>> "You can start a business without an idea. Just go into a market like...

andrewljohnson · on Sept 12, 2012

Of course it's true. Here's a simple proof.

1) You can start a business with a bad idea, and through customer engagement, find the right idea.

2) Since #1 is empirically true, then it must also be true that you can start with no product idea at all, and get to a good one. You simply start with no product, make a bad (or just random) product, and we're back to #1.

Starting with no idea is the same (or maybe better) than starting with a bad idea. Picking an industry is good enough.

I'm not even sure why people are wedded to the idea of picking a product at all - picking an activity, or industry, or group of people is a fine seed for a business. My business has very little to do with where we started 4 years ago, though we sort of started with an idea. Sort of.

charlieflowers · on Sept 14, 2012

Well, yes, that makes sense.

But -- it seems so scary (even crazy) to start a business without a concrete "idea". Like getting onto a boat and launching into the ocean to "see what happens."

All the "startup" articles scream the accepted wisdom that you will have to change your original idea many times (pivot, pivot pivot), so I believe it is true.

I suppose it needs to evolve, just like a kid growing up needs to go through wanting to be a firefighter and then an astronaut and so on until he/she finds what she really wants to do.

But that means the "original idea" that helps you hire the core team and raise funding is really just a "cover story", and the founder is either (a) fooling himself with his own cover story, or (b) fully aware that it is just a cover story that he uses to bring in others.

Is it really that way? I suppose it is, and I suppose the VC's know it better than the entrepreneurs do. But wow, it is a paradigm change for me.

jason_tko · on Sept 12, 2012

Is it true that you can start a business by understanding and solving pain points? Yes of course it is.

People who are going through this pain and who are aware of this pain will also likely be motivated to talk with you and articulate their issues.

charlieflowers · on Sept 22, 2012

Well, yes, on the surface it is true, and clearly we can find real examples where it has worked out.

But, still, the statement seems to be an over-simplification in some ways.

That has been bothering me in the back of my mind for a few weeks, until Paul Graham wrote (just published) this: "A startup has to make something it can deliver to a large market, and ideas of that type are so valuable that all the obvious ones are already taken." http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

A "startup" idea in particular has to GROW! And the ideas that have the potential to lead to that kind of growth have mostly been exploited already. Of course, all the time, new things become possible, which is where opportunity for new startups come from.

So, perhaps you can build a "business" by just picking an industry and understanding its pain, but maybe building a "startup" is not so simple (except for the workings of luck, which of course cannot be predicted).