Entrepreneurship · Library course
Where Startup Ideas Actually Come From
Find startup ideas by noticing problems in your own work and life, see the ones your mind filters out, and tell a real idea from one that only sounds plausible.
- Beginner
- 21 lessons
- 42 min to complete
7-day preview, no card needed. The course is in the library the day your academy goes live.
Entrepreneurship
What it covers
What your people will learn.
- Entrepreneurship
Good startup ideas rarely come out of a brainstorm. They start as problems the founder already had and stopped noticing.
Ideas you sit down and think up tend to sound reasonable and have nobody who needs them now. The ideas that work usually start somewhere less tidy: a chore at your job, a field changing faster than the people in it, an industry your peers find dull, or a task so tedious that nobody wants to touch it. This course shows you where to look, and how to get past the habits that hide the best candidates from you.
It draws on Paul Graham's essays on where startup ideas come from, and ends with the signs that separate a real idea from a plausible one, and with a week of noticing on your own work.
"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.", Paul Graham
Who it's for
Aspiring founders: have been waiting for a brilliant idea and want a reliable way to find real ones.
Operators and builders: sit close to real problems every day and want to know which ones could carry a company.
Early-stage teams: have a list of ideas and need a sharper test for which ones are real.
The lessons
21 lessons, in order.
About 42 min to complete. Add the course and every lesson is yours to publish as it is, or to edit.
- Stop Trying to Think of Startup Ideas2 min
- The Shape of Real Demand1 min
- The Ideas Already in Your Life1 min
- Where Two Fields Meet1 min
- Pick the Idea to Test First4 min
- Notice the Problem Knowledge Check1 min
- Living in the Future2 min
- Ask Why Now2 min
- Test Five Why-Now Claims6 min
- Live in the Future Knowledge Check1 min
- The Ideas That Repel You Because They're Hard2 min
- The Ideas Hidden in Industries Beneath You2 min
- Explain the Two Filters3 min
- When the Buyer Is Not the User1 min
- The Ideas That Repel You Because They Threaten You2 min
- Find the Small First Step4 min
- The Ideas You Flinch At Knowledge Check1 min
- Knowing You've Found One1 min
- When Someone Already Built It2 min
- Keep a Gaps Journal for a Week2 min
- Know When You Have One Knowledge Check1 min
In your academy
A starting point, not a rental.
A library course works like any course you publish. Add it, make it yours, and your people see it as one of your own.
- 1
One click
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Find the course in the library, press Add, and it's in your catalog. Publish it as it is, or shape it first.
- 2
Your brand
Rebrand it, edit it
It sits on your domain, in your colours. Change any word yourself, or ask the assistant for your wording, your examples and your policies.
- 3
Practice
Practice and the tutor come with it
Type / in any lesson to add practice, from explain it back to drills and scenarios. Your people can ask the AI tutor about any lesson.
On the same shelf
Other Entrepreneurship courses your academy opens with. The library holds 150+ across eight tracks.
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