Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator.
November 2012
The secret to How To Get startup ideas isn’t about brainstorming sessions or forced creativity. It’s about shifting your focus to identifying problems, especially those you encounter personally. The most impactful startup ideas often share three core characteristics: they address a genuine need the founders themselves experience, leverage the founders’ skills to build a solution, and tap into an opportunity that others haven’t yet recognized as valuable. Think about the origins of tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook – they all began by solving problems their founders deeply understood.
The Power of Problems
Why is focusing on your own problems so crucial when considering how to get startup ideas? Primarily, it validates the problem’s existence. It sounds almost too simple, yet the most common pitfall for startups is dedicating resources to solving non-existent problems.
I learned this lesson firsthand. In 1995, I launched a company aimed at bringing art galleries online. The problem? Art galleries weren’t interested in being online. It simply wasn’t aligned with the art market’s dynamics. Why did I waste six months on this misguided venture? Because I ignored user feedback and built a business model detached from reality. I only realized my error when I tried to sell our product to galleries and faced rejection. Even then, it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand. I was too attached to my flawed vision and the software we had developed. I was convinced they should want it!
Why do so many founders create products nobody wants? It often stems from the flawed approach of trying to think up startup ideas in a vacuum. This method is doubly harmful: it not only produces few good ideas, but it generates bad ideas that sound plausible enough to trap you.
At YC, we call these “made-up” or “sitcom” startup ideas. Imagine a sitcom character deciding to launch a startup. The writers need to invent a business for them. But generating good startup ideas is challenging, not something you can simply conjure on demand. So, unless they get incredibly lucky, the writers will likely come up with an idea that sounds good but is fundamentally flawed.
Take, for example, a social network for pet owners. It doesn’t sound obviously wrong. Millions own pets, deeply care for them, and spend considerable money on pet-related products. Surely, many of these individuals would appreciate a platform to connect with fellow pet owners. Perhaps not everyone, but even if just 2-3% became regular users, you could have millions of users. You could then offer targeted advertising and potentially charge for premium features. [1]
The danger of such ideas when exploring how to get startup ideas is that when you discuss it with pet-owning friends, they won’t dismiss it outright. They might say, “Yeah, I could see myself using something like that.” Even after launch, the concept will seem reasonable to many. They might not personally use it right now, but they can imagine others wanting it. Aggregate this reaction across the population, and you end up with zero users. [2]
The “Well” of Demand
For a startup to succeed upon launch, it must attract users who genuinely need what it offers – not just those who can envision using it someday, but those with an immediate and urgent need. Typically, this initial user base is small. If a large-scale urgent need existed and could be addressed with the resources of a typical startup’s initial version, it would likely already be fulfilled. This forces a trade-off: you can either build something with broad but shallow appeal, or something with narrow but deep appeal. Choose the latter. While not all ideas of this type are inherently good startup ideas, almost all successful startup ideas begin this way.
Visualize a graph where the x-axis represents potential users and the y-axis represents the intensity of their need. By inverting the y-axis, you can think of companies as holes. Google is a massive crater: hundreds of millions of users rely on it heavily. A fledgling startup can’t expect to create such a vast impact immediately. You have two choices in shaping your initial “hole”. You can dig a broad, shallow hole or a narrow, deep well.
Made-up startup ideas are often the former – broadly appealing but shallowly needed. Many might be mildly interested in a social network for pet owners. Nearly all successful startup ideas, when considering how to get startup ideas, are the latter. Microsoft, with Altair Basic, was a “well.” Only a few thousand Altair owners existed, but they desperately needed software to avoid machine language programming. Decades later, Facebook mirrored this pattern. Their initial platform was exclusive to Harvard students, a small group, but those users intensely desired it.
When evaluating a startup idea, ask yourself: Who needs this right now? Who needs this so badly they’ll use a basic, version one product from an unknown two-person startup? If you can’t answer this, the idea is likely flawed. [3]
While the narrowness of the “well” isn’t essential, depth is. Narrowness often emerges as a byproduct of optimizing for depth and speed. The strong correlation between depth and narrowness makes it a positive sign when you identify an idea that resonates deeply with a specific user group.
