A playbook for Generating Business Ideas

1. Domain Expertise
Domain expertise simply means knowing a lot about a certain area. It means
having a deep understanding of a customer segment or industry. At Startup
School, Chris Dixon said the best startup ideas come through direct experience
with technologies and/or problems.
A domain doesn’t need to be an “industry.” One could have “expertise” in the
process of finding new restaurants, and therefore know the inefficiencies based
on experience, and how to solve them.
Later in his talk at Startup School, Chris Dixon refers to the importance of
having a “secret.” This is similar to what I’ve described as domain expertise:
“You need to know a secret — in the Peter Thiel sense: something you believe

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that most other people don't believe. How do you develop a secret?
1.
Know the tools better than anyone else (Dropbox — entered a very
crowded market; won because of technology)
2.
Know the problems better than anyone else (Kickstarter — founders
had been in the space for 10 years)
3.
Draw from unique life experience (SiteAdvisor — security companies
thought their mandate was technical problems; most of the problems were
actually social engineering problems)”
Domain experts often have existing industry and customer relationships. For
example, CMOs know other CMOs, and have worked for companies that could
be customers. Therefore, finding customers for customer development
interviews, and eventually selling/marketing to them, will be easier.