Billion Dollar Startup Ideas [video]

The internet is rife with blogs (and now podcasts) about what can be a billion dollar startup ideas. It just depends on where someone sees an opportunity and exploits it. (not as easy, but thats about the crux of it)<p>I wanted to touch upon the other thing Garry Tan mentioned when he said that reason people try the same ideas is because &quot;desire is mimetic&quot;. We want what other people want. Same ideas especially ones which have already been successful. And he cites examples like Podcasts, Travel plans, and local events app.<p>Out of the three mentioned, local events app and travel plans apps have been tried multiple times but never been successful. Its something when you ask casual travelers what they would want in a travel app and travel planning help is their first pick and local events and guidance is their second pick. Most of these ideas fold because travel is very cold market for an investor and most dont want to invest.<p>Also, quite a few folks now pick ideas based on what is a hot market ergo what is being funded, and quite a few times its a variant or a rendition of what is already successful (or something a success in one vertical can be tried in another).<p>That being said, I do think that you need to have the experiences of the people you are building the product for. It may or may not be the same experience as others.

Haven&#x27;t watched the whole thing yet, but I will push back on some of the popular mythology that everyone thought successful startups we&#x27;re just toys or would fail in their early days. IMO that&#x27;s mostly bullshit.<p>Amazon, Google, Uber, Facebook (despite some cherry picked article from the video about it never being able to hit profitability) were all <i>hugely</i> popular right off the bat, and indeed, many people saw them as being more worthy successors to what were already huge businesses (e.g. the pre-Google search engines, MySpace).<p>In a similar vein, you often here how pg and other top VCs thought AirBnB was a horrible idea early on. Well, that&#x27;s just their own individual myopic vision IMO. Couchsurfing was already very popular, as were other vacation rental platforms like VRBO - it&#x27;s not hard to see how AirBnB could grow into that space.<p>If anything, what I see as the common thread is that the most successful startups executed extraordinarily well at just exactly the right time (e.g. there were other video sites before YouTube, but you didn&#x27;t really have enough broadband adoption until the late 00s the make it viable).

I keep hearing over and over again how the idea doesn&#x27;t matter and it&#x27;s all about &quot;execution execution execution!&quot;. I get that execution is important, but can we also agree that the idea is important too? I get that good ideas are easier to come by than good execution, but I kind of feel like completely discounting the idea also missed the point.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m wrong, but I have a hard time coming up with a super successful company based on a bad idea.<p>Just to be clear, I&#x27;m not discounting execution at all, it&#x27;s obviously incredibly important. All I&#x27;m saying is that it bugs me when people always discount ideas as unimportant.

I think there’s still plenty of low hanging fruit out there, especially for B2C, people just aren’t thinking about it in the right way. Too many resources have been devoted to providing marginal conveniences (all of the delivery companies), or to entertainment.<p>I still think what the advanced world needs most is an easily accessible way to form strong human connections. Organizations throughout history, such as religions, armies, fraternities, and secret societies, have figured out that formula. But, obviously those groups aren’t a good option for everyone. Great relationships are the most valuable things we have, and, judging by how many lonely people are out there, they are in short supply.

Haven&#x27;t watched the full video yet but the saying that one shouldn&#x27;t build what everyone else is building doesn&#x27;t seem like good advise.<p>Yahoo was hugely popular when Google launched. Orkut and MySpace were very popular when Facebook launched. There were many popular messaging services when Whatsapp launched.<p>In fact I think just digging out something from the Google graveyard would be a good idea. 4-5 million users might be a pittance for Google but most of us would be more than happy to have even half of that customer base.

Why is everyone so obsessed with ideas? Out of everything needed to succeed with a startup (idea, audience, acquisition channels, competition), the &quot;startup idea&quot; is the thing you can ALWAYS change. It&#x27;s the thing you have the most control over.<p>That&#x27;s not the case, however, with acquisition channels (a topic I write extensively about [1]), or your audience (they come with pre-defined beliefs&#x2F;behaviors that are hard to change.)<p>Having this in mind, it makes more sense to focus first on analyzing a) The audience b) The channels through which you can reach to them. Once you get enough knowledge about these 2, you can create a pretty good startup idea WITHIN these constraints.<p>This is why people have invented things like market-product fit or product-channel fit [2]. I&#x27;d like to add that you&#x27;re more likely to succeed if you FIT your idea TO the channel&#x2F;audience, rather than doing the reverse.<p>Would love to hear other perspectives on this topic.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstpayingusers.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstpayingusers.com</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brianbalfour.com&#x2F;essays&#x2F;product-channel-fit-for-growth" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brianbalfour.com&#x2F;essays&#x2F;product-channel-fit-for-grow...</a>

just a friendly reminder that you do not need to build a billion dollar startup to achieve wealth &amp; status.<p>sometimes building something that makes 1-2mn a year is the right move.

I think the one take from this short talk is this; &quot;History doesn&#x27;t repeat itself, but it rhymes&quot; (M.Twain). Walking your own path is always important when it comes to creativity, whether it is about pursuing billion dollar startup ideas or writing a unique song.

I&#x27;d like to offer a counterpoint to starting a billion dollar startup, instead of trying your best to be a billionaire - you can pursue multiple small bets that can pay you better than your current full time job. That way you don&#x27;t have to sacrifice your interests for financial independence.<p>I spent the last 2 years working on a research heavy startup that I felt would change game development forever, it was hard from an engineering, research, marketing and sales standpoint.<p>Late into the second year I started to feel burnt out and decided instead to write a robotics textbook which got way more attention to both myself and my project in about 2 months worth of work than 2 years did. This then got me to take Twitter a bit more seriously in terms of making friends, peers that I can easily see turn into collaborators or customers in the future. Sort of an audience first approach as opposed to product first approach. Tools like Twitter, Medium and Substack make this approach a lot more feasible today.<p>I even remember having a sort of disdain for freelancing because I thought it didn&#x27;t scale whereas if I did pursue it more seriously I&#x27;d imagine I&#x27;d have had more direct solo enterprise sales experience, met more clients, figured out what their problems were and solving them instead of imagining an ideal where game developers would solve their problems like I wanted them to. Seeing my savings decrease every month took a mental toll on me, I figured there would be a light at the end of the tunnel and I essentially feel like I miscalibrated my goals. Instead of trying to build a billion dollar startup, I should have spent more time figuring out how to never need a job ever again.<p>The benefits of the multiple small bets approach is that when you&#x27;re wrong it doesn&#x27;t cost you 2 years of your life, you&#x27;re less fragile to sudden decreases in income from one small bet, you don&#x27;t have a boss, pandemics don&#x27;t affect you, you choose your peers and hours etc.. Making your first few dollars online (not from a paycheck) changes you, makes a you a lot better at pursuing opportunities when they happen.<p>After COVID hit I started looking for a job again and my interviewing experience was very interesting to say the least. I described very honestly my failures and startups loved my story and appreciated my openness - bigger companies on the other hand essentially told me that well your startup didn&#x27;t work out so you must be lazy and dumb. The outcome is what determines if I&#x27;m a good founder or not but it was really painful being lectured by people who had never taken a risk in their lives.<p>I see so many founders dreaming of huge companies going towards IPO when I can see solo founder companies being a lot happier if they pursued multiple small bets instead. You can&#x27;t hedge your life over multiple billion dollar startups with a 1% chance of working out but you can certainly hedge it over multiple small bets each with a 10-30% chance of success. What&#x27;s good for the aggregate or society isn&#x27;t necessarily what is best for you.

I&#x27;ve said this before, but I&#x27;ll say it again - if you want to get ideas, try to get exposed to some (pretty much <i>any</i>) industry as either a consultant&#x2F;freelancer, or even regular employee. Most industries and businesses are rife with smaller (and larger) inefficiencies, especially when we&#x27;re still in the twilight of digitalization.<p>This is obviously going do the B2B domain, and a lot of the problems and products will be deemed &quot;boring&quot;, but hey, there&#x27;s good money to be made.

This is my first time hearing from Garry Tan, and I just want to say that his voice is incredible. It reminds me of Chris Voss&#x27; &quot;late night FM DJ voice&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RJjnkxvbxaI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=RJjnkxvbxaI</a>)<p>Could anyone recommend some exercises to practice that kind of voice?

I haven&#x27;t made it to the end of the video but here&#x27;s my take on the subject: it is true - everyone is trying to create the exact same thing over and over again. But there are some key components that everyone misses. You can&#x27;t replace facebook. People complain about facebook, but those of us who steer clear from it are a minority. And if potentially I were to create a facebook which solves the problems I have with the existing one, I&#x27;d be making a facebook clone that fits the requirements of a small subset of those who aren&#x27;t on facebook. Basically insignificant market share and it would be a catastrophic waste of time, effort and money. Hence the reason why I&#x27;m not doing it(also because I find social networks inherently boring).<p>The second big misconception is that in order to make a billion or even a million dollar product, you need to focus on a personal problem you are trying to solve. Essentially your product should solve your problem. And this lures people into an entirely different rabbit hole - convincing themselves that &quot;X&quot; is their problem and that many other people have that problem. Often no one has that problem or it&#x27;s so insignificant that no one will even bother giving it a thought.<p>The next big rabbit hole are apps. Don&#x27;t get me wrong, apps are great and I rely on my phone heavily. However the Pareto rule is in full effect here. People will have 60 apps installed, and will use around 20% of those. And they will use heavily 20% of that subset. Say the average human being spends, say, an hour and a half on his or her phone a day. 80% of which will be messaging&#x2F;social media, where you can&#x27;t compete. So you are left competing with 10 other apps for the user&#x27;s attention for a portion of the remaining 36 minutes. Sure, you could get a few thousand users out of several billion people. But again, Pareto&#x27;s rule: most of your revenue will come from a small subset of those. Which often defeats the purpose. It&#x27;s really hard to compete as a startup or an indie developer, when thousands of companies have thousands of astonishing developers at their disposal + the finances to back up any new project.<p>In addition, an idea in itself is worth nothing. It&#x27;s what you do with it and how you market it that counts.<p>Which leads me to my final point. Billion dollar ideas are really hard to execute because the bar has been set very high. It&#x27;s not something a single person or a small team can pull off. Those who do are the black swans. On a semi-related note, when the pandemic started, I was pretty convinced that many people will step up their game and come up with relevant products which will help the world adapt to the new normal. Which didn&#x27;t happen to my big surprise. And I&#x27;m kind of disappointed that I didn&#x27;t take on the challenge either(too much on my plate already + it&#x27;s hard to work alone on a project). There were so many opportunities that were entirely missed... Shame but oh well... Next time maybe...

Ideas are rarely the problem. It&#x27;s the execution and commitment.

Can anyone recommend one of these local event apps he was talking about?<p>Been looking for one for a while, i actually considered making one.

I&#x27;ve had a couple, but couldn&#x27;t tell you where they come from or how I get them. Ideas are easy (well, not really, but most smart, aware people have them).<p>The differentiator is execution and the ability to network properly. Maybe try your ideas when you don&#x27;t have five college-aged kids and debt.<p>I had the idea for &quot;Slack&quot; 4 years before it came out. Seriously, _exactly_ the idea of Slack. I even semi-pitched it to Microsoft and they blew me off. I saw Napster&#x2F;(internet downloaded music) four years before 1999, but I suspect I wasn&#x27;t the only one. I started a knowledge base of company resumes at my consulting firm in 1995 and now that&#x27;s a billion dollar industry (we never finished it because coworkers hated the idea of their resume in a database).<p>I may be smart, but so far I have been unable to execute any of my billion dollar ideas. Being smart only really gets you so far. I did try to build a tech-ed company ten years ago (Textfyre) that would thrive in the Covid learning world, but we could never get funded.<p>Still swinging though. May be the one I&#x27;m working on now will connect. We shall see.<p>My advice to anyone with an idea? Learn how to execute. Join startups, read books, network with entrepreneurs, go to startupweekend (when Covid is over), learn how to build a solid pitch deck, a business plan, and a financial worksheet. These fundamentals are the difference in getting an idea to market. And finally, make sure you focus on customers. Not on your logo, business cards, a PR website, or even paid employees. Get customers. Get revenue.

Execution is easy, it just takes money, good ideas are hard to come up with.

Startup names under 199 USD for your billion dollar ideas<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startupnames.medium.com&#x2F;startup-names-under-199-usd-dcf8378332a5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;startupnames.medium.com&#x2F;startup-names-under-199-usd-...</a>

useless garbage spam

Hol up im channeling my inner steve jobs

The world doesn&#x27;t need more VC-inflated payment platform middlemen taking a cut either Gary :p Other than the Patreon spruik, good vid.

Easy - A convenient way to get a covid vaccine &#x2F;s

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3YKNr-LiblI?t=212" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3YKNr-LiblI?t=212</a><p>i guess he never heard of ebay.<p>patreon is just paypal donation button but they take a bigger cut and have developed a habit of terminating creators from the service for vague TOS violations<p>When he says that a company is worth 1 billon or 3 billon etc. , this is based on the last funding round in a very illiquid market. The collapse of wework shows that these purportedly large numbers are less impressive than they seem