How to get startup ideas

You can’t force startup ideas.

At least not good ones anyway. Instagram, Slack and Dropbox were either discovered by accident or born from an acute problem the founder experienced daily.

Take Slack for example.

Slack began as an internal communication tool for a small gaming company, Tiny Speck, during the development of an online game called Glitch. Although the game itself was not successful, the communication platform received positive feedback, leading to its pivot and public launch as Slack.

Instagram was similar, originally it was a location-sharing app when they realised people cared more about the picture/filter aspect. So they pivoted to what we now know as Instagram.

There’s a key point here.

Sometimes you only learn what you should build when you are in the thick of it. This is why it’s much more important to launch and build, rather than build and launch.

If you are stuck and can’t think of any ideas, build a tool with one feature and do it in public. You will learn a ton from the experience and you might discover a bottleneck in the process.

Another key tip to remember is you always want to solve a problem, not create a vitamin. If your hair was on fire you would want a bucket of water. But if I was only selling a brick, you would pay a lot to bash the brick over your own head until the fire was gone.

Remember, launch and learn.

— Jack

PS - Once you have an idea, why not watch my latest video on how you can validate it :)