It’s a treat to come up with new ideas.

However, when coming up with startup ideas a specific framework is needed.

See, startup ideas are unique in that the method to achieving excellent startup ideas is not through simply sitting down and trying to think of potential companies.

“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, “How To Get Startup Ideas“

The danger of sitting down and saying “I’m going to think of a startup idea” is that you’ll probably come up with plausible sounding idea. However it’s very likely that this plausible sounding idea, doesn’t solve a problem that actually exists and in a field you might not be an expert in.

There’s a few more guidelines to how not to come up with startup ideas, I strongly recommend reading Paul Grahams’ essay, but I will save further details for another post.