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How to come up with ideas that no one else has thought of
by
Alessandro
http://www.paulgraham.com/getideas.html
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"Ideas that no one else has thought of" is a very bold statement. That's why Paul Graham didn't call it that.
Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
And what's more is most of the time idea is not that important. To ship something to the people who wants that is what's important. That bit is sometimes called execution.
For me, reading lots of book and talking to kids are the two ways that help me quite a lot because I'm currently working on my own novel haha. I'm sharing this to anyone and hope it helps somehow
The problem with new/weird/unusual ideas is while they're a ton of fun to explore or think about, they rarely work out as businesses. People are off-put by something they don't understand and never experienced. After all - which are you more likely to buy from: A new burger stand. Or some kind of new fusion food stand nobody has ever tried before?
Interesting article, thanks for sharing! However, don't forget that: execution > ideas
Combine expertise from two independent domains.
For indie hackers, coding is the obvious first choice.
Now think of another skill / domain that you can combine with that.
Ideally another skill or knowledge base you already have, that's also "distant" from coding. Coding + UX design is probably too close. Too saturated. Coding plus... gardening? Coding plus... drag racing? Go analog per your real interests and see if something jumps out.
As a video producer, I see tons of opportunity in the film and video space, so coding + filmmaking. Though the tools are starting to arrive in droves now...
Overall, I'd say the value isn't the idea itself. It's the unique combination of expert domains. If you actually understand both domains deeply, you have a unique advantage to produce value.
I wrote a short blog post about this:
https://www.founderschoice.co/post/idea-generation
As others have mentioned, make sure it's something you're passionate about and don't worry if you have copiers. There's plenty of market share for everyone to succeed.
And having competition is both healthy to keep you on your toes, give you something to go after and most importantly, learn from their mistakes and "steal" their best features.
Having a ton of competition is the best - it means no one has a distinct monopoly yet and it also proves both that ehat you want to build works and has audience that's interested in the product/service.
There’s nothing new under the sun. But just because an idea isn’t 100% novel doesn’t mean the way you execute it can’t be.
New ideas are fun. Some pointers here for Micro SaaS Ideas (but not all are new ideas)
This is super nice 🙂 finally a realistic read that I think most people would benefit from. If you never ran a business, it is far better to start by playing around with something small.
Thankyou
Tbh I don’t think that’s important.
If you understand the problem deeply and you can execute well, it doesn’t matter someone else has the idea.
Surfkey.io is not the only reddit kw alert tool, but we scratch our own itch and we double down on making it great and do a lot of growth
That's a great tool 🔥
Thanks mate! Let me know how it works for you!
Yep! Totally correct!
You don't even need to figure out something completely different. Learn more about your niche, skill, or whatever and figure out what's not working right, then just innovate!
A bit of a shameless plug but this is exactly how we got the idea for https://tolt.io .
The affiliate marketing software space has a few gaps, like auto payouts, which we're trying to solve :)
Such a slick design, very nice 🙂
A better way of going about it would be to find a market and see what competitors are lacking within their service/product.
we wrote about the strategy to deal with alternative funnels in this article: https://friendsofsaas.substack.com/p/where-to-find-ideas
Easy, good read. Thanks for sharing!
Good read, thanks for sharing!
Creative and out-of-the-box thinking requires an open mind, and new and different ideas come from a genius person who believes that the world is moving towards non-recurring and distinctive things.
My way is, I always look for solutions for any of the problems I face, usually, I generate 3-4 great ideas a month and write them down in a Spreadsheet. Usually, after writing this down I see someone has started that idea a couple of months or a couple of years later. I'm busy with my existing start-up, so don't have much time to persuade all those ideas, if anyone love to learn this process I'm happy to share my way.
There's always a competitor, but that should actually encourage you as it proves that the demand is there. And I bet you can sign up and break their system into pieces and find dozens of things you could do better. I am the opposite, I like finding ideas that have 10-20 small/medium competitors, that's the best type of startup to pursue.
My problem is that I get 1 idea a year. But if someone tells me their idea, I get the entire 0-100 business concept in my head with all the challenges, upsides, downsides in like 5 minutes.
PathFinder's aim is to leverage a large amount of online content and structure it into a pathway that makes your goals more accessible.
If you're trying to up-skill or learn something new checkout www.thepathfinderproject.co.uk
The more i learn the more boring business ideas I look for tbh
Thanks for sharing, great stuff!
Regarding ideas in general I'm also following:
#2 is the absolute key! It surely will be hard to challenge Uber or Instagram, but it's definitely doable to create a pet transportation marketplace (but we're not a mediocre competitor 😂)
An open mind is a valuable resource. When you're interested in new possibilities and able to think creatively, you're more likely to stay energized in your role – and keep your team or business one step ahead of the competition
I'm always trying to do this but even when I think I've found a unique idea, I still find that someone else has already thought of it, so then back to the drawing board again. Sometimes, i think we just need to be happy creating something that is just a little bit better than what already exists otherwise we'll go mad in the process.
Love this approach to ideation. I will definitely try it out. Hopefully, I'll come up with an innovative idea : )