10 Things I learned from "How to Get Startup Ideas"

You don't want a startup to be something you "think up" but a solution to a problem you notice.

The place to start looking for ideas is things you need. There must be things you need.

"More generally, try asking yourself whether there's something unusual about you that makes your needs different from most other people's. You're probably not the only one. It's especially good if you're different in a way people will increasingly be."

"When you find an unmet need that isn't your own, it may be somewhat blurry at first. The person who needs something may not know exactly what they need. In that case I often recommend that founders act like consultants — that they do what they'd do if they'd been retained to solve the problems of this one user."

"When you have an idea for a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? Who wants this so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one made by a two-person startup they've never heard of? If you can't answer that, the idea is probably bad."

He uses the example of social media for pet owners. A Made Up idea looking for users.

"If you look at the way successful founders have had their ideas, it's generally the result of some external stimulus hitting a prepared mind."

And later:

"Live in the future and build what seems interesting."

"coming up with startup ideas is a question of seeing the obvious. That suggests how weird this process is: you're trying to see things that are obvious, and yet that you hadn't seen."

Read broadly. Pay attention.

"just as trying to think up startup ideas tends to produce bad ones, working on things that could be dismissed as "toys" often produces good ones. When something is described as a toy, that means it has everything an idea needs except being important."

He calls these the unsexy and schlep filters like solving payments (Stripe).