What strategies can one employ to generate an innovative startup idea that outperforms existing options, similar to how Plausible created their privacy-focused and user-friendly analytics platform, which stands out from competitors like Google Analytics?<p>Rather than creating a copycat app, I'm interested in discovering an idea that sets itself apart in terms of quality and utility. What techniques or approaches have been effective for you in identifying unique and valuable startup concepts that can compete against established market players?<p>Additionally, what resources or tools would you recommend for conducting research and assessing the viability of a potential startup idea?
Coming up with ideas is a habit. Once you start doing it, it's impossible to shut off, trust me!<p>1. Learn to be discontent. You aren't seeing ideas because you are content with the status quo. You need to be in the habit of thinking "this could be better".<p>2. There is a difference between a hobby idea and a business idea. Hobby ideas solve a problem, but you probably can't get someone to pay for it. A business idea may not be "fun", but people <i>will</i> pay for it. If you're lucky, you will find something that overlaps the two areas.<p>3. Businesses succeed because they solve a problem that people are willing to pay for the solution. Figure out how to monitize your idea before wasting time building something.<p>4. You must either already have, or have a plan to develop, expert or insider knowledge and connections in order to establish your business. For example, don't expect to build a tool to sell to banks to use if you don't know anything about the banking industry and don't know anyone in the banking industry.<p>5. A successful business requires (a) someone to build the thing, (b) someone to sell the thing, (c) someone to manage the thing. You might be all three of those. If you are only one of those things, then you need to partner with others who fulfill the other roles.<p>Good luck! We need more people building things!
Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s execution that is valuable. So don’t feel too in a hurry to generate ideas.<p>Take the Google Analytics competitor. Personally I was bothered that GA got a monopoly in the space so fast and that it took so long for real competition to come along, if it has. The interesting questions revolve around “why did GA have a moat?” and “how does a new entrant overcome that?”<p>Wherever there is a market leading product there is a narrative that<p><pre><code> * Google docs sucks
* Microsoft excel sucks
* Adobe creative cloud sucks
* Facebook sucks
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It is very possible to take a bite out of this kind of firm but it is not easy. Look at at Figma as a detailed case study —- it is the ability to execute that puts an idea like that on wheels.<p>(My current side project is something that I was thinking about 18 years ago thinking… why doesn’t this exist? But it still doesn’t, except on my server.)
Whenever you have an idea put it in a file or notebook vault. Prioritize them by putting the most interesting ideas at the top. Build and update the list of ideas for life and you will never have to start from zero when coming up with ideas.
You can generate ideas with a combinatorial approach:<p>[1] <a href="https://taylor.town/an-algorithm-for-generating-ideas" rel="nofollow">https://taylor.town/an-algorithm-for-generating-ideas</a><p>To validate ideas, I try building them for 1 month to find my "real-world" blindspots.
I often go to <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/products" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/products</a>. Sometimes I feel inspired by new projects. Note that it’s just a way to find ideas, not one to know if this idea will work or not :)
Read <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/</a> and post your own to get feedback there.