Make

Build your idea with the tools you already know. Don't spend a year learning some language you'll never use. Don't outsource building to other people, that's a competitive disadvantage. Build only the core functionality. The rest comes later

Grow organically. A great product that people really need which is better than the rest will pull people in. You don't need ads for that. Don't hire people if there's no revenue yet. Don't hire many people if there's revenue either. Stay lean and fast. Do things yourself.

Monetize by asking users for money. Don't sell their data. Don't put ads everywhere. Don't dilute your product. Be honest that you need money to build the product they love and they'll be fine paying for it.

Automate by writing programs that do stuff that you do repeatedly. Only automate if it's worth the time saved. For stuff that's too hard to automate or not worth it, hire contractors

Venture capital investors LOVE to invest in companies that already have proven revenue. And that's literally what a bootstrapped business is. You'll be miles further than the person next to you pitching with just a PowerPoint deck. When you go for millions of dollars of VC investment on day one, it means you do exclude building a healthy simple business. Your company is now strapped to a rocket and you need to go big or explode. That's why I think bootstrapping is the better way to build a business now.

You may need to try shipping 10 to 30 products for 1 to 3 years before you have anything that works. That's how this approach works. You build stuff and see what sticks. I don't know anybody who shipped one product and instantly became successful

If something doesn't seem to take off early on, it probably won't take off later, so make something new and try again

there's a chance nothing you make will be successful. But by doing you'll have figured something new out, that might lead you to somewhere else, that will make you successful. Startups, and life, are about constantly pivoting when things don't work out. If you don't take action though, you can be sure nothing will ever happen. Stagnancy kills. So ship.

The only thing people received after paying $14.99 immediately was an empty Workflowy list where they could write what the book should be about specifically. That gave me immediate feedback from customers what they wanted me to make. Just like a startup

Thousands of people pre-ordered the book (quickly netting $50,000+ in revenue at $14.99 per pre-order) and there was thousands of items in the Workflowy list to write about. I went through it regularly and tried to re-order it to find patterns

I then started writing the first chapter. I wanted to do this by "building in public" too. Or in this case, writing in public. I made a Google Docs text document and started writing.

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The most important thing is to find ideas from solving your own problems. You do that by looking at your own life and observing what your daily challenges are. Then you see if you could make those challenges easier using technology. If you solve your own problem, it's very realistic that there's many more people like you who would also love their problem solved

And that's pretty much what a business is. Solving lots of people's problems in return for money.

I think you need to know a lot about the problem you're trying to solve. Once you have traction and your website, app or startup works, you can learn from user feedback and data you collect then. But that's useful once you're already running. It won't help you find ideas that are suitable for you to execute. First-hand experience with the problem you're solving is best.

Also, stop reading books to develop yourself or get ideas. You won't get them from there. Or if you do, there's lots of other people reading the same book probably. Get ideas from your life experience. Get outside. Become original. Do crazy stuff that you're scared of. Jump off cliffs (do it safely). Ask people you like out (scary but nice). Walk into random office buildings. Jump fences (but don't storm the Capitol Hill, thanks). Crash hotel pools. Whatever makes you different. Don't be scared! Live

Technology needs to solve a problem. If you make a solution for a problem that doesn't exist, it might look sexy technologically, but it won't get users.

good start if you're looking for ideas is to keep track of any you might get. How you keep track of your ideas is up to you. I now use Workflowy and previously used Trello for it. I have a few different lists. The first is for "Concepts", that's rough ideas. Then if one of the ideas looks good, I move it to the "Promising" list. If I actually start executing them I put them in the "Building" list. Then if it's done I have a "Success" or "Failure" list

I think collaborations can be very dangerous. Because if you work with somebody else in a team, there's a big tendency of groupthink, where everyone starts hyping each other on the value of the idea. The prototype might only get mild validation from paying users, but you're working with this group and you're already so crazy about it that it doesn't really matter what users pay/do/say. That's very bad. It should only be about the users.

Obviously, collaborations can work with idea generation too, but I think the most important part of idea generation is getting ideas yourself, then talking to people, customers, users to evolve them. Not talking to your teammates how great your team's idea is.

The most elementary mistake people still make is not sharing their ideas. No, people won't steal your idea if they like it. And even if they do, they probably can't execute it as well as you. And even if they do, you're not a snowflake! There's thousands or even millions of people with the same ideas as you. Stop thinking you're so special! Ideas are a dime a dozen. Everything is about how you execute.

"To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000." — Derek Sivers in his famous essay "Ideas are just a multiplier of execution" (2005)

The user paying/using it is the validation, not other people judging your idea! The point of sharing your idea is thus not to get people loving it or hating it. The point is that you get your brain working outside of its comfort zone (of talking to itself) and you'll evolve your idea. You'll come up with adaptations of your idea, or entirely new ideas by talking about it.

To get ideas, try to find problems in your daily life. You're the foremost expert at problems you have, more than anyone else who doesn't have them. If you keep coming up with the same ideas as everyone else: try to make yourself a more original person by actively experiencing different things. Don't shy away from taboos and fringe ideas, that just mean you're ahead of the curve, they might become the next big thing. Don't think big, start thinking small first, then take it one step at a time, you'll become big by starting small. To avoid groupthink and drama: work alone, especially early on. Share your ideas freely to get other people's input on them. Log every idea you have, filter them, and see which ones you can execute upon.

Spend the next 7 days making a list of problems you have in your daily life, they can be small or big, try to find 3 ideas per day, so that you have at least 21 at the end of this week.