industry well enough to understand some of
| the problems. Often this is very specific industry stuff,
| including understanding which experts are needed and what
| customers to focus on.
|
| Of course there's plenty of people who have grown up in some
| industry, but I think the other ingredient you need is enough
| general knowledge about business to be able to put some pieces
| together: how to get funding, what a corporate structure is, how
| to do certain mundane things like pay taxes. The intersection can
| be smaller than you think, because a lot of corporate types are
| comfortable where they are, plus they feel (rightly or not) that
| the job is providing a fair bit of the business infrastructure
| they need to use their expertise.
| otoburb wrote:
| I thought that entrepreneurs-in-residence at VC firms are the
| equivalent of this idea of funding exceptionally capable
| potential-founders (many who seemed to have been past founders)
| with no ideas to execute in the current period.
| axegon_ wrote:
| I touched this subject in another discussion a few days ago
| briefly. Here is what I've learned over the years:
|
| People keep repeating that you should work on ideas that solve
| problems that you have yourself. Now given some time on your own,
| it's natural to start looking at your problems and seeing how to
| solve them for yourself and potentially others and make a profit
| along the way. If you want a sinister spin on this, nothing sells
| better than fear or hope.
|
| But this is HN and as far as tech people go, our instinct is to
| solve problems that are given to us. And often when we have
| problems on our own, we come up with a solution and don't really
| think about it twice. I was recently talking with someone about a
| project they had at their work and how their company paid
| something like 3 million euros to another company to build a
| "platform" for them. And given that their company isn't that
| large or doesn't have that many users (say 40k/month tops), that
| raised my eyebrow a bit. So I asked them to show me what that
| "platform" was. Long story-short, a website with a username and
| password registration, email verification, paypal subscription,
| which allows you to download a list of PDF's.
|
| To a developer the whole concept sounds like a joke - anyone with
| a few months of experience can mash that up in two weeks. "Oh but
| we have so many users and traffic, it's not that simple."
|
| Bruh... 40k users/month, 100 pdf's, ~2mb each is something a
| raspberry pi can serve without any issues.
|
| The truth is, most tech people are very much detached from
| reality(granted that the mass of people is the reality and not
| the other way around). We try to fix problems which we really
| don't have ourselves and we over-engineer the crap out of them.
| And commonly this is the result of the so called "idea
| generation". It's easy to create a startup that solves a niche
| problem. But we often fail to acknowledge how tiny these niches
| really are. It's easier to sell something that costs 10000 euros
| to 10 people and make 100k as opposed to selling something for 5
| euros to 20000 people.
|
| The truth is, most people create 5 euro products which have a
| potential audience of 10 people, hence the reason why they make
| 50 euros as opposed to 100k. You can scroll through PH for days
| and keep repeating "omg, who needs this?!?!?"
|
| I know I have. And truthfully I doubt many people have hit the 50
| euro mark, not to mention the 100k.
|
| But people make that mistake all the time. We are surrounded by
| people who will hook up an led to an arduino which will blink
| when someone mentions them on slack while they are watching a
| movie, while ordinary people are looking at a website which has
| payments and they think that's quantum physics. Tech people and
| ordinary people live in parallel universes at this point. The
| ideas we come up with are solutions to problems no one has.
| That's the reason why SaaS is proving to be a lot more successful
| strategy than B2C.
|
| My take on this is that every time you come up with an idea,
| don't bother sharing it with your tech friends first. In most
| cases you will get a 50-50 positive-negative response. Find
| people who are completely detached from your world and have no
| idea what the difference between a USB and RJ45 is.
|
| 1. Can you explain your idea in 4 sentences or less?
|
| 2. Do they understand it?
|
| 3. Do they have that problem?
|
| 3a(if Y on 3). Do they have a working solution, even if it takes
| 3 times the effort?
|
| If the answers to those are:
|
| 1. No
|
| 2. No
|
| 3. No
|
| 3a. Yes
|
| Then don't bother. You will almost certainly fail.
| aazaa wrote:
| > A good question to ask yourself early in the process of
| thinking about an idea is "could this be huge if it worked?"
| There are many good ideas in the world, but few of them have the
| inherent advantages that can make a startup massively successful.
| Most businesses don't generate a valuable accumulating advantage
| as they scale. Think early about why an idea might have that
| property. It's obvious for Facebook or Airbnb, but it often
| exists in more subtle ways.
