A playbook for Generating Business Ideas

User Experience
a. “Reddit for X”
Product Hunt applies the user interface of HackerNews and Reddit, two very
successful news aggregation services, to the problem of discovering new
products. The problem of discovering new products is currently being solved by
media companies like TechCrunch and Engadget. So not only did Product Hunt
apply a validated solution to a different problem, the different problem had also
been validated.
While Product Hunt is still an early stage startup, the company has been
achieving tremendous growth and was recently accepted into Y-Combinator, one
of the most prestigious incubators in the world. Y-Combinator was founded by
Paul Graham, who I have quoted in this book.
b. “Tinder for X”
Tinder is a popular mobile dating app. Tinder solves the “known need” of
relationships. One of Tinder’s primary differentiators is its interface. The
interface allows users to swipe right or left on their mobile phone to indicate that
they are interested or disinterested in a given person’s profile. The interface
makes using the app and searching for mates very easy, and kind of addictive.
Seeing that the Tinder user interface has been validated as a solution to online
dating, many companies have applied it to different problems. Doing a search on
Product Hunt (!!) for “Tinder for” there is a long list of “Tinder for X”
companies. Examples include Tinder for professional networking, Tinder for

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content, Tinder for jobs, and, of course, Tinder for Product Hunt.