Paul Graham: How to Find an Idea for a Startup (Part Three)

Original author: Paul Graham
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Continuation of Paul Graham's article on finding ideas for a startup. The first and second parts are here. Without further ado, we continue:

University


Instead of trying to learn “entrepreneurship,” I would recommend college students the following: entrepreneurship is the skill that is best acquired “in battle.” Examples of the most successful founders are proof of this. In college, you should spend time moving yourself into the future. And college in this sense is an unmatched opportunity. What an omission, to sacrifice the opportunity to solve the difficult part of the task of launching a startup - to become the type of people who have organic ideas - spending time studying the simple part. Especially when you consider that you don’t even learn much. No more than what you can learn about sex while sitting in class. All that you teach is words.

The junction of regions is a particularly fertile source of ideas. If you know how to program and start learning something from a different field, you will probably encounter problems that software could solve. In fact, the likelihood of finding a good problem in other areas is even higher: firstly, the inhabitants of these areas were unlikely to have experience solving problems with software, such as programmers; secondly, since you penetrate into a new area completely ignorant, you do not know anything about its state, which would be perceived as given.

So, if you are a student in the theory of computers, and you want to start a startup, it is better to take a course, for example, in genetics, instead of a course in entrepreneurship. Or even better: go to work for a biotechnology company. It is usually easy for student-programmers to get a summer internship at a hardware or software company. But if you want to find a startup idea, then it is better to find an internship in some unrelated field.

Or just don’t take extra courses and just create things. It is no coincidence that both Microsoft and Facebook started in January. At Harvard, this is “reading time,” when students don't 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. Preferably, together with other students. Not only classes make the university a good place to move yourself into 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 in that you will not only create 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 are starting to use, then this is most likely a good idea. While a Ph.D. thesis is unlikely. For some reason, the more a project should be considered research, the less likely it is that there is something that could be turned into a startup. I think the reason is that the subset of ideas that can be considered the subject of research is so narrow that it is incredible that a project that satisfies these constraints also satisfies the orthogonal constraints of solving some kind of user problem. While a student (or professor) is working on a side project, they automatically gravitate toward solving someone’s problem - perhaps even with extra energy,

Competition


Since a good idea should look obvious, when you have one, you will be inclined to think that you are already late. Don't let this scare you. Worrying about being late is one of the signs of a good idea. 10 minutes of Internet searches usually solve this problem. Even if you find someone else working on the same idea, you may not be too late. A rare case when a startup dies at the hands of another startup. It is so rare that this probability can be neglected. Unless you find a competitor that locks users in (lock-in - such as social networks), preventing them from choosing you - do not discard the idea!

If you are not sure, ask users. The question of whether you are late is part of another question: does anyone urgently need what you plan to do. If you have something that competitors don’t have and a subset of users urgently needs it, consider that you have a good base.

The only question is whether this bridgehead is big enough. And even more importantly, who will be there: if the bridgehead will consist of people who are doing something that will be used by much more people in the future, then this bridgehead is large enough, no matter how small it is now. For example, you create something different from competitors, but it only works on new smartphones - this is probably still a fairly large bridgehead.

Make mistakes 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 your competitor. So a good idea and competitors are better than a bad one - but without them.

You do not need to worry about entering a crowded market as long as you have a clear understanding of what everyone else is losing sight of. This is actually a very promising starting point. Google was just that 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 losing sight of. Best of all, if you can say that they did not have the courage to follow their convictions. And you plan 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 that they worked on. In particular, because the better they did their work,

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 large and that has no competitors. Thus, any startup that succeeds either enters the market with existing competitors (but is armed with secret weapons that will allow users to be lured; for example, Google), or enters a market that looks small, but which will become large (for example, Microsoft) .

Filters


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

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

The “hemorrhoids” filter is so dangerous that I wrote a separate essay about the condition that it introduces into, and which I call “hemorrhoids” blindness. I give an example of Stripe: a startup that has benefited from eliminating this filter. And the example is bright enough. Thousands of programmers could see this idea; thousands of programmers know how inconvenient the payment process was before Stripe. But when they look for an idea for a startup, they don’t see this idea, because subconsciously they avoid dealing with payment systems. For Stripe, all of these systems are also hemorrhoids, but quite tolerable. 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 quite smoothly solve problems in other issues that are usually painful. For instance, building user base. They did not have to try hard to get them to pay attention, because users in desperation were waiting for what Stripe created.

The “unattractive” filter is similar to the “hemorrhoids” filter, except that it keeps you away from problems that you despise, and not which you fear. We overcame this filter when we worked 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 addressed.

Removing the “hemorrhoids” filter is more important than eliminating the “unattractive” filter, since hemorrhoids are most likely just an illusion. And even if this is not true to some extent, he is the worst form of indulging his weaknesses. A successful startup is a rather difficult and tedious business. And no matter what your startup is about. And even if the product itself does not imply a large amount of hemorrhoids, you still have to deal with investors, hiring and firing employees, etc. Thus, if you have any idea that you think it’s cool, but you shy away from it for fear of getting problems, do not worry: any good enough idea will provide you with hemorrhoids in excess.

The “unattractive” filter, although a source of errors, is not as useless as the “hemorrhoids” filter. If you work at the forefront of a rapidly changing sphere, your understanding of what is attractive will to some extent correlate with what is really useful in practice. Especially over the years and gaining experience. Plus, if you find an attractive idea, you will be working on it with great enthusiasm.

According to tradition, tomorrow I’ll post the 4th part . It will be final, because at the request of the workers, he slightly increased the size of each.

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