Today, I added the 1001st entry to my list of potential startup ideas

Max Prilutskiy
4 replies
It may seem like I’m running a creative marathon here, but the secret sauce is pretty simple: every idea that pops into my mind, no matter how silly it seems goes straight to a dedicated Notion page. At first, you might imagine me scribbling down weird concepts like ‘delivery service for dogs’ or ‘recycling program for teabags’. Yes, those exist in my list. But as I continued to write, I noticed something very interesting. Picture this: it’s like clearing out a messy room. Initially, you toss out a bunch of useless stuff. But as the room gets cleaner, you start to find some useful items. Similarly, the first few ideas are the obvious, overdone ones. But as you keep pushing, you start to uncover the unique ones. Once you start, it’s hard to stop. The ideas keep coming, each one better than the last. You’re like an idea machine, documenting each brainwave in your notes app. Not all ideas are going to be great. That’s true. Some are annoying, others have potential. And then there are those that are so good, you can’t believe you thought of them. What I learned, is that the more ideas I let out, the more room I make for new ones. The more I write down, the more ideas pop up. That was somewhat unobvious to me. Paul Graham once said, in one of his essays, that the best way to have startup ideas is to become the sort of person who generates them. And now, I believe, I understand the actual meaning behind these words. --- Originally published at https://twitter.com/MaxPrilutskiy, follow @MaxPrilutskiy there for more stuff like this.

Replies

André J
Good. Keep iterating the ideas. people usually spend years on the first idea that they come up with 😅 But now comes the hard part. validating the the best ideas. This is where hard work starts. It's so much work to truly validate stuff. But, talking to expert voices will help, and just pitching investors or YC alumni. It will give you an idea of how good the idea is. And if its worth spending time and resources on it.
Igor Martynov
What is this list more similar to: a cemetery surname list or a telephone directory?
selective
True! You get rid of the ideas stuck on top of your head. First link associations, the first things that come to mind. The more you come up with, the deeper you go into your brain's neural networks the more ideas come to mind that connect more distant neural networks. 99% of them will be trash, but once in a while, you'll come up with something brilliant, that fits the requirements perfectly, that almost nobody else has come up with.