OK, in a venture that I've already started, I go back to our mission statement[1], and decide if the new idea fits the mission. If it does, I think about whether or not it would be a feature of a project we're already working on, or would become a whole new product. In either case, it has to be prioritized relative to the existing work. In some cases, it's easy enough to say "this isn't important enough to work on right now, so it goes in the backlog." In other case, it's not so clear, so you might want to get out and talk to people. I like to bounce ideas off a select handful of people I know and trust initially, and then - depending on the feedback - I might start talking it up to a wider audience, and/or blog/tweet/g+/etc. the idea to solicit discussion.
Do cool things just randomly pop in your head after whatever things you do through life?
Sometimes, but I find that most of the cool ideas I have (well, the ones that I think are cool anyway) occur in response to reading or studying something new, or something that shifts my perspective. I'm a rabid reader anyway, and I try to stretch my boundaries by reading books that span a lot of territory. Even in terms of technical books... I mean, I'm a software guy by trade, but one of the last books I read was Beyond Boundaries[2] by Miguel Nicolelis, which deals with neuroscience and brain/machine interfaces. And lying around here somewhere are some books on nanotechnology, philosophy of mind, artificial life, economics, etc., etc. I often find inspiration from reading something seemingly fairly unrelated to my day to day work.
I also find that talking to interesting people, doing interesting stuff, with other cool ideas, can spark a new idea. As such, I hang out at the local hackerspace[3] quite often, and just listen in, talk to people, swap ideas, etc. Going to user group meetings around new technologies and talking to people there can also spark ideas.
Another neat thing to do, is to follow the "incubator"[4] discussion list at the Apache Software Foundation. Just following what new and interesting projects are being submitted there can potentially spark some cool and creative ideas.
As a follow-up, how do you actually validate whether or not you will actually move forward with it (market opportunity, personal problem, growth potential, ease/challenge of problem, customer validation)?
See above, but if something makes it as far as being seriously considered for a product / product feature, I'm a big fan of @sgblank's "Customer Development" approach. See his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany[5] for details.
[1]: Previous HN discussion on missions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3631611
[2]: Author Website: http://www.beyondboundariesnicolelis.net/~beyond/wordpress/
[3]: http://www.splatspace.org
[4]: http://incubator.apache.org
[5]: http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strateg...
- http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-...
- http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-...
- http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strateg...
I'd still love to know what was planned for the class, but these volumes have been valuable to me.
http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/
http://venturehacks.com/articles/customer-development
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976470705
http://www.amazon.com/New-Business-Road-Test-entrepreneurs/d...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5E38frHo1U
etc.
1) It is difficult to tell what the site does, and 2) Once that's figured out, few people stay because the site doesn't seem to solve a problem they actually have.
You mentioned iteration; What do you mean by it, specifically? Have you made substantive changes in functionality? Or have you simply added "most requested features"? The difference here is important, as it may be the difference between finding a problem that needs solving and adding resources to a solution searching for a problem.
My recommendation (for what that's worth) is to engage in a bit of customer development, the initial goal of which is to find who has the problem that you feel like you're solving. Hasenj noted that the calculations seem very simple (given, many contributors here are programmers and/or math nerds). That said, you do not know how many of your actual customers may be thinking the same thing.
However, if you can find (and by find, I mean specifically target, talk to and learn from) a group of people who consistently benefit from your service, you are in a much better position to move ahead. Effectively, this group will act as your cheering squad, providing feedback upon which you can grow and word-of-mouth upon which you can ultimately scale.
I consider this to be much more important than the design (although that is important as well). While better design may attract people to stay longer and/or use your service for the first time, it will not help with retention unless you're solving a problem that people legitimately have. Design doesn't provide an accurate indicator of scale-potential; Function does.
You may have known all of what I just told you. Hell, you may have already done it all. If, however, it was new to you, I would suggest checking out Steve Blank's book The Four Steps to the Epiphany, found here: http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
Best of luck!
See this page: http://www.techstars.org/details/
(BTW, I'm doing a startup in Boston. I'm sure they'll get lots of applications, but this isn't for me.)
Edit: I saw someone recommend their book. Let me plug another one. I'm loving Steven Blank's Four Steps To the Epiphany (http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...)
My impression is that a lot of comments are just restatements of the usual clichés: "get the first paying customer", "luck vs perseverance", "minimum viable product", "execution vs great ideas", etc.
