How to get startup ideas

In 2012, Paul Graham wrote a blog post entitled "How to get startup ideas". Among other things, Mr. Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator. In the fast-changing world of startups, the fact that his ideas from almost a decade ago still hold true today proves that YC's immense success over the years was no fluke.

In fact, the ideas seem to be universal for starting companies of all kinds. So while I'm not starting a startup, I am planning to open a bookstore, so I thought it would be helpful to share my thoughts on this classic post.

The problem must exist

Companies exist to solve people's problems (an charge them for it). If no one has the problem we're trying to solve, then we would have no customers.

The challenge is to solve a problem that people have - that hasn't been solved yet. The most critical problems have been solved, and therefore the markets for solving them are quite competitive. People need a place to sleep and things to eat. This was solved long ago, so hotels and restaurants are everywhere now. People generally access the web by searching for something, so Google and Baidu exist (and are very profitable).

How do we know whether a certain problem actually exists? Mr. Graham's key insight is that we usually don't. This is why it's so important to work on a problem that we ourselves have - because at least that proves it exists.

People must be desperate for the solution

If you can choose between building something that many people like a litle bit and building something that a few people need desperately, always choose the latter.

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. - Paul Graham

Nearly all good startup ideas are of this type for at least two reasons. If no one needs a solution badly enough (because the problem isn't worth solving or there are alternate solutions already) then it's likely that no one would want it. If a great many people need the solution badly, it has almost always already been solved by another company.

You never know

A startup idea that passes the first two tests needs to pass a third - is there a path out of the niche of solving a problem for a very small group of people? This is a tough one to answer without at least trying to build the startup.

Mr. Graham suggests that the best types of ideas are those where we "notice something is missing". Aside from turning on the filter of "What's missing", he also gives the advice of turning off every other filter, including "Could this be a big company?"

In the beginning, we won't know whether what we're working on will eventually be big. However, working on a solution to a big problem that we ourselves have gives us the biggest chance of success. And even if it never scales, we would have solved our own problem and learned a lot in the process.