Start up ideas are cheap but you don't have any.

I hear you complaining that you haven't got any ideas for a startup. Stop there, take a deep breath and read on.

The hardest part is starting, so here is a friendly kick up the backside:

"Watch people who have money to spend, see what they're wasting their time on, cook up a solution, and try selling it to them. It's surprising how small a problem can be and still provide a profitable market for a solution."

Trevor Blackwell, Partner, Y Combinator
Once you've started understanding what people spend money on you need to apply filters for good and bad ideas.

Here are some of my favourites

1) Evan Williams - 10 rules for Web Startups
2) Fabrice Grinda - 9 business selection criteria
3) Paul Graham - Ideas for startups



The fundamentals of good ideas worth pursuing are
1) Big market (millions of potential customers not thousands)
2) Defensible (hard for someone copy you)
3) Something you can do (if you can't implement it, learn how to and find others too)
4) something people actually want (ie you can answer the question what problem do you solve in one sentence)
5) Make something people will pay for (doesn't have to be at the start, but at some point FREE = worthless, so find something lots of people use and give 80% away for free and charge for 20%)
6) Simple - if you can't explain it in a sentence its too complex

For internet related ideas the following criteria are helpful:

"In retail, the key success factors are location, location, location. In the consumer internet, the key success factors are distribution, distribution, distribution"

Reid Hoffman, Co-founder PayPal, LinkedIn, Serial Entrepreneur & Investor

1) Has good distribution - this means your product reaches people in as many ways as possible, because the product require people to tell their friends, or your website shows up on google searches, to making it easy to share on social networks. If your marketing can be done for free why not. This leads nicely to the second point -
2) Is cheap to do but rapidly creates value - Creativity is born in constraints. Not having half a million dollars to start off with means you are creative with your money/time. These are the best skills to develop as a startup entrepreneur.
3) Is compelling enough to cause repeat usage: A useful service is addictive. How could you leverage our understanding of the psychology of addiction to make things more compelling? Interesting approaches involve design choices and game mechanics.

Remember generating ideas are easy. Thats just the start point which everyone needs. A company is the product of thousands of ideas which revolve around the core start point. Don't be surprised if your idea changes as you look into the problem and don't stop there. Go and do it!

What other thinking helps you generate good ideas for your startup? Serial Entrepreneurs reading your thoughts would be welcome.