Key Questions
- Where do good ideas come from?
- What are the characteristics of people who generate lots of good ideas?
- How can I generate good ideas?
- How can I help others generate good ideas?
- How can I evaluate ideas?
- Which experiments should I run?
- How should I sequence experiments?
- How often should I run experiments?
- How to set up and evaluate experiments?
Worksheets
- MindTools: Brainstorming Toolkit (PDF)
Start Here
Paul Graham: How to Get Startup Ideas
(25 min read.) Paul delves into the issue of finding startup ideas, using as examples some of today’s most successful companies to illustrate his points. One of his key observations is that the best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they are things the founders themselves want, things the founders themselves can build, and things that few others realize are worth doing. Graham notes that the best approach is organic: aspiring founders should try to notice what is missing in the market rather than try to think up ideas as the latter typically results in bad ideas.
Bill Gross: Iterate Like Crazy
(1 min video.) Bill is the founder of Idealab, an incubator that has launched over 150 companies. Gross emphasizes the importance of continuous iteration in the startup process, believing that it is more crucial than the initial idea’s quality.
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Sam Altman: Idea Generation
(4 min read.) In this article Altman underscores the paramount importance of idea generation for startup founders, emphasizing the need to cultivate a mindset conducive to creativity and future-oriented thinking. He advises founders to immerse themselves in environments characterized by optimism, creativity, and a high idea flux, while avoiding negative influences. Altman advocates for identifying opportunities arising from significant shifts in the landscape and encourages founders to align their startup ideas with their personal strengths. Moreover, he stresses the importance of evaluating ideas based on their potential for mass appeal, even in the face of initial skepticism. Ultimately, Altman underscores the value of thinking ahead, anticipating future trends, and fostering an environment that fosters idea exploration and innovation.
Apoorva Mehta: 20 Ideas Before Instacart
(62 min video.) In this interview Mehta shares key business learnings from his entrepreneurial journey. He highlights the importance of adaptability and emphasizes that entering an unfamiliar industry is acceptable if one can quickly gain expertise. Mehta stresses the need for rapid iteration and validation of ideas, advising entrepreneurs to list and address potential reasons an idea might fail before investing significant resources. He underscores the significance of scrappiness and creative problem-solving in the early stages. Mehta also learned that crises can be opportunities for focus and growth, as demonstrated when Instacart thrived despite Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods.
Chris Dixon: The Idea Maze
(3 min read.) Chris discusses the challenges of finding good startup ideas, likening it to navigating a maze. He suggests that successful startups often emerge from exploring many ideas, pivoting, and persevering through the “idea maze.” The key is to keep an open mind, learn from failures, and continuously iterate until finding an idea that resonates with users and creates value.
Chris Dixon: Why You Shouldn’t Keep Your Startup Idea Secret
(3 min read.) Chris argues that sharing your startup idea openly is beneficial and the execution of an idea is far more important than the idea itself. By discussing your idea, you can receive valuable feedback, attract potential partners, and refine your concept. Keeping an idea secret out of fear of it being stolen is misguided, as successful execution requires significant effort and resources that mere idea theft cannot replicate.
Balaji Srinivasan: Market Research, Wireframing, and Design (PDF)
(30 min read.) Among numerous topics, Balaji presents multiple views on the importance of the idea in starting a business. He compares the product/idea to execution/team and the market. He also introduces and discusses the “Idea Maze” and how a good idea depends on what kind of business you want to create.
Stanley Tang: Three Lessons From the Founding Story of Doordash
(6 min video.) Stanley, the co-founder of DoorDash, shares the founding story and three lessons learned: 1. Test your hypothesis: Treat your startup ideas like experiments and test them before investing significant time and resources. 2. Launch fast: Don’t wait for perfection. Get your product or service out there quickly and gather feedback to iterate and improve. 3. Do things that don’t scale: Don’t get caught up in building complex systems at the beginning. Focus on the core of your business and hack together solutions to get started.
Jeffery Bussgang: Founders Should Test the Hypotheses That Matter the Most
(4 min read.) Jeffrey emphasizes the importance of strategic experimentation in startups, focusing on selecting and sequencing tests to maximize limited resources. He outlines four key business model components: consumer value proposition, go-to-market strategy, profit formula, and product/technology/operations. Founders should prioritize testing the consumer value proposition first, as it influences other components. The article draws on teachings from Harvard Business School and writings by Tom Eisenmann and Eric Ries, stressing that effective lean tactics cannot compensate for poor strategy.
Hiten Shah: Create Products That People Love by Validating Your Idea First
(8 min read.) The article provides a three-step process for validating business ideas: 1) Create a problem hypothesis from your idea, 2) Set up a system to pull people to you (like a landing page or survey), and 3) Find the pattern of pain by talking to potential customers to understand if they truly have the problem you’re trying to solve. The goal is to validate if there is a real need for your idea before investing resources into building it.