As someone who has already asked this kind of question on HN, that type of cookie-cutter advice really isn't helpful at all (assuming you have been following HN for a while).
We need more specific, actionable advice. Here is mine:
Grab a copy of "The Four Steps to the Epiphany"[1] by Steven Blank and apply his methodology. It's broadly a "How-to" guide on discovering who your customers are, what they really want and how to make them buy. According to your story, it seems you are focusing too much on getting PR when you really should go out your office and talk with your customers directly (instead of via TC).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
If you are looking for a good book applicable to businesses big and small, I have to pass on some recent advice I got from fellow HN'ers: read "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steven Gary Blank:
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
An old edition I got my hands on looked like it had never seen a decent book editor in its life. It seemed that it could easily be chopped in half due to the repetition and mistakes in spelling/grammar. And the "Why?" is not answered on a lot of statements (need to spend 1.7x or 3x, but why? what is that based on?). I would hope that the September 2010 edition available via Amazon/Cafepress has eliminated some of these issues. But, there are some excellent cases of businesses described in the book and it gets you thinking of business in a much different way. It was for me a "skimming" book, and I plan to buy the most recent edition as my next book purchase.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
The book is by Steven Gary Blank, whose weblog is often linked to from Hacker News.
I would focus on fixing the burnout first and then if you're serious about being an entrepreneur, do it later. If you do it now, you'll likely just stall out early on and be even more disillusioned.
Get out of burn-out by taking vacation, spending more and more quality time with your family, etc. Once you take some time away from the keyboard, your passion for coding and inspiration for new ideas will start to surface. Once you HAVE to stay up all night to work on an idea because you're so excited, then you'll know you are back.
Once you are serious about starting your business, read http://www.startupbook.net/ and http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09... to help you identify and verify good business ideas and take the first few steps, lean on HN once you have an idea to help you improve it and iterate on it.
Due to your family situation, you'll probably need to keep your job and work on your startup on the side (welcome to the club!). Once your startup is making some money you can consider switching to consulting or a part-time situation. It's crazy hard enough as it is, and basically impossible when you are demotivated and burned out.
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
and do the opposite.
It also helped me to spend a lot of time in bars and cafes talking to strangers until I was comfortable with both the approach & conversation.
You've already proven that you are capable of doing great things. Work to increase your capabilities.
To generate wealth, in my opinion it's best to do things that are aligned with what you are interested in. Since you have demonstrated ability with business and technology, and some capital, start with that.
One way to generate wealth is to start a company, then sell it. There are many skills necessary, but the essential one you already have - being able to just plunge in and do it.
I'd say, dive in and see if you can learn to build a small company by bootstrapping it - without taking investment money or going into debt... take it slow and incremental, not going into debt or taking investment unless you think you have a winning team and product. Usually at that point you don't really need investment, but can use it to expand a lot.
These days, software development done by yourself or a few friends and servers in the cloud are so cheap that you can build whole software or software-as-a-service companies with your existing cash flow. Learn the technical and business skills you need. Plan experiments that help you learn - that won't kill you if you fail. You can learn much more from failure than success, so make mistakes as fast as you can.
Oh yeah, and find a good accountant and make sure you pay your taxes.
Here's some resources:
Cheat sheet on how to get people to change - and buy your products. The best summary I've read:
http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/TheParadoxOfPain/Documen...
. . . .
My bible on how to learn customer problems and turn them into money. Also has a great annotated bibliography of other good books to read, and a methodology for becoming a self-taught entrepreneur. The author founded 5 well-known tech companies that did IPOs, generating a great deal of wealth, and now teaches at Stanford business school. I can't say enough good things about this book:
The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
. . . .
The inside story on nitty-gritty details of how to start a start up, do the legal work necessary to create the machinery for wealth generation. Written from the perspective of helping tech entrepreneurs protect themselves. If I would have had this book when I was starting out, I'd have held on to much more of my wealth:
High Tech Start Up - John L. Nesheim http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Start-Revised-Updated/dp/068...
. . . .
Last but not least, a very important short text on how money works. Written by the founder of MasterCard. Extremely helpful in thinking about money, how to work with it and think about it, what it's good for, not good for, and its capabilities and place in ones' life:
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Money-Shambhala-Pocket-Classics/...
Bonus text - the classic manual on leadership - really helpful instructions on gracefully working with others. How to lead effectively and with a minimum of muss and fuss. This is my favorite translation.
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Stephen-Mitchell/dp/00608...
- a serial entrepreneur