|
| This reminds me of David Heinemeier Hansson's talk at Startup
| School waaayyy back.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY
|
| The gist: funders tell founders all the time to catch a wave. Go
| big or don't bother. The reason is that the funder must have a
| big payoff and small outcomes don't cut it.
|
| But there's plenty of room for a small, well-run company with no
| aspirations of getting bigger. I believe the analogy was: best
| Italian Restaurant in the city.
|
| The other advantage of thinking smaller than "huge" is that
| success is so much more likely because the competition tends to
| be less intense.
|
| Maybe the author and I have a different idea of "huge," but the
| examples suggest otherwise.
|
| If you're looking for a community that embraces the small startup
| idea and has developed a lot of material for exploring it, check
| out Microconf:
|
| https://microconf.com
| alexashka wrote:
| _Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your
| ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they
| hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future._
|
| Here's an idea - if _most_ people are world-weary (not true in my
| experience), maybe you should go and find out _why_ and then try
| to figure out what you can do to make it less so (get therapy in
| your case Sam Altman).
|
| What's your track record Sam Altman, besides burning through
| other people's money and thinking most people are _world-weary_
| and need to be distanced from?
|
| Here's from his wiki:
|
| _In 2005, at age 19,[9] Altman co-founded and became CEO of
| Loopt,[10] a location-based social networking mobile application.
| After raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt was shut
| down in 2012 after failing to get traction._
|
| So his track record is creating yet-another social-network, how
| original, burning through someone else's money and failing.
|
| Please tell us more Sam, you've clearly proven yourself to be an
| original thinker and capable operator of burning through other
| people's cash.
| juped wrote:
| Sam Altman is clearly great at the one skill that matters
| (becoming a "made man"). I haven't been impressed by anything
| else from him.
|
| If you want a YC person worth listening to, I recommend
| starting with Michael Seibel instead.
| wenc wrote:
| Quote
|
| --
|
| _It's important to be in the right kind of environment, and
| around the right kind of people. You want to be around people
| who have a good feel for the future, will entertain improbable
| plans, are optimistic, are smart in a creative way, and have a
| very high idea flux. These sorts of people tend to think
| without the constraints most people have, not have a lot of
| filters, and not care too much what other people think.
|
| The best ideas are fragile; most people don't even start
| talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps
| most of all, you want to be around people who don't make you
| feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never
| feel stupid for doing so themselves._
|
| --
|
| I worry that many take away the wrong lesson, i.e. every idea
| has potential, no idea is stupid. Many companies are trying to
| inculcate this into their cultures thinking they can replicate
| SV's success by being more open. I think most will quickly find
| this to be an untenable way to live, because it's only half the
| picture.
|
| I think the real take-away is more nuanced. Open unconstrained
| environments tend to produce the very best ideas (not just good
| ideas), and it's important not to kill new ideas too early.
| That said, all those ideas eventually need to be tested against
| the crucible of reality. Generate lots of ideas, but be ready
| to ruthlessly edit and kill those that don't work in reality.
| As pg said, innovation is two-step process -- and those 2 steps
| (generate, then edit) are discrete, not to be mixed. High
| infant mortality during ideation means good ideas get killed.
| But loose filtering at all means you're throwing good money
| after bad.
|
| My improv teacher tells me that to produce great work, we have
| to work out of abundance (lots of ideas), and also work out of
| failure (fail a lot). Abundance in itself is not enough, nor is
| failure on its own.
| tlb wrote:
| Social networks were not in the "how original" category in
| 2005. Facebook was started in 2004 and was still restricted to
| college students when Loopt launched. Loopt was quite different
| (mainly about location rather than friend graph.) It was an
| idea worth trying.
| rb808 wrote:
| The problem I see is 9/10 startups have stupid ideas but manage
| to pocket millions before the company crashes and burns. How do
| you get ideas like that will let you live well, but not
| necessarily be a good business? Doing sensible businesses just
| isn't viable in SV these days.
|
| > Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your
| ambitions.
|
| OK maybe that just is me.
| parhamn wrote:
| I think we need to have more founder-typing instead of
| prescribing everyone act like they can be good at everything.
|
| It's much more important to find balance on your founding team
| than expecting to learn idea generation suddenly.
|
| We need better tools for these different types to find each
| other. Creatives, executors, evangelists, etc can be different
| people.
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