start with the problem
most startup advice you hear today is just total noise. it is usually a bunch of echoes from people who have never actually built anything that mattered in the real world. they talk about "disruption" and "pivoting" like they are just buzzwords you can buy at a grocery store. but if you are actually serious about building something that survives the next decade, you have to find a real signal in all that static. and for me, that signal has always been y combinator.
yc doesn't really give you "advice" in the traditional sense. they give you frameworks. they don't tell you exactly what to think or which market to jump into. instead, they teach you how to think about the world around you. and the best part is that now the whole course is online for free. it is called startup school and honestly it is the only education you need if you want to be a founder. if you havent looked at it yet, just stop what you are doing and start there. it will save you three years of making the same mistakes as everyone else.
once you have the framework, you have to forget about "brainstorming." brainstorming is where good ideas go to die because you are trying to force creativity. paul graham says it best: don't try to think of startup ideas. just notice problems. preferably your own problems. think about the history of the biggest companies on the planet. microsoft, apple, google, facebook... none of them started with a boardroom brainstorm. bill gates needed an interpreter for a microcomputer. steve wozniak wanted a personal computer he could actually afford. larry and sergey wanted to organize the mess of the early internet. mark zuckerberg was already living his life online and just wanted a better way to connect. these werent "visions" from a mountaintop. they were simple answers to questions the founders were already living every single day.
the very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they are something the founders themselves actually want, they are something they can actually build, and they are something that very few people realize is worth doing yet. that is where the magic happens.
the most common mistake founders make is trying to solve a problem that nobody actually has. i have seen it a hundred times. people get attached to a "model" of the world and they spend six months building software for it... only to find out that the users they imagined dont actually exist in reality. they built a solution in search of a problem. it is a heartbreak you can easily avoid if you just start with your own frustration.
so find the problem you cant stop thinking about. the one that frustrates you, fascinates you, and maybe even makes you a little bit crazy. find the thing that you wish existed so badly that you are willing to build it yourself. build that thing. everything else—the marketing, the fundraising, the scaling—is just noise. the core of a successful company is always just a person who found a real problem and refused to walk away from it.
what is the one thing in your day that is broken? what is the task you hate doing because it feels like it belongs in the 1990s? that is your starting line. the future doesnt belong to the people with the best ideas... it belongs to the people who are brave enough to solve their own problems first.
