As soon as I started working on my startup, I started noticing lots of other problems in the world, which I wish someone would fix. At least some of these could turn into good business ideas too.<p>So, if you are romanticising about starting a startup but don't have an idea, do this: forget about ideas and doing something new. Just pick up an existing business and try to clone it. Along the way, you will find your idea.<p>Building stuff is the best generator of ideas in my experience.
I don't really understand this need for "finding startup ideas". In my mind, it's good idea that lead to start-up and I can't see myself thinking "I want to launch my start-up but I don't have any idea of what to do".<p>Is there actually some people thinking this way (want startup -> need idea) ?
Would people who can't find startup ideas be interested in paying for a service that provides a stream of ideas along with basic market research?<p>I don't know what the exact mechanism would be (subscription of some sort most likely, with an additional "Pay to remove this idea from all the listings" fee).
An idea I had 5 years ago was related to local (social networking, news, events,classifieds) - at that time local wasn’t the hot topic it is today (and Facebook was just for colleges).<p>How did I came up with that? I had a need - I was a fresh immigrant to US (coming from Eastern Europe) - didn’t know almost anybody - and I though would be nice to have a local site for each neighborhood (based of the zip code level) where people can interact, post local news, local events, local classifieds.<p>I even start coding and did a prototype in the free time I had, and I almost 1 year (which is still online at <a href="http://www.mirceagoia.com/local" rel="nofollow">http://www.mirceagoia.com/local</a> ) hoping that I may present that to an investor - well, I was too new here and I had to look for a job eventually, to survive. So, i abandoned the idea - but, who knows, that idea could be still viable, especially nowadays.
I find startup ideas by looking at the domain names which are expiring and are in the pendingDelete status. I acquired lots of these and for some I am writing down what can be done for it.
When you start a startup it’s good to have a good domain name right away - just ask Mint.com how much they had to give up for that good domain name (gave up some good equity) - or ask Facebook, which paid $200,000 for it after it became successful (money which could be used for the actual business)
I like the framing of any annoyance as a potential startup idea. It implies that one either has the basis for an idea or are generally content anyway. In which case, why would one need a startup?<p>May work better in theory than in practice.