Failory - How to Get a Startup Idea

Hey — It's Nico.

New month, new series of content. In July, I'll be publishing articles related to Startup Ideas. This week, an article on How to Get a Startup Idea.

🙌 Welcome to the 361 founders who joined this week.

This issue is brought to you by Around:

A few months ago, I downloaded Around, looking for ways to improve my Zoom's calls with other startup founders.

I've since stuck to Around for two reasons: 1) it frees up my screen, which allows me to easily read and take notes as I have the call; 2) my background image and noise are always messy and Around helps me avoid founders from noticing this.

Here are 10 frameworks you can use to systematically work your way towards a real business idea:

1. Look for founder-market fit: Think about your unique skills, expertise, and relationships and how those could be used to build a product. By creating a startup around these unique personal advantages, you’re finding what’s called founder-market fit.
2. Solve a personal problem (bottom-up approach): Whether you’re in college or already well into a professional career, think of different problems you have in your personal and professional lives and brainstorm products that could solve them.
3. Consider your passions: It takes 10 years on average to build a startup into a strong, established company. Think about some area or industry you would love to work on a project in for the next decade, even if it didn’t succeed. Then, try to come up with different product/service ideas around that.
4. Come up with ideas around something new (top-down approach): Look for new technologies or situations in the world to build a company around. Through this approach, it can be easy to get wrapped up thinking about high-level stuff and take too long to actually build a functional product. Make sure you don’t lose sight of the actual execution.
5. Employ strategic foresight: Look at past recurring trends, and think about how they might affect the future to try and predict coming market trends. Consider the trends and developments in political, economic, social, technological, and legal environments.
6. Think of a variation of a recently successful company: Look for new companies making headlines because of their recent success, then come up with new variants of them. Make sure your idea solves a problem utterly different from the problem the company that inspired you is solving.
7. Search for an industry that is broken: Many industries are outdated and struggling to keep up with the needs of their users in modern times. Any of these industries might be a good one to develop a new product or service in. If you know something about that broken industry, even better.
8. Crowdsource an idea: Even if you don’t have a personal problem you can solve with a product or service, someone close to you might. Ask friends, family members, colleagues, and other people in your social and professional circles what products and services they wish existed.
9. The 10x rule: The idea of the rule is that you can build a great product by “10xing” something — making it 10x easier, 10x faster, 10x more fun, or making the user experience 10x better in some other way. Look at things that already exist, then think of ways you can drastically improve them.
10. Find ways to use otherwise idle assets: There are idle assets all around us that you could potentially find a way to utilize through a new product or service. Assets can be anything, including skills, properties, and cars.

​In the article, we explain in detail each of these frameworks and provide examples of startups that have used them.

When thinking about startup ideas, people generally commit the following mistakes.

1. Creating a solution without looking for a problem.
2. Waiting for an "amazing" startup idea.
3. Working on the first idea they have.
4. Discarding ideas because they seem too hard to work on.
5. Not working on ideas because they seem "boring".

Once you have some startup ideas that you think could work, you need to evaluate them. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is there a good founder-market fit?
• Who wants this product now?
• How much room is there for market growth?
• Is my idea something that only recently became possible?
• Are any successful companies doing something similar?
• Am I building something that is missing from the future?

If you want to read further about the common mistakes and steps to evaluate your startup idea, make sure to check the article.

​Here's our guide on How to Get a Startup Idea.​

If you found today's article useful, you may enjoy the 4 articles we published last month related to co-founders:

• ​How to Find a Co-Founder​
• ​How to Find a Technical Co-Founder​
• ​Startup Founder Agreement​
• ​How to Split Equity Among Co-Founders​

As every week, here are 3 recommended resources:

• ​Project Ideas: Future Fund has published a list of 39 projects they'd like to see launched and would invest in, related to sectors like AI, Space, and Economic Growth.
• ​How to Come Up with a Consumer Startup Idea: This article is part of a series of 6 posts on how to kickstart and scale a consumer business. This post digs into how 50 consumer startups came up with their idea.
• ​Adapting to Endure: Sequoia has published 4 presentations they have hosted to help founders navigate the current market conditions and emerge as strong, enduring startups.

I hope you enjoyed this week's newsletter!

Cheers,

Nico