Explore

Finding Startup Ideas

Hi, I'm

KP⁠

. This is my public scrapbook where I document my ideas/experiments/learnings as I explore tinkering with new startup ideas. I plan to build and ship a few experiments in the next year or so and here is a collection of all the ideas (some are mature, some dumb, some super early/fragile). I hope this open Coda doc helps one other person somewhere :)

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North Star

My North Star is experiment with ideas as close as possible to this below battle-tested framework and achieve early signs of Product Market Fit.

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Ideal Customer Persona 🙋

Figure out a persona/niche where you have an unfair advantage to achieve a better Founder-Market Fit. Here’s my list:

No-Code Maker

Non-Technical Founder

Early Stage Founder

Twitter Power User

Early Startup Employee

Director at a Series A startup

Podcaster

U.S. Immigrant (on visas like F1, H1B etc)

New Dad in the Startups/Tech industry

Hot Markets/Trends 🔥

Figure out a market/trend that’s exploding and will continue growing in the next 10 years. Bonus points if you have a small foot in the door. Here’s my list:

The rise of no-code/low-code tooling to help non-technical founders (the builder economy)

The rise of virtual communities and online watering holes

The rise of modern ed tech programs (like On Deck, Maven etc)

The rise of creator economy

Idea Database:

(Note: These are some of the ideas/startups I wish existed, not necessarily those that I will start myself, just my list of open curiosities)

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Some popular frameworks:

Many greats have explored and documented brilliant insights on how best to start a startup. Here is my collection of helpful frameworks and playbooks that I like to review time and time again:

Create a new sub-category and own it so you become the future of an entire market/industry

Ex: Social drop-in audio (Clubhouse), Conversational Marketing (Drift), Cohort-based Courses (Maven) etc.

Another way to look at this is:

X market (typically a multi-billion dollar industry) is broken, Y is a novel solution to fix it

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“Ex: Online learning is broken, Maven is a way to fix it”⁠

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Note: Typically, these startups begin with a higher risk and may be scoffed at the beginning because there are no clear existing solutions to map them to. They expand the pie. [refer to

Paul’s essay on the Pie Fallacy⁠

]

2. Find an existing category with many players in it, but serve an underserved niche

Ex: Convertkit

Existing category: Email marketing tools

Underserved niche = personal bloggers building online businesses

3. Find an existing largely fragmented market with many players but somehow customers are having to put up with antiquated technology or abysmal NPS, build a 10x better alternative

Ex: Real estate market, Zillow. Restaurants PoS market, Square.

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Relevant Resources:

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How to start a startup⁠

by Paul Graham

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How to Get Startup Ideas⁠

by YC

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The idea maze by Chris Dixon⁠

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DO ENTREPRENEURS CREATE DEMAND? by Justin Jackson⁠

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BUSINESS IS LIKE SURFING⁠

by Justin Jackson

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Wave Hunting⁠

by Kunle

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