I still don't feel strongly about starting anything. Start cold-calling industries?
I've been collecting ideas in my notes for some time, but none of them seem appealing or have solid monetization strategies. I want to start building something, I just don't know how to get started.
Some SaaS entrepreneurs have advocated for skipping ideation, and instead speaking to an industry you're interested in to figure out their challenges. I really have no clue how to get started with something like that. Has anyone else had experience going down that route?
Otherwise, how do people typically generate ideas?
Well... don't actually cold call. Cold calls are both inefficient and soul-destroying. But if you mean it more metaphorically in the sense that you'll chat to people about what's going on in their work and industries, then hell yeah. It's a great background process to run whenever you find yourself chatting with someone who works in a role or industry you're unfamiliar with. (And has the nice side effect of making them a good lead as your first customer if you find something you like.)
If it's useful, a few years back I collected all the major "idea generation" strategies I could find (e.g. industry exploration, rising tech/societal trend, use new tech to simplify an old workflow, etc. etc.) and made each one into a little one-page worksheet. There are like 10 of them with explanations on a free PDF at: http://www.foundercentric.com/static/pdf/idea-generation-v1.pdf
Thank you for this!
That's an incredible resource! I really appreciate you sharing that.
Here is an idea;
Approach Microsoft.
They are creating ecosystems, where startups build what enterprises need.
Microsoft's benefit is expanding use of MS technologies.
They know exactly what industry needs, especially in B2B - enterprises are begging them to find small teams w solutions.
Ask for a problem to be solved.
Solve that problem.
Let MS take you to your customers.
(Replace Microsoft with any other tech building software company)
This is interesting, but I'm not sure how to "Approach Microsoft" with any success... LinkedIn?
In general, the easiest way to get started with big company ecosystem stuff is to approach their accelerators. In microsoft's case it would be MSV (microsoft ventures). Telefonica has Wayra, etc etc. It's generally much easier to get into convo with folks whose job is to talk to entrepreneurs as opposed to folks for whom it is a distraction. I still think it's better to follow your own curiosity/interests/experiences, but corp accelerators are a viable approach path if you want to explore it. You can even go one step further removed and try to talk to folks who mentor at corporate accelerators, since they'll have some passing familiarity with the ecosystem and opportunities but are very easy to cold approach.
@robfitz explained it really nicely and in much more detail than I would.
I do not know what exactly the name of the role is but there is a guy that's managing that ecosystem on Microsoft in each country.
I would say, just go to their office and knock on the door :)
Getting industry interviews without having an idea or something concrete will be difficult and IME a waste of time/energy. You likely won't be talking to the right people to get the insight you need, and you probably won't know the value of the things that they're talking about (unless you have a solid understanding of the industry or an industry that faces similar issues).
My thoughts:
I wouldn't worry about monetization strategies to start with.
Focus on a problem you have and solve that problem. If you're worried about monetization (this is overblown for indiehackers, IMO) -- think about the market you're targeting and whether monetization will be possible for that market.
Once you've built something/marketed it, you will have better insight into how to approach that market and hopefully get some users, that you can then talk to and understand their issues and build monetizable solutions for. This is problem + customer focused approach. Build products to serve customers, understand their needs, and obsess over ways to produce value. Then figure out ways to capture some of that value for yourself (i.e. how to monetize)
I have started writing a guide on this -- www.makesomething.app -- but I've since partnered with someone on an app idea, so it's on a (hopefully!!) short hiatus at the moment.
If you have some ideas you want to run by me, I'd be more than happy to help you get started.
Appreciate these ideas and thoughts. Part of my problem is I don't really have a lot of my own problems at the moment, based on the industry I'm in. All of my problems are politics and process based and I don't really have much passion for the industry I'm in. I think I just need to keep waiting and maybe networking more to figure out people's problems, since I don't have many of my own.
What's your skill set?
What about finding a cofounder or joining an existing team?
What are you passionate about? No products you wish existed?
Mostly enterprise web development, messaging at scale, and a lot of ETL. React, Java, and Python mostly, with many different storage technologies. Can build front-end and back-end for web apps.
I haven't given partnering up or joining an existing team a lot of thought, but maybe I should. I think I want the control, and the responsibility for making something successful. I have a kushy job that I don't really want to leave, so I'm trying to do more of a side project.
I'm not passionate about many things, but I'm highly interested in a lot of different things. That is something I kind of struggle with. I think if I had to "pick" a few things, it'd be music, photography, and food/cooking. I've thought about trying to solve problems in those areas, but again, not having much success there.
Maybe talk to others who are in those areas (music, photography, cooking) and see what issues they have. Go to meetups and explore your interests further.
I wouldn't rush into finding a big problem to solve. Just start with small things and see where they take you.
One of the great things about building/starting a project is that you learn a lot about the community/issues people have just by starting.
For example, for food I can give you a couple of places that might be worth looking into to start/expand from:
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http://www.opinionatedaboutdining.com
is a popular site for high end restaurants. This could be done much better/have more of a community aspect. This is also a hole left by chowhound, which is not great now.
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https://getbento.com/plans/
This is a company doing websites for restaurants. Their services are not that hard to replicate. You could probably do this. You could use strapi or a headless CMS to let them edit their data as they need, or pull data from airtable or dropbox (i.e. put menus in a folder and it automatically updates the menu with the newest file).
You could also target a niche like food trucks or popups.
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I appreciate how much thought and time you've put into these responses! I am going to consider all of these options.
I've read somewhere that one of the better ways to generate idea these days is simply to ask yourself: what's big today, and will be even bigger in 5 years' time? Then work on that.
Talking to industry is fine if you can get access to them to do customer development interviews. Most of the time, that's difficult. You may be able to get access to small businesses or even solo businesses, and that's where I would start.
I still think it has to pass the "big" test. Most startup ideas that succeed are riding one or two big waves and arrive at the right time.