What Startups Are Really Like

That's made harder by the fact that the best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas.

Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them.

Finding startup ideas is a subtle business, and that's why most people who try fail so miserably. It doesn't work well simply to try to think of startup ideas. If you do that, you get bad ones that sound dangerously plausible. The best approach is more indirect: if you have the right sort of background, good startup ideas will seem obvious to you. ... See more

But don't feel like you have to build things that will become startups. That's premature optimization. Just build things.

If you're not working hard, you're probably wasting your time.