Paul Graham: How to find an idea for a startup (part three)

Continuing the article by Paul Gram about finding ideas for a startup. The first and second parts here. Without further ado, we continue:

University

Instead of trying to learn “entrepreneurship”, I would advise college students the following: entrepreneurship is a skill that is best acquired “in combat”. Examples of the most successful founders are proof of that. In college, it is worth spending time moving yourself to the future. And college in this sense is an unparalleled opportunity. What an omission, to sacrifice the opportunity to solve a difficult part of the startup startup problem - to become the type of people who have organic ideas - after spending time studying the simple part. Especially if you take into account that you do not even learn much. No more than you can learn about sex while sitting in the classroom. Everything you learn is words.

The junction of areas is a particularly fertile source of ideas. If you can program and start learning something from another area, you will probably encounter problems that the software could solve. In fact, the likelihood of finding a good problem in other areas is even higher: first, the inhabitants of these areas hardly had experience solving problems using software such as programmers; secondly, since you are penetrating a completely new area, completely ignorant, you know nothing about its condition, which would be taken for granted.
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So, if you are a student in computer theory, and you want to start a startup, then it’s better, instead of a course in entrepreneurship, to take a course, for example, in genetics. Or even better: go to work for a biotechnology company. Programmers usually find it easy to get a summer internship in a company that works in hardware or software. But if you want to find a startup idea, then it is better to find an internship in some unrelated area.

Or just don’t take extra courses and just create things. It is no coincidence that both Microsoft and Facebook both started in January. At Harvard, this is “reading time” when students do not have classes because they are preparing for final exams.

But you should not have the feeling that you should create a thing that will become a startup. This is just a preliminary optimization. Just create. It is desirable, together with other students. Not only classes make the university a good place to move yourself to the future. You are also surrounded by other people who are trying to do the same things. If you work with them on projects, it will end up not only creating organic ideas, but also organic ideas in an organic team - and this, in my experience, is the best combination.

Beware of research. If a student creates something that all his friends start using, then this is most likely a good idea. While the master's thesis is unlikely. For some reason, the larger the project should be considered research, the less likely it is that there is something that could be turned into a startup. I think that the reason is that the subset of ideas that can be considered the subject of research is so narrow that it is quite improbable that a project that satisfies these constraints also satisfies the orthogonal constraints of solving a user problem. While a student (or professor) is working on a side project, they are automatically in the direction of solving someone’s problems — perhaps even with additional energy, the source of which is liberation from the many limitations of research.

Competition

Since a good idea should look obvious, when you have one, you'll be inclined to think that you are already late. Don't let that scare you. Worrying about being late is one of the hallmarks of a good idea. 10 minutes of searching on the Internet usually solves this issue. Even if you find someone else working on the same idea, you may not be late. A rare case when a startup dies at the hands of another startup. So seldom that this probability can be neglected. Unless you have found a competitor who locks users on himself (lock-in - like social networks), preventing them from choosing you - do not discard the idea!

If you are not sure, ask the users. The question of whether you are late is part of another question: does it urgently need someone to do what you plan to do. If you have something that competitors do not have and a certain subset of users urgently need it, consider that you have a good springboard.

The only question is whether this bridgehead is large enough. And more importantly, who will be there: if the bridgehead consists of people who do something that many more people will use in the future, then this bridgehead is large enough, no matter how small it is now. For example, you are creating something different from competitors, but it only works on new smartphones - this is probably still a fairly large springboard.

Be wrong on the same side as your competitor. Inexperienced founders exaggerate the danger of a competitor, which he really is. Whether you succeed depends much more on you than on a competitor. So a better idea and competitors is better than a bad one - but without them.

You do not have to worry about entering a crowded market while you have a clear understanding of what everyone else is missing. In fact, this is a very promising starting point. Google was exactly the kind of idea. Your understanding should be more accurate than "we are going to make an X that will not suck." Even. You should be able to articulate this in terms of what competitors are missing out on. Best of all, if you can say that they did not have the courage to follow their convictions. And you are planning to do what they would do, following, no matter what, their understanding of the problem. And Google is an example again. Previous search engines shied away from the most fundamental implementations on which they worked. In particular, because the better they do their work, the faster the user leaves.

A crowded market is actually a good sign, as it means two things: first, that there is demand; secondly, that none of the existing solutions is good enough. A startup should not hope to enter a market that is both large and competitive. Thus, any startup that succeeds either enters the market with existing competitors (but is armed with a secret weapon that will entice users; for example, Google), or enters a market that looks small, but that will become large (for example, Microsoft) .

Filters

There are two more filters that you need to get rid of to start noticing startup ideas: the “unattractive” filter and the “hemorrhoid” filter.

Most programmers dream of starting a startup like this: write a brilliant code, put it on the server and acquire users who pay them a lot of money. They prefer not to get involved in boring problems or dirty work from the real world. This preference is quite reasonable, since such things are depressing. But this preference is so widespread that space with convenient start-up ideas has already been cleaned. If you let your mind go down a few blocks down the street to dirty, boring ideas, you will find a couple of valuable ones that just sit and wait for implementation.

The hemorrhoid filter is so dangerous that I wrote a separate essay about the condition in which it enters, and which I call “hemorrhoid” blindness. I cite the example of Stripe: a startup that has benefited from the removal of this filter. And the example is quite bright. Thousands of programmers could see this idea; Thousands of programmers know how uncomfortable the payment process was before Stripe. But when they are looking for an idea for a startup, they do not see this idea, because subconsciously they avoid having business with payment systems. For Stripe, all these systems are also hemorrhoids, but quite portable. In fact, they may not have had much at all. Since the fear of hemorrhoids with payment systems kept most people at a distance from the idea, this allowed Stripe to smoothly solve problems in other issues that are usually painful. For example, building a user base. They didn’t have to try hard for them to pay attention to them, because users were in despair waiting for what Stripe created.

The “unattractiveness” filter is similar to the “hemorrhoid” filter, except that it keeps you away from problems that you despise, and are not afraid of. We overcame this filter when working on Viaweb. There were interesting things related to software architecture, but we were not interested in e-commerce as such. We just saw that this is the problem that needs to be solved.

Removing the hemorrhoid filter is more important than eliminating the unattractive filter, since hemorrhoids are most likely just an illusion. And even if this is to some extent wrong, he is the worst form of indulging in his weaknesses. A successful startup is a rather tedious and tedious business. And no matter what your startup is about. And even if the product itself does not imply a large number of hemorrhoids, you will still have to deal with investors, hiring and firing employees, etc. So, if you have an idea that you think is cool, but you avoid it because of the fear of having problems, don't worry: any good enough idea will provide you with hemorrhoids in excess.

The filter of "unattractiveness", although the source of errors, but not so much useless as the filter "hemorrhoids". If you are working on the edge of a rapidly changing sphere, your understanding of what is attractive will be to some extent correlated with what is really useful in practice. Especially over the years and gaining experience. Plus, if you find an attractive idea, you will work on it with great enthusiasm.

By tradition, tomorrow I will lay out the 4th part . She will be the final, because at the request of workers, somewhat increased the size of each.