Paul Graham argues that aspiring founders shouldn't force startup ideas. Instead, learn deeply about domains that interest you, work on real problems, and collaborate with people you respect. Larry Page's search engine came from genuine curiosity, not a business plan.
Chapters
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. If you make a conscious effort to try and think of startup ideas, you will think of ideas that are not only bad, but bad and plausible sounding, meaning you and everybody else will be fooled by them and you'll waste a lot of time before realizing they're no good. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of trying to make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your brain into the type that has startup ideas unconsciously. So how do you turn your mind into the kind that has startup ideas unconsciously? 1. Learn a lot about things that matter 2. Work on problems that interest you 3. With people you like and respect. That third part, incidentally, is how you get co founders at the same time as the idea. My life is full of case after case where I worked on things just because I was interested and they turned out to be useful later in some worldly way. Y Combinator itself is something I only did because it seemed interesting. So strangely enough, the optimal thing to do in college if you want to be a successful startup founder is not some sort of new vocational version of college focused on entrepreneurship. It's the classic version of college as education for its own sake. If you want to start a startup, what you should do in college is learn powerful things. And if you have genuine intellectual curiosity, that's what you'll naturally tend to do if you just follow your own inclinations. The component of entrepreneurship I can never quite say that word with a straight face that really matters is domain expertise. Larry Page is Larry Page because he was an expert on search, and the way he became an expert on search was because he was genuinely interested in it, not because of some ulterior motive. At its best, starting a startup is merely an ulterior motive for curiosity, and you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive at the end of the process. So here is the ultimate advice for young would be startup founders reduced to two Just learn.
