Need Inspiration For a Startup?

Posted on July 23, 2008 - Filed Under Other IT Stuff

Y Combinator is a US company that funds the early days of startup companies. In the past they have invested in startups such as Reddit, YouOS and Anywhere.FM. They have a innovative approach, prefering to judge startups based on personal interviews and demos, rather than business plans.

In another somewhat innovative step, their founder, Paul Graham, has tried to get your grey matter working by posting a list of his startup ideas Y Combinator would like to fund.

Reading through his ideas is interesting, rather than inspiring, although I did find myself drawgin parallels between that I was reading and applications I am currently working on/have worked on in the past.

There are 30 ideas, many of them suggesting people examine the weaknesses of current success stories such as eBay, Craigslist and Wikipedia and building on them.

As a taster I have extracted the first and the last suggestion, but I highly recommend you browse them all.

A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Something is broken when Sony and Universal are suing children. Actually, at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels’ business model. The current situation can’t be the final answer. And what happened with music is now happening with movies. When the dust settles in 20 years, what will this world look like? What components of it could you start building now?

The answer may be far afield. The answer for the music industry, for example, is probably to give up insisting on payment for recorded music and focus on licensing and live shows. But what happens to movies? Do they morph into games?

Startups for startups. The increasing number of startups is itself an opportunity for startups. We’re one; TechCrunch is another. What other new things can you do?

Consider this list to end with a giant ellipsis. It’s not even a complete list of the types of ideas we’re looking for, let alone of all types of startup ideas. So if you have a great idea that’s not on this list, don’t be deterred. Some of the best ideas are outliers everyone ignores because they seem crazy.

It was an interesting exercise to write out this list. I noticed a lot of similarities between ideas that I never realized were there. In fact, when you read the list, you get a pretty accurate composite portrait of a startup: a combination of relentless predator upon the obsolete and benevolent solver of the world’s problems. As ways of making money go, that’s pretty good. Startups are often ruthless competitors, but they’re competing in a game won by making what people want.

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