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Ideas for Startups

paulgraham.com · 3,977 words · saved by 1 readers

October 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School.) How do you get good ideas for startups? That's probably the number one question people ask me. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard to come up with ideas for startups? That might seem a stupid thing to ask. Why do they think it's hard? If people can't do it, then it is hard, at least for them. Right? Well, maybe not. What people usually say is not that they can't think of ideas, but that they don't have any. That's not quite the same thing. It could be the reason they don't have any is that they haven't tried to generate them. I think this is often the case. I think people believe that coming up with ideas for startups is very hard-- that it must be very hard-- and so they don't try do to it. They assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don't. I also have a theory about why people think this. They overvalue ideas. They think creating a st

Ideas for Startups --> Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator . October 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. ) How do you get good ideas for startups ? That's probably the number one question people ask me. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard to come up with ideas for startups? That might seem a stupid thing to ask. Why do they think it's hard? If people can't do it, then it is hard, at least for them. Right? Well, maybe not. What people usually say is not that they can't think of ideas, but that they don't have any

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