idea, pre-launchMy friend and I are two qualified software developers. We first met when we started working for the same company. It didn’t take us too long to realize that we want to start a company together.
The problem we are facing now, we can’t find THE idea. We keep throwing ideas here and there but never actually started developing anything.
I was wondering if anyone on here had a methodology he/she followed to pick up a good idea from a pool of ideas and successfully launched a start-up.
Check out the Alexander Osterwalder's lean canvas. It's a great way to quickly assess & develop business ideas without tying yourself to a specific plan.
That said, In my opinion, you shouldn't think of your idea, as something you find or stumble upon. Your idea, needs to be something your develope, and something that evolves as you explore the business case.
The more you develop the business case for your idea, and understand what the market size is, how much you can charge, AKA how much potential there is, and what you need to do to execute your idea beyond just coding the more tangible and actionable building the business will become.
Sam Altman advocates working on interesting projects to as to maximize your chances of stumbling upon an interesting, valuable business problem to solve.
Btw, you know the saying that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? Same thing goes for all problems appearing to be technology problems to software engineers.
One way to pick good business idea is to reflect upon your day and see what are the problems do you encounter most. What of these problems still remains unsolved? Or perhaps there have been solved but solutions are too expensive or difficult to implement? Or simply they're not good enough.
If you can find something, then here you go, it’s very likely you have found good business opportunity.
Another way is to take an existing product/app/service and see what others do and how they position themselves. Porter’s Generic Strategies matrix could help you here.
Fo example, if you think of developing new music streaming service/app you potentially could have two options - differentiate somehow (eg. high resolution music) or go after a niche (eg. albanian punk rock). The latter can be tricky as market size may be too small, but if you could think of any additions (eg. merchandise, tickets, etc.) it could grow into substantial business.
The most important thing to remember is that best businesses try to remove or ease pain that people have.
So take any app/product you love using, see how you could improve or change a bit (what it is missing). The check how it fits into Porter's generic strategies and take one of the quadrants that competition didn't consider for themselves (or with least competition).
But even having the best idea means nothing if execution is bad, or the timing is bad, or you’re simply unlucky.
Good luck!
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