A playbook for Generating Business Ideas

2. Passion
Starting a company is hard. It requires long hours building products, acquiring
customers, fundraising, and more. Getting started may entail long periods of
being broke. There’s a ton of uncertainty. Having passion helps push through all
the challenges.
A startup is more than something you do from 9 to 5. It’s something you have to
fully commit yourself to. Even at the micro level of finding customers to
interview. Finding customers requires stepping out of your comfort zone and
asking for help. You will have to ask your friends, family, and
professional
network
for everything from sharing your stuff on Twitter to introductions to
investors.
Some people can just put their head down and execute, no matter what the
situation, especially if there’s financial upside. But it seems for many people that
it requires being truly excited about something.
You might have a great idea, but if you don’t have enough passion to even go
find a customer to interview, growing the company is probably going to pretty
daunting. With enough passion, I believe one can overcome a lack of domain
expertise. With enough passion, one can dive in and learn faster, and be enthused

---

enough to find customers, partners, etc.
Key Takeaways
Startup ideas don’t just appear out of thin air. Having domain expertise and/or
extreme passion can help generate ideas. To get startup ideas, think about where
you have expertise or passion. Solve your own problems, or the problems of a
group of people you’re passionate about. The methodologies described above
will be easier to use if you have domain expertise and passion.

---

Chapter 4: Scratch Your Own Itch
“Scratch your own itch” is a funny way of saying, “Solve a problem you have.”
This quote from Paul Graham of Y-Combinator, one of the most successful and
prestigious incubators, highlights the strategy of solving your own problem:
“Why is it so important to work on a problem you have? Among other things, it
ensures the problem really exists. It sounds obvious to say you should only work
on problems that exist. And yet by far the most common mistake startups make is
to solve problems no one has.” – Paul Graham, Y-Combinator
As discussed previously in this book, the best business ideas come from solving
problems. And one of the biggest risk factors of any business is that the business
does not provide a product or service that anyone wants, or that the product or
service does not solve a problem. As Paul says “...the most common mistake
startups make is to solve problems no one has.”
By identifying a problem you have, you can, as Paul says, “ensure the problem
really exists.” It is not enough for just you to have the problem because you can’t
be your own customer, but if you can identify a problem that one other person
has, it is probably more likely that more people will have that same problem.