However, a “well”-shaped demand is necessary but not sufficient. If Mark Zuckerberg’s creation had been limited to Harvard students, it wouldn’t have become the giant it is. Facebook succeeded because its initial niche provided a rapid path for expansion. Colleges are similar enough that a successful Facebook at Harvard could easily scale to other colleges. From there, expansion to the broader public was a natural progression.
Similarly, Microsoft’s path unfolded: Basic for Altair, Basic for other machines, other languages, operating systems, applications, and eventually, an IPO.
Image showing Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, discussing startup strategies, emphasizing the importance of solving personal problems to identify viable startup ideas.
The “Self” Element
How do you discern whether an idea has expansion potential? How do you differentiate between a niche product and the seed of a major company? Often, it’s impossible to know initially. Airbnb’s founders didn’t initially envision the massive market they were entering. Their initial concept was much narrower: allowing hosts to rent out floor space during conventions. The broader application emerged gradually. Initially, they just sensed they were onto something, much like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg probably did in their early stages.
Sometimes, the expansion path is evident from the start. And occasionally, experienced individuals like those at YC can identify less obvious paths. However, predicting expansion potential remains challenging, regardless of experience. The key insight about expansion paths is that they are inherently difficult to foresee.
If predicting expansion is so uncertain, how do you choose between different startup ideas when thinking about how to get startup ideas? The answer, though perhaps underwhelming, is insightful: the right kind of person often has the right kind of instincts. If you’re at the forefront of a rapidly evolving field, your hunches about what’s worthwhile are more likely to be accurate.
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig writes:
You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.
I’ve pondered this passage since high school. While its direct applicability to painting is debatable, it resonates strongly with this situation. Empirically, the best way to generate good startup ideas is to become the type of person who naturally has them. Being at the leading edge of a field doesn’t require being a pioneer. You can be a leading-edge user. For Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s potential wasn’t solely from his programming skills, but from his heavy computer usage. In 2004, most 40-year-olds would be horrified at the idea of semi-publicly sharing their lives online. But Mark already lived online; it felt natural to him.
Paul Buchheit says those at the leading edge of rapid change “live in the future.” Combining this with Pirsig’s idea, we get:
Live in the future, then build what’s missing.
This perfectly describes the origin of many major startups. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook weren’t initially conceived as companies. They grew from solutions their founders created to fill perceived gaps in the world.
Looking at successful founders’ idea generation, it’s usually an external trigger meeting a prepared mind. Bill Gates and Paul Allen hear about the Altair and think, “We could write a Basic interpreter for it.” Drew Houston forgets his USB drive and thinks, “I need to access my files online.” Many heard of the Altair. Many forgot USB drives. But these stimuli sparked companies in these founders because their experiences had prepared them to recognize the opportunities.
The right verb to use with startup ideas isn’t “think up” but “notice.” At YC, we call ideas arising naturally from founders’ experiences “organic” startup ideas. The most successful startups almost always begin this way.
This might not be the answer you hoped for. You might have expected formulas for generating startup ideas, but I’m suggesting the key is cultivating a properly prepared mind. While potentially disappointing, this is the truth. And it is a kind of recipe, albeit one that might take a year, not a weekend.
If you’re not currently at the leading edge of a rapidly changing field, you can get there. Anyone reasonably intelligent can likely reach the forefront of programming (e.g., mobile app development) within a year. Given that a successful startup demands at least 3-5 years of your life, a year of preparation is a worthwhile investment, especially if you’re also seeking a co-founder. [4]
You don’t need to learn programming to be at the cutting edge of a fast-evolving domain. Other fields are changing rapidly too. However, while coding isn’t mandatory, it is, for the foreseeable future, sufficient. As Marc Andreessen famously said, “software is eating the world,” and this trend has decades to run.
Knowing how to code also empowers you to implement your ideas. While not essential (Jeff Bezos couldn’t), it’s a significant advantage. When considering an idea like a college Facebook, being able to think, “I can build a prototype tonight” instead of just “That’s interesting,” is immensely powerful. It’s even better when you’re both the programmer and the target user, enabling rapid iteration and user feedback cycles within your own mind.
The Art of Noticing
Once you’re “living in the future” in some area, how to get startup ideas becomes about identifying what’s missing. If you’re truly at the leading edge of a rapidly changing field, obvious gaps will exist. What won’t be immediately apparent is that these gaps represent startup opportunities. So, when looking for startup ideas, activate the “What’s missing?” filter, but deactivate all others, especially “Could this be a big company?” That test can come later. Focusing on it too early can filter out good ideas and steer you towards bad ones.
