Chapter 2
Ideas

—John Steinbeck

We've all been there—something happens, we lose the keys, burn the eggs, or kill the car battery. If only there was a way we could prevent or quickly remedy the problem. Brainstorming begins—boom!—and an idea is born from necessity.

Are you a person who's just flowing with ideas? Or do you have trouble coming up with them? The easiest way to find an idea may be to follow your obsessions—that's what MakerBot chief executive officer (CEO) Bre Pettis did.

Pettis was a teacher and a maker. He grew up fixing things, then taught art in public schools. He eventually found himself working at Maker magazine, where he had to deliver a video every Friday showing how he made something, such as hovercrafts, lasers, and other cool gadgets. After some time at Etsy—a marketplace for makers—he started a side project, called MakerBot, that leveraged his knowledge for making things. MakerBot grew organically and eventually took over Pettis's life. It caught on with a group of makers just as obsessed as Pettis.

But it wasn't easy. At one point, Pettis sold everything he owned to buy more robot parts to keep the company going. He remembers thinking, “I'm not letting this thing go until it eats me.” Thankfully, it did not eat him alive—but it did take him on a startup journey to the forefront of a budding industry, 3D printing. And MakerBot was positioned to enable consumers to use 3D printing to change the world and make it a better place. Its users did just that.

In 2013, Richard Van As and Ivan Owen created a design for a Robohand, a set of 3D printed fingers that can open and close based on wrist motions. Printed on a MakerBot, Robohand can replace custom-made versions (which can cost $10,000 per finger) for around $150. Liam, a five-year-old in South Africa with a congenital disorder affecting his fingers, got one of the first Robohands. As he outgrows it, he'll be able to get another—as will others who couldn't afford a traditional prosthetic. This is just one example of why Pettis and MakerBot are obsessed with what they do.

This chapter covers how to find the idea that's right for you and common questions you might have along the way.

Scratch Your Own Itch

Pettis's idea evolved from a passion, but sometimes the best ideas come from problems that you want to solve for yourself. Take 37signals, a Chicago-based design and development firm that needed a way to communicate with clients. The existing options were too clunky and bloated, so they decided to build their own and called it Basecamp. Now used by millions of people, Basecamp was born when 37signals (now called Basecamp) scratched their own itch: they found a problem they had and built a product that others could use as well.

Banjo, a social discovery app, was born out of Damien Patton's missed connection. Fifteen years after serving in Desert Storm, he found himself in the same airport as one of his fellow servicemen, who lived across the country. He hadn't seen his friend for all those years, and they didn't see each other that day either—none of their social networks could alert them. So Patton set out to create an app that would feed you relevant information, such as friends nearby, without you having to ask.

But how do you come up with an idea?

Throughout your regular day, you may encounter a problem or something inefficient or irritating. Carry a notepad or use your mobile device, and write it down. No need to come up with a solution or product right now; just look at the world with a problem-oriented eye. Jay Alan Samit, president of ooVoo, tells his students to write down five things that bother them or could be improved each day, creating a list of dozens of ideas in a month. You'll have a lot to work with and should be able to find a problem you're obsessed with.

While writing for my personal blog and guest blogging for TechCrunch, I took several trips to Silicon Valley, where I met numerous startup founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and pundits. I noticed that many of these folks saw each other regularly at San Francisco events, like every week, where they met, chatted, and shared information. I took note and brought nuggets back to the Windy City to see if there were similar opportunities.

When I did not see any events that had the same San Fran upstart vibe, I began to toy with the idea of starting something to help facilitate these interactions. I had seen what new media such as blogging could do and understood the importance of real-life events to bring together a community, so I began to noodle on an idea. After asking a few entrepreneurs what they thought, I started to reserve domain names for what this new venture might be called. I secured names like Techstir.com, TechBlendr.com, TechKoolaid.com, TechMixr.com, and TechCocktail.com. I had found an idea; now I wanted to find a cofounder.

Go After an Industry

If you haven't found a problem out in the wild, look closer to home. If you're familiar with an industry, you already have contacts and personal connections who could give you an advantage. You speak the language, and you know how it works. You're also familiar with major players and competition, big obstacles such as regulations, and more. This industry expertise will help you see things that others cannot.

Here's an example: Dan Stratman was a pilot and worked in the airline industry for 23 years before starting Airport Life, an airport application that includes flight statuses, airport restaurants, and baggage policies. It would be hard for an outsider to figure out how to pull in all that real-time information, but he knew where to look for it, which gave him an advantage.

As for me, I worked for the Tribune and AOL, both giant media companies, for years. I was one of the early contributors to TechCrunch, along with my personal blog Somewhat Frank. I had industry experience in new media platforms and connections with startups to get me started.

You have industry knowledge as well; you just need to determine what it is. To research, go out for coffee or breakfast with people in your chosen industry. Ask them about problems they have or areas that need fixing. The idea is to always be looking for ways these people or organizations might become customers.

Debate: Should You Build Painkillers or Vitamins?

No, you're not jumping into the pharmaceutical industry, but the common advice for entrepreneurs is to build painkillers rather than vitamins. Don Dodge, an investor, startup veteran, and developer advocate at Google, calls painkillers a must-have. They could be something that increases return on investment (ROI), improves sales, or helps companies satisfy a regulatory requirement—it's really needed. On the other hand, a vitamin is something that's nice to have. Productivity tools, collaboration platforms, analytical tools—any kind of tools—tend to be vitamins.

Don Dodge

Don Dodge is a developer advocate at Google, where he helps independent developers work with Google platforms. He came to Google from Microsoft, where he was a startup evangelist. Before that, Dodge worked at pioneering startups such as Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. He is also an angel investor.

With a painkiller idea, people are more likely to pay for it and remain loyal customers. They're also more likely to find you even if you don't have a huge marketing budget. You're solving a real problem, and these people are probably already out there searching for a solution.

These painkillers are known to soar higher, but some vitamins do very well. Products such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest were not created to solve an obvious user problem, but they have had staying power and generated huge demand. Sarah Tavel, a senior associate at Bessemer Venture Partners, calls this category a drug; it's something that's nice to have that becomes addictive and hard to give up. Evernote, for example, uses a freemium pricing model to give people a taste (for free) and get them hooked so they'll upgrade to a premium plan. A number of other companies use the same model.

Remember, different products appeal to different people—something that's a vitamin to one group may be a drug or a painkiller to another. For example, a meditation app might be a painkiller for someone who gets panic attacks but a vitamin for a mildly stressed parent. Keep the painkiller/vitamin/drug distinction in mind when coming up with and sorting through your ideas and target market.

But don't give up if you don't get the support you expected. Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, didn't, even when the world told him they didn't need another blogging platform. “Some of the most interesting things come from doing what everyone says is a bad idea or where no one else is interested—those ideas that you almost have to ram down the world's throat. Even if you fail, at least you weren't failing at the same thing everyone else was doing,” he says. The founders of GrubHub followed this advice,...