Welcome to my startup dashboard
I’m always thinking about startups. On this page I have listed many of the ideas I have come up with over the past few years. Most of the projects listed here never become anything more than an idea. Some take an initial shape (often a doc and domain), and a few even go to market or are being worked on now.
P.S. Thanks to Ivy Xu for some of the points below from her podcast.
- Pay attention to your own problems – this is by far the bulk of the ideas on this page. Whenever you see a problem in the world, note it down and then brainstorm around what a solution might be.
- Niche down – think of an existing industry where you might be able to identify a niche. For example, food delivery apps but for Seniors, or Fitness tracking apps for HIIT enthusiasts, or Travel tips app for Japanese students learning English
- Old problem / New problem / Old solution / New solution – Map each of these on a 2×2 matrix and then use it to brainstorm. The one to avoid is old problem / old solution. You can come up with lots of great ideas with this matrix.
- Productize an existing service that’s normally customized – for example building websites is often a “custom quote”. Find a way to package it into products people can buy.
- Bundling/Unbundling – think about ways to bundle stuff together. For example with bundling, bed and breakfast (house + food), all-inclusive travel packages (air, hotel, taxi, food), all-inclusive website (building, hosting, security, reports) and more. Unbundling examples could be with mobile – you can buy a phone without a plan, or selling individual MP3s vs the whole album. More about this concept here.
- “Not Not test” – Adopted from Merrick Furst, ideate by asking the question: what would our potential target market say to themselves “I cannot not buy this!”. So for example with shopping online, a service that ships nearly anything to you for free for a monthly free. Sound familiar? Yep, that’s Amazon Prime.
How to use these ideation frameworks:
- List a target market that you care about – preferably one you are part of
- Note down all the problems they are experiencing, INDEPENDENT of existing solutions. Think more generally vs specifically.
- Go through each of the frameworks described above and ideate
Need more help? I encourage you to listen to Ivy Xu for more inspiration.
Here is my process (post the initial idea):
- Do some “napkin-math” to see if the idea is worth pursuing (blog post coming soon, for now, see here)
- Check for domain names – see if someone has thought of this
- Research to find out if someone else is building this already. If they are, visit their site and “glean” what they discovered and (often) what they missed (its ridiculously easy to get off track in startups)
- If nobody seems to be, explore the idea further to see if a community exists and if someone mentions the same problem
- Explore the business and startup canvases (google business model canvas)
- Consider the idea from a PM lens: “What could the MVP look like?”
- Think about partners and influencers that might participate
- Think about the Wizard of Oz version of the startup
At this point, if I get a good feeling and think it’s worth pursuing, I start the heavy lifting like
- looking for potential teammates and co-founders
- joining communities (there is a community for everything)
- reading blogs
- joining email newsletters
- asking on reddit for some pointers to resources
- listening to podcasts
- developing a mission/vision (something new that I’m working more on)
- and most important of all: finding and talking to customers to get a deeper sense of their interest and pain frequency
If I can stomach all of this customer and market research, and I’m still excited by the problem (I often stop being somewhere in the research), then I know I’m on to something that’s a great product/market/founder fit (google it.. its a thing).
In the past, (prior to becoming a product manager), I would have jumped headfirst into building the thing. Nowadays, I “front-run” problem discovery, customer surveys, and team building instead.
So that’s a little about my process.. enjoy the list!
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Most of these probably won’t work out but I don’t mind. It’s only a domain name and my sweat equity. I gain lot of joy and experience building and experimenting, so I don’t plan to stop.
These are the ideas I’m actively working on. They are all in various stages – pitch decks, MVP websites, building communities, product research etc. I use the talents acquired over 20 years (building websites) to quickly build prototypes and try things out.
The Problem: Founders in Web3 need a lot of help - speaking both from first and second hand experience. Also, SBF/FTX are clear indicators that us "old grey beards" could do a lot more to help Founders avoid such issues.
Hypothesized Solution: An inclusive community where every Founder is welcome, and everyone gets the help they need. A "virtual gym" to get Founders from Zero to Hero.
Ever get that nagging feeling like there is “something” here that you need to investigate further? These qualify:
The Problem: Founders/Startups don't have any insight into what investors are thinking when pitch decks are reviewed. Investors also don't have a good workflow to receive pitch decks.
Hypothesized Solution: A marketplace where founders can submit pitches, and angels can give feedback over video/audio and then founders can record video feedback and submit revisions
The Problem: Founders feel alone, VC's don't know where the founders are. Cheerleading is needed much.
Hypothesized Solution: A social app where founders post their "daily wins" sharing their updates which get shared socially and openly, and then VCs can "cheer on" founders with a quick tweet, or video, or audio message. Basically Twitter, but for a specific subset of users (founders and investors)
The Problem: I use multiple apps and methods to publish, note, and journal
Hypothesized Solution: An app that connects to the other apps that I use like Gdocs, Notion, WordPress, knows what kind of content I'm publishing, and updates those target documents automatically. Sort of a virtual secretary. Powered by AI of course.
The Problem: VC's have trouble finding promising early-stage founders
Hypothesized Solution: Instead of launching a community, course, or saas event, hire a professional "founder scout" at founderscouts.com. Founder Scouts are professional founder finders that join startup communities and identify promising founding teams that don't yet have a voice.
The Problem: I want an easy way to digitize and reference my daily journaling. I love journaling, but archiving and finding stuff is a pain.
Hypothesized Solution: Daily Wins to the rescue. Journal to your heart's content, and then send your journals in to be digitized, transcribed (cause we can do that now thanks to Amazon) and placed on the internet forever.
The Problem: Building custom web apps is difficult. You need a Designer and Engineer and have to invest a tonne of money to get something standing up.
Hypothesized Solution: An app that you build programmatically - an abstraction layer that sits above your application that lets codify the business logic. A custom SDK for business logic that uses AI to assist.
The Problem: What if you own an electric car and are far from home or at work? And you are low on charge and there are no chargers around?
Hypothesized Solution: Enable homeowners to create a charging station lane by signing up, getting an installation, and completing their profile using an app. The home owner pays nothing for an installation (or buys it outright) and earns a residual income above their cost of electricity. Both the home owner and EC earns a cut. and the customer pays for the electricity cost.
The Problem: There are so many brilliant founders around, but no easy place to collaborate on ideas
Hypothesized Solution: A community platform where you work on startup ideas by contributing your knowledge and market insight, and gain points that can convert into equity later - should the idea go to market
The Problem: Installing content gets easier all the time in WordPress with sophisticated page editors. Optimizing for conversions is still slow and manual.
Hypothesized Solution: AI/ML that does the content creating, selecting and optimizing all on its own using data to drive decisions. Like Datamilk but for WordPress.
The Problem: How do you send someone in the metaverse a long document without exposing your identity and yet ensuring only they can see it?
Hypothesized Solution: An online document sharing tool where the sender has to sign with their wallet, and the reciever's wallet address is required to descrypt?
The Problem: Viewers watching live events online don't get an intimate experience of the event. Event organizers are the only broadcasters of live events and are often unable to provide this intimate experience
Hypothesized Solution: A mobile app that lets anyone (vetted by event organizers) attending in-person events, broadcast their own version of the event to the event page (hosted on Streamcake).
The Problem: Communities and social apps are broken. Users join, rarely engage, and are left participating in conversations that don't matter.
Hypothesized Solution: The entire idea of social media needs a reboot. I'm starting by building a direct competitor to Slack, Discord, and FB groups. If you want more info, visit goodmingl.com.
