(2005-10-19) Graham Generating Startup Ideas

Paul Graham on generating Start Up ideas.

• Most startups end up nothing like the initial idea. It would be closer to the truth to say the main value of your initial idea is that, in the process of discovering it's broken, you'll come up with your real idea... The initial idea is just a starting point-- not a blueprint, but a question. It might help if they were expressed that way. Instead of saying that your idea is to make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet, say: could one make a collaborative, web-based spreadsheet?... 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. Asking Questions.

• It's obvious why you want exposure to new technology, but why do you need other people? 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. This is one reason Y-Combinator has a rule against investing in startups with only one founder. Practically every successful company has at least two (Management Team). And because startup founders work under great pressure, it's critical they be friends. (with aside about Women)

• 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.

• But valuable ideas are very close to good ideas, especially in technology. I think they're so close that you can get away with working 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?...One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use now that's broken. Dating Market sites are a prime example. They have millions of users, so they must be promising something people want. And yet they work horribly. Just ask anyone who uses them. It's as if they used the worse-is-better approach but stopped after the first stage and handed the thing over to marketers.

• One of the most useful mental habits I know I learned from Michael Rabin: that the best way to solve a problem is often to redefine it... Redefining the problem is a particularly juicy heuristic when you have competitors, because it's so hard for rigid-minded people to follow... 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 (BigCo), and assume you could build something way easier to use (Say No).

• If success probably means getting bought, should you make that a conscious goal? The old answer was no: you were supposed to pretend that you wanted to create a giant, public company, and act surprised when someone made you an offer (Built To Last). Really, you want to buy us? Well, I supposed we'd consider it, for the right price. I think things are changing (Built To Flip)... If an increasing number of startups are created to do Product Development on spec, it will be a natural counterweight (SmallWorld) to monopolies.

• You can sit down and consciously come up with an idea for a company; we did. But measured in total market cap, the build-stuff-for-yourself model might be more fruitful. It certainly has to be the most fun way to come up with startup ideas. And since a startup ought to have multiple founders who were already friends before they decided to start a company, the rather surprising conclusion is that the best way to generate startup ideas is to do what Hacker-s do for fun: cook up amusing hacks with your friends.