article

SUMMARY - ideas

[WHAT]

1. ] Paul Grahams(2005) article about the process of creating ideas. why do people think it's hard to come up with ideas for startups?

[WHY]

1. ] If people can't do it, then it is hard, at least for them. Right?
1. ] maybe not. people say is - not that they can't think of ideas, but that they don't have any. That's not quite the same thing. It could be
2. ] the reason they don't have any is that they haven't tried to generate them.
1. ] I think this is often the case. 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.
3. ] They assume ideas are like miracles:
1. ] they either pop into your head or they don't.
2. ] They think creating a startup is just a matter of implementing some fabulous initial idea. And since a successful startup is worth millions of dollars, a good idea is therefore a million dollar idea.
4. ] startup ideas are NOT million dollar ideas
1.  ] here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one.

[WHERE]

1. ] READ THE FULL ARTICLE
1. ] http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html 

[WHEN]

1. ] 2005-10

[EXAMPLE]

1. ] treating ideas as questions, not assertions
1. ] The fact is, most startups end up nothing like the initial idea.
2. ] The initial idea is just a starting point-- not a blueprint, but a question
3. ] Instead of saying that your idea is to make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet, say: could one make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet?
4. ] Treating a startup idea as a question changes what you're looking for. If an idea is a blueprint, it has to be right. But if it's a question, it can be wrong, so long as it's wrong in a way that leads to more ideas.
5. ] is there some way to bite off some subset of the problem, then gradually expand from there? That will generally work unless ...
2. ] stay upwind
1. ] So far, we've reduced the problem from thinking of a million dollar idea to thinking of a mistaken question. That doesn't seem so hard, does it?
2. ] New technologies are the ingredients startup ideas are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in.
3. ] universities have both, new tech(research) and smart elastic minded people
4. ] rule of thumb, work on things that maximize your future options.  stay upwind for as long as you can, then cash in the potential energy you've accumulated when you need to pay for (kids)
5. ] one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind.
6. ] The right environment for having startup ideas need not be a university per se. It just has to be a situation with a large percentage of school.
7. ] Can't you just think of new ideas yourself? The empirical answer is: no. Even Einstein needed people to bounce ideas off. Ideas get developed in the process of explaining them to the right kind of person. You need that resistance, just as a carver needs the resistance of the wood. Thats why YC has a rule against single founders. Part of the reason why currently so few VC backed companies with female founders.
3. ] doodling
1. ] the most productive setup is a kind of together-alone-together sandwich. Together you talk about some hard problem, probably getting nowhere. Then, the next morning, one of you has an idea in the shower about how to solve it. He runs eagerly to to tell the others, and together they work out the kinks.
2. ] Perhaps letting your mind wander is like doodling with ideas. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly. In effect, you call the same functions on random arguments. That's what a metaphor is: a function applied to an argument of the wrong type.
3. ] the habits of mind you invoke on some field don't have to be derived from working in that field. In fact, it's often better if they're not. 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.
4. ] Are some kinds of work better sources of habits of mind than others? I suspect harder fields may be better sources, because to attack hard problems you need powerful solvents.
4. ] problems
1. ] I find that to have good ideas I need to be working on some problem. You can't start with randomness. You have to start with a problem, then let your mind wander just far enough for new ideas to form.
2. ] Let me repeat that recipe: finding the problem intolerable and feeling it must be possible to solve it. Simple as it seems, that's the recipe for a lot of startup ideas.
5. ] wealth
1. ] Startup ideas are ideas for companies, and companies have to make money. And the way to make money is to make something people want.
2. ] Wouldn't any good idea be something people want? Unfortunately not. I think new theorems are a fine thing to create, but there is no great demand for them. Whereas there appears to be great demand for celebrity gossip magazines.
3. ] work as if the goal were to discover good ideas, so long as, in the final stage, you stop and ask: will people actually pay for this?
4. ] One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use now that's broken. ex dating sites
5. ] the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself. But this is a special case: you can't defeat a monopoly by a frontal attack. Windows can and will be overthrown, but not by giving people a better desktop OS. ] The problem is not, what operating system should people use on desktop computers? but how should people use applications? There are answers to that question that don't even involve desktop computers
6. ] make a luxury a commodity, example henry ford and the auto, making more of them, lowering the cost, sometimes lowering the cost can transform the way people use the product create more opportunities. 
7. ] Michael Rabin: that the best way to solve a problem is often to redefine it. A lot of people use this technique without being consciously aware of it, but Rabin was
8. spectacularly explicit. You need a big prime number? Those are pretty expensive. How about if I give you a big number that only has a 10 to the minus 100 chance of not being prime?
9. ] Redefining the problem is a particularly juicy heuristic when you have competitors, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow. You can work in plain sight and they don't realize the danger. Don't worry about us. We're just working on search. Do one thing and do it well, that's our motto.
10. Making things cheaper is actually a subset of a more general technique: making things easier, making things easier to use
    What you want to be able to say about technology is: it just works. How often do you say that now? Simplicity takes effort-- genius, even. The average programmer seems to produce UI designs that are almost willfully bad. It seems that, for the average engineer, more options just means more rope to hang yourself. So if you want to start a startup, you can take almost any existing technology produced by a big company, and assume you could build something way easier to use.
6. ] design for exit
1. ] Success for a startup approx. equals getting bought (Only a few go public) - You need some kind of exit strategy. No exit strategy means no smart people will work for you.
2. ] should you make that a conscious goal? If 98% of the time success means getting bought, why not be open about it?
3. ] be sure to make something multiple acquirers will want. dont fix windows b/c there is only 1 aquirer, they can take their time and its more likely they will copy you than aquire you.
7. ] the woz route
1. ] The most productive way to generate startup ideas is also the most unlikely-sounding: by accident - examples, lotus, yahoo, apple
2. ] its not the only way to start startups. sit down and consciously come up with an idea for a company; we did.
3. ] measured in total market cap, the build-stuff-for-yourself model might be more fruitful. It certainly has to be the most fun way
4. ] the rather surprising conclusion is that the best way to generate startup ideas is to do what hackers do for fun: cook up amusing hacks with your friends. It seems like it violates some kind of conservation law, but there it is: the best way to get a "million dollar idea" is just to do what hackers enjoy doing anyway.

[HOW-TO]

1. ]

[REFERENCE]

1. ] view/person
1. ] Paul Graham

 

Details

ID: 4268

NAME: ideas-creating-them

DESCRIPTION: by Paul Graham, founder @yCombinator - SUMMARY Paul's Essay(2005) - about the process of creating ideas

AUTHOR: article.author/s

EDITOR: article.editor/s

PUBLISHER: article.publisher/s

STATUS: Write

PRIORITY: -5

OWNER ID: 75

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