Look for Problems You Have

This is the opening of Paul Graham’s “How to Get Startup Ideas” (November 2012). Everything after it is an argument for taking the first instruction literally.

Sit down to invent a product and you tend to land on one that sounds reasonable but that nobody actually wants. Graham calls these “made-up” or “sitcom” startup ideas, plausible enough to fool you into building them. A problem you have yourself is the cheapest guard against that, because you can tell a real need from one that only sounds good. It is also why he says the verb is “notice,” not “think up”: you find the good ideas by living in a problem until the gap is obvious, not by brainstorming a list.

So he reduces it to one question: “who wants this right now?” Not whether people would like it, but whether anyone needs it so badly they would use a crappy first version from a two-person startup they have never heard of. It is a test for intensity of need, and the reason to start with a problem of your own: if it nags you enough that you want it fixed, you are already one person who needs it that badly.