When Dropbox launched, there were at least half a dozen other "online storage" businesses in existence. The Apple iPod entered a market litered with crappy MP3 players. Google was famously the Nth Internet search engine. Some good ideas have a lot of bad implementations before someone comes in and does it well enough to win big. ...

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Via: Eladgil Written by Eladgil

It's been interesting over the years to observe which vertical marketplaces take off sustainably and which fizzle, especially in light of the two dominant horizontal liquidity behemoths: eBay and Craigslist. For a while it looked like vertical sites would take away eBay's business category after category as experts in each vertical with the right community credentials built something better attune ...

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Via: Fabrice Grinda Written by Fabrice Grinda Entrepreneur, student and lover of life and aspiring Renaiss

How does one find new startup ideas? Every business is built around solving a customer pain. Solving a customer pain creates value which in turn, if successfully harnessed, can be monetized. Platform Thinking and Startup Ideas One of the patterns for new startup ideas, that I often see in platforms, is the following: Match an unmonetized/unvalued surplus with an unsatisfied scarcity. ...

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Via: Platforms and Two-sided Markets Written by Sangeet Paul Exploring the disruption caused by online and mobile platfor

When evaluating a startup idea, it's important to leverage the collective wisdom of what makes a startup successful, including evaluating the market opportunity, understanding how your product will significantly improve upon what already exists, evaluating the team's strengths, understanding your user acquisition strategy, and critiquing the business model. ...

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Via: Sachin Rekhi Written by Sachin Rekhi Entrepreneur, product guy, and software engineer. Founder &

Is the European tech industry building companies poised to change people's lives, or just wasting everyone's time with pointless apps? Matthew Bostock worries it might be the latter. ...

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Via: THE KERNEL Written by Matthew Bostock I write stuff. I read stuff.

By now we all know that successful startups focus on learning about their users -- figuring out what features, branding, and messaging resonate and perform best. Smart teams invest valuable time designing, building, testing, and iterating their own designs and prototypes based on learning from analytics and user studies.But don't forget to test your competitors' products too! ...

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Via: Design Staff Written by Braden Kowitz User Experience Designer, Prototyper, Storyteller. Partner a

Andrew Parker had a great post a few years ago where he sketched out all the startups going after pieces of Craigslist: Startups that have tried to go head-to-head against the entirety of Craigslist (the "horizontal approach") have struggled. Startups that have tried to go up against pieces of Craigslist (the "vertical approach") have been much more successful. ...

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Via: chris dixon's blog Written by Chris Dixon Founder & investor

There have been some interesting posts on Hacker News of late around side projects. Some have pointed to their potential to distract. Others, the importance of having an "end" in mind. And while these are very real considerations, I keep feeling as though the obvious has yet to be stated. The obvious being; life needs side projects. If nothing else, they are the lifeblood of creativity. ...

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Via: Swombat on Startups Written by Andrew Peek Founder @Rocketr / EiR @JetCooper / Speakers Coach @TEDxToro

Some people get excited about building something new that the world has never seen. Others get excited about making something more beautiful than it was before. Others like making things faster. And some others get off on making something less expensive. To differing degrees, these are all personal driving factors of mine as well. But the one that stands out above all the others is. ...

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Via: 37 Signals - Signal Vs Noise Written by Jason Fried Founder of 37signals. Co-author of REWORK. Credo: It's simpl

What Is A Startup Miracle? A startup miracle is the key difficult thing you need to pull off for your startup to work. It could be hitting product/market fit, a key business deal, a specific regulatory change, or the like. If your startup needs zero miracles to work, it probably isn't a defensible startup. ...

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Via: Eladgil Written by Eladgil

A common way to think of business regulations is by analogy to sports: the rules are specified up front, and the players follow the rules. But real regulations don't work that way. Businesses follow regulations as much as regulations follow businesses. Sometimes the businesses that change regulations are startups. ...

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Via: chris dixon's blog Written by Chris Dixon Founder & investor

When I was a kid, "The Graduate" was a generation-defining hit movie, with Dustin Hoffman playing an aimless college graduate. In the middle of a graduation party, an older businessman takes the wayward Hoffman aside and delivers some wise advice: "plastics." That should be the field his generation should focus on, the field that would shape the future. Today's advice for aspiring graduates is als ...

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Via: Seeing Both Sides Written by Jeff Bussgang Former entrepreneur turned VC at Flybridge Capital, author o

Q: I see a lot of opportunities for a startup, but I am not sure how to evaluate them? A: Here is a short checklist we use to help entrepreneurs sort through where they are, this is typically most useful in the "idea / team formation" phase or in preparation for "open for business" and complements the "First Seven Questions" that focus more on the product than the team's core competencies, the unk ...

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Via: Sean Murphy Written by Sean Murphy New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome

I find it really interesting to see how investors and entrepreneurs shift their money and efforts from one sector to the other. I think some of this behavior is just driven by human nature. We like looking for shortcuts and we like following the crowd. But the more crowded a space gets, the less attractive it becomes. When a few successes become apparent in other areas, the crowd shifts in that ...

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Via: Robgo.org Written by Robgo Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle

A curious email arrived in my inbox this morning from a new service I've recently joined. Curious mainly for a central feature that they'd woven into the footer of the email: know that you are welcome to contact us at any time about anything. And you'll get a reply from a real, live human. Personalized, human service as a competitive advantage. ...

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Via: Bryce DOT VC Written by Bryce Roberts VC, Dad

The first thing many entrepreneurs do when considering a new idea or startup is comb the market to see if it has already been done. The most common result is the realisation that someone thought of it, and even built it, way before we did. ...

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Via: Startup Blog - Wordpress Written by Steve Sammartino Trying to create. www.stevesammartino.com

One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. Any one of them could make you a billionaire. That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them. ...

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Via: Paul Graham Written by Paul Graham

Every founder who's been in the game a few years has clouds of potential ideas floating around that they can't find the time to work on. They might not all be good, but there are always too many of them. At the same time, though some people have this cloud of ideas following them even before they run their first business, many start off with few ideas. ...

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Via: Swombat on Startups Written by Daniel Tenner Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat