What You Really Need Is A Market, Not An Idea

This post appears to simply restate what it attempts to argue against (niche ideas and the previous brainstorming post).<p>Niches <i>are</i> markets. Dog walkers probably could use some kind of SaaS app. Restaurants <i>desperately</i> need better websites. And if you have a passion or (especially) deep knowledge of those industries/markets/niches, there's nothing wrong with experimenting with ideas.<p>No one is arguing against doing market research–in fact, multiple people stated that as the first step in the HN post mentioned. And I doubt the OP on that thread was saying "make some ideas up out of the blue with no basis in industry knowledge". C'mon.<p>[1] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4917661" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4917661</a>

I think the article oversees an important factor in startup success: the needs of the market is a vast land, and surely there is an intersection with a passion yours.<p>I can't envision the founder of Bang &#38; Olufsen being indifferent to sound quality, or the founder of Herman Miller being indifferent to office furniture. I chose these companies deliberately because I don't know their founders, but I'm sure they were passionate about their field.<p>I can't fathom building a company for a market that might be lucrative, but is meaningless to me. I'd rather build 10 failed companies than create a profitable CRM for telemarketers.

An idea without a market is largely useless (from an income generating perspective at least). But as a single founder currently slugging through the mountain of work needed to get something off the ground, I know I couldn't do it if my heart wasn't in it and I had no passion for what I'm working on other than plugging a hole in a randomly identified market.<p>Despite having an entrepreneurial streak and coming from an entrepreneurial family, I was 29 before I finally decided to quit my job and pursue the idea I'm now working on. A big reason it took so long was because I was only willing to risk everything on an idea that I believed in AND had a demonstrated market. Having one or the other wasn't enough.<p>It isn't all roses though. Even if you think you've got a good idea and a valid market for it, it's still all for nothing if you can't get in front of and retain a critical mass of customers. That's the piece of the puzzle I'll shortly be faced with and I'm not relishing it.

Riiiight... Mark Zuckerberg researched the worldwide market before starting Facebook. Kevin Rose researched the market before starting Digg. And all the other successful entrepreneurs are known for this.<p>"Research the market" approach is good if you want to build a regular bootstrapped business. If you're building a startup, you should actually build an MVP and "Test the market".<p>Please don't get me wrong, but I still believe that building a couple of duds and failing is the better way to go. If you're building something truly innovative and disruptive, most people you ask during "research" won't even know that they need it.

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them" - Jobs

This post is gold. And agrees with Amy Hoy, Rob Wailing, Dane Maxwell, and many others who have been writing about boostrapping for a while.<p>If you dedicate 70% of the time to find the market and isolate the pain point, risk decreases hyperbolically :)

I was the person who started the link referenced in the article, "Can we brainstorm a list of sites like bingo card creator", and admittedly the post was either a poor idea, or at the very least poorly phrased.<p>Coming from a business background, I just assumed that any idea people would put out there would have been small solutions to small problems... not "sitcom startups". I guess I was wrong. Really the only thing I was looking for were problems that could potentially be solved with minimal capital, and only 1 or 2 people. I wasn't looking to bypass market validation, or solving poeple's problems.<p>So, going back to the underlying question of starting businesses, how do you go about finding a market, finding problems, finding solutions to those problems, and finding paying customers? Preferably all without wasting a ton of time or money?<p>I hope Patrick replies to this thread and walks us through his process. Did Patrick start with the teachers market because he knew some teachers? Did he ask them what problems they had? Did they complain to him that were dying to play classroom bingo, that the existing solutions are terrible, and that they would pay him if he provided a solution?<p>I know some people involved in trades, some in education, finance, and consulting. Several of these people are either the business owners themselves, or have the authority to pay for software solutions to their problems. These are primarily offline markets. How do you suggest going from here, to paying customers? Asking them outright what problems they have? What problems they have that software might provide a solution? What problems they have with current software solutions they use?

Well said.<p>I think that a lot of entrepreneurs also completely miss the concept of loss aversion. No matter how much pain your potential idea may be solving, some people are simply in love with their current shitty situation.

Paul, did you apply this to Hoppy Press? Just curious what the market is for hand made beer art.

This belongs on "the best of HN" (if such a thing exists) and should be required reading for any aspiring startup founder.<p>In the online startup community very little space seems to be devoted to methods and tips for researching markets. Perhaps this is an opportunity itself? Someone should research this niche and then start an on online information resource if the demand is there.<p>(edit: yes, I realize how meta this is)

"<i>Be prepared to adjust the binoculars as go -- you may discover a market existing where you didn't know one existed. Like teachers needing bingo cards.</i>"<p>Why do teachers need bingo cards? Because they need easy ways of making <i>interactive</i> and <i>attractive</i> games and puzzles for their students. And they will pay for stuff, but not <i>huge</i> amounts. You might get a monthly fee for a Web based authoring system if the figure is low. We have to be careful about putting students on Web sites, so probably <i>not</i> a fully Web based membership system.<p>Plenty of room there, UK has around 600,000 teachers, US must be 5 times that. Similar for Europe and other continents.

This is a great article, and definitely something I could recommend to a lot of people.<p>But what about passion? Identifying a market is one thing, but should you go after it if you don't have any interest for that particular domain? I know that's what Patrick did with BingoCardCreator, but I personally don't think I would be capable of that.<p>Of course market research is primordial, but I still think there's something to be said for following your passion and building something really cool. You might not make as much money, but on the other hand maybe you'll enjoy the process more.

Great read, if you pick the right market, it's easy to become profitable very, very quickly.<p>In our case, we picked "Developer Recruiting in SF" as our initial market after years of personal experience dealing with incompetent recruiters, expensive job board ads that didn't produce results and talking to hundreds of founders/CEOs/CTOs who where all complaining about the same thing.

I feel like this has been said a billion times. (Isn't this what Steve Blank's customer development methodology is all about?) I do realize, though, that now matter how many times we say it, people fall into the trap of thinking their idea is enough.<p>In very rare cases where there is no market yet, ideas do matter (e.g., the automobile).

The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca...</a>

having built stuff (that failed) based on "a good idea" I can not agree more with the post

Marc Andreessen nailed this point years ago:<p><a href="https://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-startups-part-4-the-only" rel="nofollow">https://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-sta...</a>

Similar discussion about ideas - <a href="http://www.vusal.me/essays/ideas/" rel="nofollow">http://www.vusal.me/essays/ideas/</a>

Nice to see another one of my 30x500 alumni rocking the HN charts. With great, solid advice. Congrats, Paul. Great post.

I am involved in a bunch of smaller things, each with different people that I met along the way of doing other things -- serendipitiously -- and I never felt the need to drop everything to do a big, risky startup around a "great idea" or a "great niche market". None of the smaller things I do, actually has a full-time person working on it. That's the beauty of websites. They are always there, but there is no need to attend to them on a full-time basis. It's all running on solar power and wind energy ;-) I may do something bigger one day or another, but I don't see the pressing need to actually make that happen. It will only happen by serendipity.

What you really need is a new category not a market.