Startup ideas don’t appear on whiteboards.
Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp didn’t come up with Uber in a brainstorming session; they came up with it when the frustration of trying to hail a cab in San Francisco hit a boiling point. Startup ideas come from going out into the world and learning first-hand about the problems that exist in it.
Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by impressive Venture for America (VFA) Fellows who have started their own companies. None of their company ideas came from brainstorming sessions—they all came from being out in the world and encountering unique problems.
Photo courtesy of Venture for America
Networking can lead to new ideas
Don’t network for the sake of networking; take an interest in other peoples’ experiences. Everyone has problems they’re struggling with, and if you listen to what those problems are, you will be flooded with startup ideas.
This is how we came up with the idea for my company, Compass. I was talking to my parents about their online presences and how they were managing their time running their businesses. They expressed to me that they really wanted to have professional websites but struggled with dealing with unreliable web developers and receiving unaffordable quotes for custom sites. As someone who knew dozens of web designers who used modern tools like
Do things outside of your comfort zone
There’s a reason that such a high percentage of college students come up with startup ideas for social apps, getting jobs, or finding cofounders--those are the problems that they experience in their college bubble.
If you are going through the motions of the same routine, you’re not going to stumble across any new problems that need to be solved.
Actually, if you’re trying to solve a problem outside of your comfort zone, your inexperience could become a competitive advantage, as you’re immune to the biases of an industry.
Take the founders of Castle, a property management startup in the current YC 2016 class. After graduating from college they leapt out of their comfort zones by moving to Detroit to work for VFA partner companies. Immediately they were exposed to problems that only those in Detroit see. They decided to do something they had no experience doing: buy a 7-bedroom Detroit home for $8,000 at tax auction and restore it on their own. Through this experience, three 20-somethings who majored in creative writing, mechanical engineering, and computer science, experienced how difficult it was to manage a property. So, they decided to create a new type of property management company. They would never have come up with that idea if they hadn’t exposed themselves to something new.
Solve your own problems
Slope, another business birthed in Detroit, was actually a startup video production company called TernPro before they were Slope. The founders were new to video production and they were shocked by how convoluted the process of collaborating on a video project was. So they created software to make that process easier. They solved their own problems and now seek to solve their customers’.
Brian Rudolph started Banza, in his apartment in Detroit because he loved pasta but the ingredients were making him sick. He started tinkering around with different recipes and learned how to make a much healthier, gluten-free pasta, made from chickpea flour.
James Fayal loved tea but wanted it to give him the same energy boost as a cup of coffee. What he did next didn’t require hackathon or a startup weekend—he simply founded Zest Tea, a company that makes their own blends of caffeine-infused teas using high quality blends. It turned out that he was just one of many people who wanted this product. By solving a small problem for himself, he also solved it for the millions of tea-lovers just like him.
Go out into the world and you’ll find ideas
Startup ideas don’t usually come from a whiteboard, brainstorm sessions, or thinking to yourself. Game-changing ideas come from getting contact with real problems that exist in the world, and coming up with ways to solve them.
It’s nearly impossible to find a startup idea in a vacuum, but if you’re as proactive as possible, a startup idea will find you, not the other way around.
Venture for America is a fellowship program for recent grads who want to learn how to build a business while making an impact.
