STOP looking for new startup ideas, you're just wasting your time!
Yes, you heard it right. you need to stop looking for new startup ideas. Every newbie entrepreneur makes the same mistake, thinking they need a novel idea. I believe that’s a completely wrong mindset, I’ve seen people stuck for years without any good ideas.
Coming up with a novel idea is tough, first, the idea needs to be sound, and then there needs to be a market for it. Even if one got both right, there are a thousand things that can go wrong with a new product with a new idea.
So, What should people do? In my opinion, people should build startups that people are already paying for.
What do I mean by this? People are paying money to a lot of startups in exchange for their services, they pay to them because there is a demand for their services. Why should you waste your time figuring out what will work, if you can get a market share of what people are already paying for?
Simply put, I think the best approach to finding new startup ideas is to look at already existing startups and build them with a new creative spin. But there is another problem, where can you look for successful startups?
You see, every business owner has to achieve these 4 goals:
- To build their startup
- To sell their product
- To grow their startup
- And finally, to exit their startup.
You can get valuable information about successful startups if you can find them at places where they try to achieve these 4 goals.
Look where people are asking others to build their startups
This is the first place I would start looking for ideas. Just go to Upwork or other freelancing sites and start looking for interesting ideas people are working on. This only works rarely though…
Because freelancing sites are often filled with smaller tasks rather than complete projects, you have to be careful though as these are not necessarily validated product ideas. Yet, It’s a great place to look for inspiration because you can start spotting trends here before most people because you’re observing startup trends as they’re being built!
Look where people are selling their products
Once people build their product they have to sell what they offer, sites like Appsumo are generally where people post lifetime deals for their products. Look for products with reviews, these are pre-validated ideas for you to build because they show there is a demand for those types of products.
Look where people are raising money to grow their startups
Sites like AngelList list which startups are raising money to grow their business. This should be straightforward, look for startups that you think can build. But remember, even if startups raise money it still doesn’t necessarily mean their idea is validated. Don’t fall into hypes.
Look where people are exiting their startups
Look at sites like Acquire.com (previously MicroAcquire.com) where people enlist their startups for sale. This might be the single best place to look for a startup idea because…
Unlike all the other places here you can see all the raw economics of the business like revenue and profit. You can easily find a few product ideas that you can start building right away with this information because all of them are validated by the market if you sort by profits.
That’s it for the post!
PS: If you're interested, I have scrapped the entire Acquire.com listings with all the information for you to download, this allows you to go through the list of startup ideas one by one quickly.
I’ve uploaded it to Gumroad, where you can buy the database for 15$. You don't need to buy these from me all the details are available on the website for free, I’ve just packaged it as a CSV file for convenience.
But before you can proceed to buy I have to say this, After downloading you might notice the product names are missing from the CSV file because one would’ve to contact each owner individually to get the information, so it’s impossible for me to get you that. But everything from product description, revenue, profit, tech stack to team size is available in the database.
You can buy the database by clicking here.