Most missing pieces take time to recognize. You almost have to trick yourself into seeing the ideas around you.
But know that ideas are out there. This isn’t a problem without a solution. It’s highly improbable that technological progress is suddenly ceasing. People will undoubtedly build things in the coming years that will make you wonder, “How did I live without this before?”
And these solutions, in retrospect, will likely seem glaringly obvious. Your task is to disable the filters that normally prevent you from seeing them. The most powerful filter is taking the current state of the world for granted. Even the most open-minded among us do this most of the time. You couldn’t navigate from your bed to the front door if you questioned everything constantly.
But when actively seeking startup ideas, you can sacrifice some of this efficiency and start questioning assumptions. Why is your inbox overflowing? Is it just high email volume, or is it difficulty managing your inbox? Why do you receive so much email? What problems are people trying to solve by emailing you? Are there better solutions? And why is inbox management challenging? Why do you retain emails after reading them? Is an inbox the optimal tool for this purpose?
Pay particular attention to irritations. The benefit of taking the status quo for granted is not just efficiency, but also making life more bearable. If you knew everything we’d have in 50 years but lack now, current life would feel quite restrictive, much like it would for a present-day person sent back 50 years. When something annoys you, it might be because you’re living in the future.
When you find the right problem, it should feel “obvious,” at least to you. When we started Viaweb, all online stores were hand-built by web designers creating individual HTML pages. It was obvious to us as programmers that these sites needed to be software-generated. [5]
This means, strangely, that finding startup ideas is about seeing the obvious – things you haven’t yet seen, despite their apparent clarity.
Since the goal is to loosen your mindset, a direct, frontal assault on idea generation might be less effective than a background process. Focus on hard problems driven by curiosity, while a “second self” observes, noting gaps and anomalies. [6]
Give yourself time. You have considerable control over developing a prepared mind, but less control over the stimuli that trigger ideas. If Bill Gates and Paul Allen had forced themselves to find a startup idea in a month, what if they’d chosen a month before the Altair’s emergence? They likely would have pursued a less promising idea. Drew Houston initially worked on an SAT prep startup before Dropbox. Dropbox was a far better idea, both inherently and as a fit for his skills. [7]
A good way to trick yourself into noticing ideas is to work on projects that seem “cool.” This naturally leads you to build things that are missing. Building something already existing is inherently less interesting.
Just as forced brainstorming often yields bad startup ideas, working on seemingly trivial “toys” often produces good ones. When something is called a “toy,” it has all the hallmarks of a good idea except perceived importance. It’s cool, users love it, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. However, if you’re living in the future and build something cool that users love, it might matter more than outsiders realize. Microcomputers seemed like toys when Apple and Microsoft started. I remember that era; “hobbyists” was the common term for microcomputer owners. BackRub (Google’s precursor) seemed like an inconsequential science project. Facebook was initially just a way for college students to “stalk” each other.
At YC, we’re excited by startups working on things that forum “know-it-alls” might dismiss as toys. To us, that’s positive validation of a good idea.
If you can afford a long-term perspective (and arguably, you can’t afford not to), you can refine “Live in the future and build what’s missing” into something even stronger:
Live in the future and build what seems interesting.
The “School” of Ideas
This is the advice I’d give to college students instead of “entrepreneurship” courses. “Entrepreneurship” is best learned by doing. The examples of successful founders demonstrate this clearly. College should be about accelerating your personal “future readiness.” It’s a waste to sacrifice the opportunity to solve the hard part of starting a startup – becoming someone who generates organic startup ideas – by spending time learning the easy parts in a classroom. You won’t truly learn it anyway, any more than a class can teach you about sex. You’ll only learn the vocabulary.
The intersection of different fields is a fertile ground for ideas. If you have deep programming knowledge and start exploring another domain, you’ll likely see software-solvable problems. You’re doubly likely to find good problems in a new domain: (a) domain experts are less likely to have already solved problems with software, and (b) as a newcomer, you’re less likely to take the status quo for granted.
