How to Get Startup Ideas - Paul Graham  ## Metadata - Author: **Paul Graham** - Full Title: How to Get Startup Ideas - Category: #articles - URL: https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html ## Highlights - The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs3aph8k0p8kphe1g07nxyh4)) - 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 ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs3v9q4bfk18d3wq6sj15jwy)) - you can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs3aq6q449h20n03j0xc0gwt)) - If you're at the leading edge of a field that's changing fast, when you have a hunch that something is worth doing, you're more likely to be right. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs3vfxvekwjef8k2ketagzbb)) - Paul Buchheit says that people at the leading edge of a rapidly changing field "live in the future." Combine that with Pirsig and you get: > Live in the future, then build what's missing. That describes the way many if not most of the biggest startups got started. Neither Apple nor Yahoo nor Google nor Facebook were even supposed to be companies at first. They grew out of things their founders built because there seemed a gap in the world. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs3vpbhgy6r74psg3zv923ht)) - 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. It's cool; users love it; it just doesn't matter. But if you're living in the future and you build something cool that users love, it may matter more than outsiders think ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs3wszte6xq1jcacjh3pmqjk)) - The place to start looking for ideas is things you need. There *must* be things you need. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs5n7acwy44b8erq9hm0gfwp)) - One good trick is to ask yourself whether in your previous job you ever found yourself saying "Why doesn't someone make x? If someone made x we'd buy it in a second." If you can think of any x people said that about, you probably have an idea. You know there's demand, and people don't say that about things that are impossible to build. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs5n7c3fphxk0mjke8f149sa)) - Since startups often garbage-collect broken companies and industries, it can be a good trick to look for those that are dying, or deserve to, and try to imagine what kind of company would profit from their demise. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hs5ngv90qsy93adfxg1nxrjj))