Sam Altman: Treat Your Idea as a Project Rather Than a Company at First
(2 min video.) Sam discusses the importance of treating an idea as a project before turning it into a company. He believes that this approach allows entrepreneurs to explore their ideas without the pressure to succeed immediately. Altman emphasizes that starting a company should be driven by passion and a clear understanding of the problem being solved, rather than the desire to start a business for its own sake.
Stewart Butterfield and Adam D’Angelo: How to Get Ideas and Measure Them
(49 min video.) Stewart (founder of Slack) discusses the importance of ideation as well as the process of coming up with ideas and the qualities of good ideas. Adam (founder of Quora) then discusses the importance of metrics, typical key metrics, how to use metrics effectively and the psychological aspects of metrics.
Bill Gross: Can You Objectively Compare Ideas? CarsDirect example.
(4 min video.) Bill tells the story of how he investigated if CarsDirect was a good idea, as well as shares his thinking on how to prioritize different startups ideas.
Julie Zhou: Finding Ideas
(4 min read.) Julie emphasizes the importance of curiosity, observation, and the willingness to explore new experiences. She suggests that ideas often come from unexpected places and encourages readers to keep an open mind and stay receptive to their surroundings. By engaging with diverse sources of inspiration and maintaining a habit of continuous learning, individuals can enhance their ability to come up with innovative ideas.
David and Tom Kelly: IDEO: Brainstorming and Other Ideation Techniques
(3 min video.) IDEO embraces various ideation techniques, with brainstorming remaining a valuable approach for generating big ideas. They emphasize the importance of diverse perspectives and building upon each other’s ideas to foster innovation. The empathy map is another effective tool developed by IDEO. It involves observation and documentation of user experiences, followed by group analysis to infer their thoughts and feelings. This process often leads to the identification of opportunities for innovation by bridging the gap between observed behaviors and underlying motivations.
IDEO: Brainstorming Example Video
(2 min video.) A short example of a real brainstorm session by a team at IDEO. They use seven rules to encourage good sessions: 1. Defer judgment 2. Encourage wild ideas 3. Build on the ideas of others 4. Stay focused on the topic 5. One conversation at a time 6. Be visual 7. Go for quantity
Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From
(18 min video.) In this TED Talk, Johnson emphasizes that innovation is a complex process that involves blending existing knowledge, creating connections, and allowing for serendipitous discoveries. By fostering environments that encourage collaboration, embrace long-term thinking, and value idea sharing, we can increase the likelihood of unlocking transformative ideas.
Sam Altman: How to Come up With a Great Startup Idea
(3 min video) Altman advises that aspiring entrepreneurs should wait for a good idea before starting a startup. He emphasizes that the best startups are born from a passionate belief in an idea, not from the pressure to create something. Original thought is crucial, as copying others often leads to failure. For instance, after Facebook and Instagram launched, thousands of similar startups emerged, but only the originals succeeded. Altman suggests noticing problems in your own life as a source of ideas since many transformational companies began this way. He also highlights the importance of recognizing technological waves. Successful companies often ride these waves, like the internet boom of the 90s and the mobile wave post-2007. Altman encourages identifying the next big wave and positioning yourself to capitalize on it.
Aproova Mehta: Instacart Founder Explains the Framework He Used to Iterate Through 20 Startup Ideas
(3 min video) Mehta discusses iterating through 20 different ideas using the concept of the “adjacent possible,” which suggests that certain ideas become feasible due to changes in societal norms, culture, and technology. He gives examples like Instacart’s feasibility in 2012, a Facebook social games ad network, a menu item ratings app inspired by Instagram, and a daily deals company. Mehta emphasizes the importance of iteration speed, suggesting that quickly cycling through ideas increases the chances of success. He advises trying to “kill” ideas by identifying potential challenges and only pursuing those that can overcome these obstacles.
Aproova Mehta: 20 Ideas Before Instacart
(60 min video) In this interview Mehta shares key business learnings from his entrepreneurial journey. He highlights the importance of adaptability and emphasizes that entering an unfamiliar industry is acceptable if one can quickly gain expertise. Mehta stresses the need for rapid iteration and validation of ideas, advising entrepreneurs to list and address potential reasons an idea might fail before investing significant resources. He underscores the significance of scrappiness and creative problem-solving in the early stages. Mehta also learned that crises can be opportunities for focus and growth, as demonstrated when Instacart thrived despite Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods.
Sam Altman: Hard Startups
(2 min read.) Altman discusses the counterintuitive notion that hard startups often have a higher chance of success compared to easy ones. Hard startups, which require significant resources and time, tend to attract more talented people who seek meaningful work. While easy startups are simpler to launch, they struggle to sustain interest and talent over time. The success of a startup hinges on its ability to recruit talented individuals, driven by the mission, potential for massive success, and the caliber of the team. Altman encourages entrepreneurs to aim high, pursue ambitious goals, and commit to long-term efforts, leveraging the inherent advantages of working on significant, challenging problems.