Let’s say if you want to start a startup.
How should you do that? If you only want to start a billion dollar company, I can guarantee you’re gonna have hard time doing it. The most obvious billion ideas have already been worked on by those big tech giants. The only chances you have are the ideas that seem ridiculous. Those ideas might seem ridiculous at first. Because people never realize how much new technology has changed the landscape. It made something previously impossible possible. That’s why the good ideas initially seem bad.
You should start with such kind of ideas and start it small. Just try to solve one small problem for small number of people. Yes, solve a small problem but solve it really well. Making something that small number of people love is more valuable than something that a lot of people like. The former is so much easy to spread than later. Because you’re working on new technology, you need early adapters and there won’t be a lot of them. But please make sure they love you solution very much. So that they will recommend it to their friends and families with passion.
Make something small number of people love.
When you start you small project, make sure the problem you’re solving really exists. There are just a lot of people trying to solve imaginary problems. The best way to validate if a problem really exists is to experience it from your life. If you really encounter that problem in your daily life, then it probably is really there. In other words, solve you problem you have. By doing this you will also have another benefit. You can be your first user. If you’re the user yourself, you can user your product and you can give yourself feedback. This makes the iteration very fast. Startup is a lot about speed. It’s about how fast you can iterate your product.
If possible, do something that interests you. I would say starting a startup is extremely hard. It’s already so hard. If you can’t do something you feel interested, it will just increase your chance to fail. So, find a real problem and its solution looks stupid. Oh, it better sounds interesting to you.