So, if you’re a CS major wanting to start a startup, skip the entrepreneurship class and take a genetics course, for example. Or better yet, work at a biotech company for the summer. CS majors usually seek summer jobs at software or hardware companies. But to find startup ideas, a summer job in an unrelated field might be more fruitful. [8]
Or skip extra classes and just build things. It’s no coincidence that Microsoft and Facebook both started in January. At Harvard, January is (or was) “Reading Period,” when students have no classes to study for finals. [9]
Don’t feel pressured to build things that must become startups. That’s premature optimization. Just build things, ideally with other students. Universities are great for future-proofing yourself. You’re surrounded by like-minded individuals. Collaborating on projects often leads to not just organic ideas, but organic founding teams – empirically, the best combination.
Be wary of academic research. If an undergrad project gains user traction among friends, it’s a promising startup indicator. A PhD dissertation, however, is unlikely to translate into a startup. [10] The subset of ideas considered “research” is so narrow that it’s unlikely to simultaneously solve real-world user problems. Side projects, in contrast, naturally gravitate towards user problem-solving, often with added energy from escaping research constraints.
Competition as Validation
Because good ideas should feel obvious, having one might make you feel “late to the party.” Don’t be discouraged. This feeling is often a sign of a good idea. A quick web search will usually clarify the situation. Even if you find competitors, you’re likely not too late. Startups rarely fail due to competition – it’s almost negligible. Unless a competitor has insurmountable lock-in, don’t discard the idea.
If unsure, ask users. The “too late” question is part of the broader question of whether anyone urgently needs your product. If you offer something unique that a user segment urgently needs, you have a beachhead. [11]
The next question is beachhead size. More importantly, who occupies it? If your beachhead is composed of early adopters of a future trend, it’s likely large enough, regardless of current size. For example, a mobile-first product for the newest phones is a viable beachhead.
Err on the side of ideas with competition. Inexperienced founders often overestimate competitors. Your success depends more on you than on them. A good idea with competitors is better than a bad idea without.
Don’t fear “crowded markets” if you have a thesis about what incumbents are missing. In fact, it’s a promising starting point. Google was such an idea. Your thesis needs to be more specific than “We’ll build a better X.” Articulate what incumbents are overlooking. Best of all, show how your plan is what incumbents should have done if they’d fully embraced their own insights. Google again fits this model. Preceding search engines hesitated to fully embrace the implication that better search meant faster user departures.
A crowded market signals demand and inadequate existing solutions. Startups can’t expect to enter large markets with no competitors. Successful startups either enter competitive markets with a unique advantage (like Google) or enter seemingly small markets that expand greatly (like Microsoft). [12]
Filtering for Opportunity
Two more filters to disable when seeking startup ideas: the “unsexy” filter and the “schlep” filter.
Many programmers dream of launching a startup by writing brilliant code, deploying it, and instantly generating revenue. They prefer to avoid tedious tasks and messy real-world interactions. Understandable, as these slow you down. But this preference is so common that convenient startup ideas have been largely exhausted. Venturing into messy, tedious areas often reveals valuable, untapped opportunities.
The schlep filter is so dangerous I wrote a separate essay on “schlep blindness.” Stripe is a prime example of a startup that benefited from disabling this filter. Countless programmers were aware of the pain of online payments before Stripe. But when brainstorming startup ideas, they overlooked this because they unconsciously recoiled from dealing with payments. Payment processing is a schlep for Stripe, but a manageable one. The fear of this schlep kept many away, allowing Stripe relatively smooth sailing in other areas like user acquisition. Users were eagerly awaiting their solution.
The “unsexy” filter is similar, preventing you from pursuing problems you dislike, not just fear. We overcame this with Viaweb. While our software architecture was interesting, e-commerce itself wasn’t our passion. However, we recognized the problem’s importance.
Disabling the schlep filter is more critical than the unsexy filter, as the schlep filter is often an illusion. And even if real, it’s a worse form of self-indulgence. Startup success is inherently laborious. Even with a “schlep-free” product, you’ll face challenges with investors, hiring, and management. If a “cool” idea is held back by perceived schleps, don’t worry: any worthwhile idea will have its share.
The unsexy filter, while still a source of error, isn’t entirely useless. If you’re at the leading edge of a rapidly changing field, your sense of “sexy” will somewhat align with practical value, especially with experience. And passion for an idea fuels greater effort. [13]
Recipes for When You Need an Idea Now
While becoming the type of person who generates organic ideas and building what interests you is ideal, sometimes you need an idea now. For example, if your initial startup idea fails.
