How to get out of an Idea Rut
*As a preface, I graduated from college about a year ago. *
I've always had an interest in SaaS businesses and tried while in college to start up some side ideas. However, after graduating, I've found myself in a bit of a rut. I've looked over a lot of the idea generation posts on Indie Hackers as well as reading some books but it seems like I'm running into a mental block.
Any thoughts on how to get past this or other ways to come up with ideas?
Keep in mind that ideas aren't of much value. Figma, ClickUp, Stripe, Square, and just about every other company that is making waves in their industry were late entrants. All of them entered competitive markets with entrenched incumbents. What makes the special is not the quality of the initial idea, but rather how they executed on it. My advice would be to find a problem space that you are interested in, survey the companies already there, and see if there is either a unique perspective you can bring to the area or if there is a segment of the market that is being under-served. And don't be too picky. You don't need a stellar idea to get rolling.
I've been going through the startup school from YC and they seem to talk about the same thing. After I find a space, should I focus on finding competitors and working on creating something that improves on them in some way?
Don't think about a head-to-head competition. You want to find an area where you can do a better job for a segment of the market. For instance, if you wanted to compete with Shopify, that would be tough. However, if you wanted to just make selling digital goods better, then that's a lot easier. That's the basic approach that Gumroad took. Likewise, if you wanted to create a project management system to compete with Basecamp, that would be tough. A project management system to better service the needs of interior designers would be a lot more feasible.
Another approach is to ask if there is a different way to approach a problem. There were lots of ways to share files before Dropbox, but Dropbox decided to make the experience just look like another folder on your computer that "magically" stayed in sync. BTW, Box came along and did about the same thing, but they targeted business users, so that's another example of finding an existing product and then pursuing a segment of their market.
More than anything, just pick something and go after it. If you are talking to enough customers along the way and incorporating their feedback, you'll get somewhere good. Not 100% chance of success, but it's an effective strategy. There's a saying: "it's easier to steer a moving ship."