Where Startup Ideas Actually Come From

The good ideas were never going to show up at a brainstorm. They were sitting in your own life, disguised as something too obvious, too small, or too uncomfortable to take seriously.

Most people sit down, try to think of a startup idea, and produce something plausible that nobody actually wants. The ones that work tend to start as a problem the founder already had, an industry everyone else looked down on, or a future a few people were already living in. This course teaches you to find ideas by noticing instead of inventing: the problems hiding in your own routines, the directions the world is already moving, and the ideas that repel you precisely because they are hard or because they threaten you.

It builds on Paul Graham's reasoning about where real startup ideas originate, then gives you a way to tell a genuine opportunity from a merely clever one, so you stop chasing ideas that sound good and miss the ones in front of you.

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: keep waiting for a brilliant idea and want a reliable way to source real ones instead.

Operators and builders: sit close to real problems every day and want to learn to recognize which ones are worth leaving a job for.

Early-stage teams: have a list of ideas and need a sharper test for which ones are genuine opportunities rather than clever distractions.