Ask HN: What can I do to better stimulate my mind for business ideas?

13 points by _davebennett 5 years ago | 11 comments

I often read advice saying that you can't just sit down with a piece of paper and start coming up with business ideas; it just doesn't work that way. Many people seem to suggest to just start naturally doing stuff and "notice" the problems that you encounter. Paul Graham and Peter Levels both seem to advocate for this approach.

My problem is that I rarely get any ideas I notice. Maybe I'm not doing enough stuff? Maybe all my stuff is very basic? Is there something else that I could do everyday that will "exercise my mind" for coming up with business ideas?

rwdim 5 years ago |

Im sure you get ideas that are below your threshold for engagement... most people do until someone makes them aware and they have an “aha” moment..

Pick a topic, product, food, restaurant, etc. at random and think of (then write down) at least one way to improve it (even if subjective).

Now for each propose at least one method of doing it. If you don’t know how, then take a minute to google the processes that lead up to the improvement... slowly you internalize that knowledge and it becomes second nature.

It’s an exercise, but after a week or two you will come to do it naturally. Just make sure you tell people your ideas if your not going to use them.

I’ve found that when you “release” an idea, better ones follow.

nefitty 5 years ago |

A fun brainstorm method I do is the ABC game. I ask a question, then force myself to come up with an answer for each of letter of the alphabet within an hour. Absolutely no other tasks/distractions for that hour.

I think a lot about spreadsheets. If a person made a spreadsheet to get something done, it might mean there’s no solution/accessible options available.

Finally, I think about stuff that sucks. A lot of things seem like they could be fixed by some automation, and it seems to be the low hanging fruit of business ideas. Invention, manufacturing, etc. I think benefit from an entire explicit process for idea generation.

davismwfl 5 years ago |

Every idea I brought to market and my notes of ideas I keep all come from things I have encountered through talking with other people or directly myself. Sitting down and dreaming up ideas is pretty idealistic but it generally doesn't result in successful products. Even things like the automobile were an evolution type product, not a from scratch thought process. So you need to be out experiencing life, talking to people and finding pain points that have a market to sell into. Write down those things over time, take the ones that look promising and go deeper and talk to people about them, explore what type of market might exist and then you settle on ideas.

In my notes I have more ideas then time now cause everywhere I go I see things that could be solved. Just many of them are not worth enough to do as a business, others that are worth it require significant capital (so more due diligence to explore there) and still others I am exploring myself deeper all the time. But you'll find when you stop trying to dream up fancy new ideas and start looking at processes and pains around you and in other peoples lives, businesses etc you'll find an unlimited supply of ideas. Some of those ideas are incremental, others are transformative and either can be lucrative and fun.

dannyphantom 5 years ago |

I think you're onto something but looking at it in the wrong way when you say that YOUR stuff is basic. It's not YOUR stuff that is basic, it is what you can find that is basic.

Many of the challenges that would lead to a revenue generating idea seem (to me) to come from something that isn't regularly discussed - something basic along the pipeline that causes someone, somewhere down the pipeline a small and/or large headache - with varying degrees of course.

Let us take a small peek at Stripe, they identified a piece of the puzzle by creating a solution for online business payments. That is awesome and all but I want to detract from that into a more manageable scale. What do you find is a headache, to any degree? Maybe a prebuilt excel sheet for those who don't whelm the power of being an excel guru. Perhaps an app that allows drivers to simply upload a receipt every time they get gas to track average mpg - with some nice extras that could track mileage. The market is flush with these type of solutions. I think the real challenge is pushing beyond the idea of this mindset being challenging.

Think of all the moving parts vs the large scale. You'll be sure to find something along the way, I guarantee it.

chrisdalke 5 years ago |

You're best equipped to solve problems that you experience yourself, but these problems don't have to be your own. Maybe you have friends or family in a different industry -- Seek out points of friction they might have. Maybe consider just interviewing others, researching their needs, etc.

giantg2 5 years ago |

Just be curious and cross pollinate your ideas between different domains. I think the best ideas are not forced, but organic.

I come up with an idea for an invention about every other month. Usually they've already been implemented, or wouldn't have a large enough market.

krytz 5 years ago | |

“they've already been implemented” - meaning validated by others. the notion that an idea has to be unique is silly. if every business idea worked that way we’d only ever have one jeans maker, one car maker, one social network and one bottle shape. ideas dont need to be “unique”. they do need to vary as different people have different expectations from similar products.

“wouldn't have a large market” - a billion dollar idea is not the only idea that should be chased. a corner shop owner can earn more than an office worker dreaming about becoming the next elon musk. as do thousands of nice products.

giantg2 5 years ago | | |

The existing ideas are usually as good or better than mine, making it impossible to break in. Or if it's too similar, there could be patent issues. I'll give you two examples from when I was a kid.

I saw one of those geometric balls that expand and contract at the gift shop of the Smithsonian. I thought, what if they use something like that in a transmission instead of multiple gears? You could have one like that which expands and contracts with a smaller one that varies much less but just changes the pitch of the teeth to fit the big one. The next decade they came out with CVTs which objectively were a better design using (very basically) two rollers that change geometry.

In middle school, I created an invention for that young inventor program run by Sears. I made a device that would slide up and down on the side of an extension ladder. It was a basket to hold paint or tools. I couldn't find anything like it back then. 20 years later and I see an infomercial one. Perhaps this was my best idea I ever had. Sadly I was just a kid and never patented or sold them. I didn't even win the competition.

nosmokewhereiam 5 years ago |

Exposure over time, allow day dreaming / unconscious thoughts

Jugurtha 5 years ago |

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" - Blaise Pascal. Coming from him, he not only was a mathematician, a philosopher, and a physicist, but he started the first modern form of public transport in the world[0].

Business is recognizing problems, and then solving them for a profit. The problems can be yours or others'. The "definition" of a problem is a gap between a current state and a desired state that one does not know how to overcome. You can train yourself by looking for signs of problems such as anxiety, frustration, ranting, complaining, and then digging deeper instead of shrugging it off as another day in the office.

I helped people with tiny businesses get in touch with huge auto-manufacturers simply by designing great looking documents with a LaTeX template and designing a commercial offer. I helped others to decide to make chemical products by digging into chemical compounds and having spectroscopies and other lab experiments done after a nightly conversation in a forest where I pulled a notebook and a pen and started listing price points and products because they complained they were being excluded by product wholesalers. I helped others by making software that generates the right document for the right bank for their clients after getting cofee. I helped others move money around, or deal with vendors abroad, or work on an HR system for a sixty thousand person organization, etc... This was when I was a student/fresh graduate and had some time to spare and the result of conversations where I didn't say "It sucks, man."

One funny thing is that you end up as the "go-to person", a "fixer" of sorts, and more and more people bring you their problems or bring you people who have a problem. It becomes a game of solving problems.

The gist of this is paying attention and recognizing problems, and then paying attention to your attitude towards problems. What do you do with them.

- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrosses_%C3%A0_cinq_sols

krytz 5 years ago |

definitely not by sitting around and asking on hn. not only is there too much overthinking around here but neither pail nor peter lurk around answering questions. its mainly wannabe office workers who somehow think that gaining points here gets them closer to becoming experts in anything.

instead do what you quoted - go out there, pick a field, do stuff in it and learn what you can either do better, different, or more of the same if the market allows. ideas come from ingredients and the more you have the more you can bake.