Startup fundamentals
Startup ideas and why now
Where good ideas come from, which shapes to avoid, and how to judge an idea before you quit your job.
If you treat idea selection as "sit down and invent a unicorn," you will invent solutions in search of a problem. If you treat it as notice problems, then earn the right to a solution, you are playing the game that actually produces companies.
This page is the map. The concept pages walk each filter: where ideas come from, which work people avoid, which shapes are traps, whether you should be the one to build it, and whether the timing is real.
Before you quit a job, you are not seeking certainty. You are killing the worst ideas cheaply.
A cheap evaluation
Score an idea on one page. If a row is blank, that is the next research task — not a green light.
| Filter | Question |
|---|---|
| Market | Large enough for your ambitions? Growing? Size it bottom-up when you can. |
| Insight | What do you believe that smart people in the space underweight? |
| Competition | Who wins if you do nothing? Often spreadsheets and email, not a funded rival. |
| You | Founder-market fit and a path to users this month. |
| Economics | Who pays, roughly how much, how often, and what does delivery cost? |
Usage-based AI products with thin gross margins need a clearer path than classic SaaS.
Decks are cheap. Conversations are the filter. If you cannot get ten target users on a call, distribution may be the real problem — and distribution problems kill more startups than missing features.
Concepts in this section
| Step | Concept | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Organic ideas | Do I start from a lived problem or a brainstormed shape? |
| 2 | Schlep blindness | Am I skipping the unsexy work that is the actual business? |
| 3 | Tarpit ideas | Is this a crowded graveyard with a huge TAM slide? |
| 4 | Founder-market fit | Why us, and can we reach the first 20 customers? |
| 5 | Why now | What made this newly possible? |
Common mistakes
- Falling in love with the solution. Customers shrug. Keep the problem if it is real; kill the demo.
- Skipping the first ten conversations. If you cannot get the calls, you may not have a distribution path.
- A blank economics row. Who pays, how much, how often, what it costs — even a napkin sketch kills fantasies.
- Evaluating a job offer on "AI is big." Ask what insight and why now the founders claim.
Key takeaways
- Prefer lived problems over "Uber for X" brainstorms.
- Run market, insight, competition, you, and napkin economics before you quit.
- Talk to users before you write a framework. Blank rows are research tasks.
- Ideas morph. A good starting point with founder-market fit beats a perfect pitch.
Further learning
How to Get Startup Ideas (Paul Graham)How to Get Startup Ideaspaulgraham.com Schlep Blindness (Paul Graham)Schlep Blindnesspaulgraham.com Y Combinator LibraryYC's library of startup advice: essays and videos that teach you how to start a company.YC Startup Library
Michael Seibel on getting and testing ideas:
A YC talk on common idea mistakes:
Related
What a startup is
Startups are companies designed to grow fast. That one constraint explains funding, equity, and why most of them fail.
Finding problems worth solving
Pain intensity, frequency and willingness to pay — separating hair-on-fire problems from nice-to-haves.
Market sizing: TAM, SAM and SOM
Top-down vs bottom-up market sizing with a worked example, and how to present a number investors will trust.