The rest of this essay offers techniques for on-demand startup idea generation. While the organic approach is empirically better, you can succeed this way with discipline. Organic ideas feel like inspirations, naturally signaling real gaps. Conscious idea generation lacks this natural filter and produces many bad ideas. You need strong self-discipline to filter them effectively.
A major danger of non-organic methods is misinterpreting the “inspiration” feeling of organic ideas. Stories abound of successful startups starting from seemingly crazy ideas that founders “just knew” were promising. If you feel this about a consciously generated idea, be skeptical.
When actively seeking ideas, focus on your areas of expertise. If you’re a database expert, don’t build a teen chat app (unless you’re also a teen). It might be a good idea, but you can’t trust your judgment. Database-related ideas exist where your expertise is valuable. Finding database ideas challenging? That’s your expertise raising your standards. Your teen chat app ideas are equally flawed, but you’re giving yourself a Dunning-Kruger pass in that domain.
Start looking for ideas in your own needs. You must have needs. [14]
A good technique is to recall past jobs and ask, “Did I ever think, ‘Why doesn’t someone make X? We’d buy it instantly!'” If you can recall such an “X,” you likely have an idea. You know there’s demand, and it’s likely buildable.
More broadly, consider what makes your needs different from most people’s. You’re probably not alone. It’s even better if your difference aligns with emerging trends.
If pivoting from a previous idea, your prior project is a unique experience. Did you discover any unmet needs while working on it? Several well-known startups originated this way. Hotmail began as a tool for founders to discuss their previous startup idea while employed elsewhere. [15]
Youth offers a particularly promising “uniqueness.” Some of the most valuable new ideas first resonate with teens and young adults. While young founders face disadvantages, they uniquely understand their peers. Someone not in college would have struggled to start Facebook. So, if you’re a young founder (under 23), what do you and your friends want that current technology doesn’t provide?
The next best thing to your own unmet need is someone else’s. Talk to everyone about gaps they perceive. What’s missing? What do they wish they could do? What’s tedious or annoying, especially at work? Keep conversations general, avoid forcing startup ideas. Seek sparks. You might notice a problem they haven’t consciously recognized, because you know how to solve it.
When you find another’s unmet need, it might be initially vague. The person needing something might not precisely know what they need. In such cases, act like a consultant – solve that one user’s problem as if retained to do so. User problems are often similar enough that most of your code will be reusable, and any throwaway code is a small price to ensure you’re addressing a genuine need. [16]
To truly understand and solve others’ problems, make them your own. When Rajat Suri of E la Carte decided to create restaurant software, he worked as a waiter to understand restaurant operations firsthand. This might seem extreme, but startups are extreme. We admire such dedication.
In fact, for those seeking new ideas, I recommend not just disabling schlep and unsexy filters, but actively seeking unsexy, schlep-heavy ideas. Don’t aim to create the next Twitter. Those ideas are too rare to find by actively searching. Build something unsexy that people will pay for.
A good trick to bypass the schlep and unsexy filters is to ask: “What do I wish someone else would build, so I could use it? What would I pay for right now?”
Startups often capitalize on failing companies and industries. Look for dying or deserving-to-die industries and imagine companies that could profit from their demise. Journalism, for example, is in decline. But opportunities may still exist in areas like journalism. What type of company might be seen as “replacing journalism” in the future?
Imagine asking this question in the future, not now. Industry replacement is often indirect. Don’t seek a direct replacement for X; seek something people will later recognize as having become a replacement for X. Think creatively about the axis of replacement. Traditional journalism offers information, entertainment, writer income, and advertising platforms. It could be replaced on any of these axes (and already is in many ways).
When startups disrupt incumbents, they often start by serving small but vital markets that larger players ignore. Incumbent disdain can be particularly advantageous. After Steve Wozniak built the Apple I computer, he offered it to his employer, Hewlett-Packard. Fortunately, they declined, partly because its TV monitor seemed “déclassé” to a high-end company like HP. [17]
Are there “scruffy” but sophisticated user groups, like early microcomputer hobbyists, currently ignored by major players? Startups aiming for larger markets can often easily capture smaller markets with efforts that wouldn’t be justified for those markets alone.
