Where good ideas come from
Weekly reflections while building a SaaS company
0
Upstream
“Find your next business idea here!”
I have yet to see a (good) business or product idea emerge from a newsletter or a deliberate search for ideas.
Ideas are downstream. Ideas emerge from observations.
1
Throwaway comments
“You know… we probably have a list of people who applied here that we never interviewed.”
^ that comment changed my business. It came at the end of a long conversation with a customer, and I nearly missed it.
It was disguised as a throwaway comment, an afterthought. Had I been in a rush to my next meeting...
Again, ideas emerge from observations. My (few) meaningful ideas have come from:
A throwaway comment from a customer or prospect, usually at the end of a conversation about something else
A personal observation, a slight frustration, while working to accomplish something
They are easy to miss, even easier when I’m looking for ideas instead of observations.
Observations are “demand.” Ideas are “supply”.
2
From demand to supply
Unless there is demand, supply is irrelevant. Unless there is a problem, a solution is irrelevant.
Shaping is turning demand into supply - observations to ideas, problems to solutions. It’s the theory behind Basecamp’s book, Shape Up. (Read “Principles of Shaping” here, free.)
Shaping is a challenging discipline, if only because it requires painful delays in gratification: The instant I make an observation, everything in me DEMANDS I start designing intricate interfaces and specifying how the software should work.
This is the surest way to turn a powerful observation into a mediocre idea. Then someday, into a business that could have been great.
Here is how I understand shaping. To make it concrete, I’ll include examples from the observation that changed my company’s direction:
“You know… we probably have a list of people who applied here that we never interviewed.”
Explore the observation without delving into solutions. What problems emerge? How are these problems currently solved, if at all? (Example: Companies continue to scramble for applicants, especially when people quit all the time.)
In the most abstract sense, how should the observation be addressed? What is the purest, simplest explanation of the solution that a 3rd grader could understand? (Example: Companies should keep in touch with people they don’t hire today, because those people might be perfect for tomorrow’s hiring needs.)
Get to your idea iteratively, at increasing levels of specificity. Turning the abstract into the concrete is a “one step forward, two steps back” endeavor. Get progressively more concrete, but be ready to step back to the abstract when your initial direction inevitably breaks. (Example: Current hiring systems aren’t designed for people who have already applied - so we realized we needed to build a simple, integrated, parallel hiring system for past applicants.)
From Shape Up:
3
Shaping everything
Observations before ideas. Problems before solutions. Acquisition before retention.
Start upstream. Iterate from the abstract to the concrete, and only then consider moving downstream.
Shaping is everywhere. Another example of shaping from Drift - notice, “We didn’t move to the next step until we solved the prior one.”
4
Observations
Observing is hard. Shaping is hard. It’s natural to want to outsource this, but you can’t.
A few observations I’ve had this week, which could be sparks for ideas:
Both Twitter and LinkedIn make me feel bad about myself
Suppliers don’t seem to always like aggregators. (Not all businesses want to sell on Amazon.)
I always look exhausted on Zoom calls.
“People always seem to apply to jobs where we don’t need them.”
What are you observing?
Rob