Similarly, successful startups often ride larger trends. Seek out these trends and consider how to leverage them. Gene sequencing and 3D printing costs are both falling rapidly. What new possibilities will emerge in this near future? What are we currently dismissing as impossible that will soon become feasible?
The Organic Path
Explicitly looking for trends is a plan B for startup ideas. Looking for trends simulates the organic approach. If you’re at the forefront of a rapidly changing field, you are the trend. No need to seek it.
Finding startup ideas is nuanced, which is why most attempts fail. Simply trying to “think up” ideas doesn’t work well. It yields bad ideas that sound deceptively plausible. The best approach is indirect: with the right background, good startup ideas will seem obvious. But even then, not immediately. It takes time to encounter situations where you notice something missing. And often, these gaps won’t appear as company ideas, just interesting things to build. That’s why having the time and inclination to build things simply because they’re interesting is so valuable.
Live in the future and build what seems interesting. Strange as it sounds, that’s the real recipe for how to get startup ideas.
Notes
[1] This type of flawed idea has been around since the early web. In the 1990s, people with similar ideas spoke of creating portals for X, not social networks for X. Structurally, it’s a “stone soup” approach: attract people interested in X, and profit from them. Founders are lured by statistics about millions potentially interested in each “X.” They forget that individuals have many affinities, and no one regularly visits 20 different online communities.
[2] I’m not definitively saying a pet owner social network is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea in the way randomly generated DNA wouldn’t produce a viable organism. The set of plausible-sounding startup ideas vastly exceeds the set of good ones, and many good ideas don’t even sound that plausible initially. If plausibility is your sole criterion, assume the idea is bad.
[3] More precisely, user need must provide sufficient “activation energy” to adopt your product, which varies greatly. Enterprise software requires high activation energy due to established systems. Switching search engines has low activation energy. This is why search engines evolve faster than enterprise software.
[4] This becomes harder with age. Idea spaces don’t have dangerous local maxima, but career paths do. High walls exist between career paths, increasing with age.
[5] We also recognized the web’s transformative potential in 1995. Few non-programmers grasped this, but programmers understood the impact of GUIs on desktop computing.
[6] Perhaps a journal for this “second self,” briefly noting daily gaps and anomalies—not startup ideas, just raw observations.
[7] Sam Altman notes that taking time to find an idea isn’t just a better strategy, but also undervalued. There’s less competition for the best ideas because few founders invest the time to find them. Mediocre ideas face intense competition as they are commonly conceived.
[8] For hardware/software companies, summer jobs are recruiting funnels. Talented individuals can bypass this phase. Strong candidates are easily hired upon graduation, regardless of summer experiences.
[9] Empirical evidence suggests the best way colleges can support student startups is to provide structured freedom.
[10] This applies to IT startups; biotech is different.
[11] This exemplifies focusing on users, not competitors. Competitor insights primarily come from user feedback anyway.
[12] Most successful startups blend both strategies. Each strategy can be described in terms of the other by adjusting market boundaries. However, considering them separately is useful.
[13] I hesitate to mention this, as startups are businesses, and business aims to make money. This constraint means you can’t always work solely on your greatest interests.
[14] The need must be strong. Any made-up idea can be retrospectively framed as a “need.” But is that recipe site or local event aggregator as essential as Dropbox was for Drew Houston or Airbnb for Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia? At YC, I often ask founders, “Would you use this if you hadn’t built it?” Surprisingly often, the answer is no.
[15] Paul Buchheit notes that trying to sell a bad product can lead to better ideas: “The best technique I’ve found for dealing with YC companies that have bad ideas is to tell them to go sell the product ASAP (before wasting time building it). Not only do they learn that nobody wants what they are building, they very often come back with a real idea that they discovered in the process of trying to sell the bad idea.”
[16] Here’s a recipe for the next Facebook, targeting college students: If you have connections to a powerful sorority, offer to be their personal IT consultant, building anything they need for their social lives that doesn’t exist. Anything built this way would be promising, as these users are demanding and influential. I’m unsure if this would work.
[17] The Apple I used a TV monitor because Steve Wozniak solved his own problems. Like his peers, he couldn’t afford a monitor.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Mike Arrington, Paul Buchheit, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Garry Tan, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts, and Marc Andreessen, Joe Gebbia, Reid Hoffman, Shel Kaphan, Mike Moritz and Kevin Systrom for startup history insights.
