Startup - How to brainstorm great business ideas

It's been said that ideas don't matter, and that only execution does. I wholeheartedly disagree. You need both to succeed, but you can only get so good at execution. A great idea gives you much more leverage.

Below is my framework for coming up with great business ideas.

The Basics

Most people equate product ideas with business ideas. That's wrong. Your product is only one part of your business. There are at least four parts in total:

1. the problem you're solving and the people who have it (i.e. the market)
2. the distribution channels to reach customers
3. the monetization model you use to make money
4. the solution to the problem (i.e. your product or service)

Great business ideas are strong in all of these areas. 

Problem First, Solution Last

The #1 rule is to put the problem first and the solution last. That's right: your product should be the last thing you think about.

Seth Godin puts it nicely in his book This Is Marketing:

Finding a Problem

Armed with this knowledge, it's time to find a problem. You're going to have to brainstorm. Some people recommend that you just sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't. That might take years, if not forever. Be proactive.

My personal favorite is to start by looking at where people are already spending lots of time and money and go from there. Money changing hands is almost always a sign that there's a valuable problem being solved.

Avoid Fatal Mistakes

• Starting with a solution in mind. I've mentioned this already, but it's worth repeating. You need to be honest with yourself here, because this is sometimes subtle. If you're already attached to a particular idea for a product, technology, or set of features that you want to build, that's going to ruin your ability to find a solid problem and analyze it objectively. You've put the solution first, and it's blinding you to opportunities.
  
  
• Ruling out already-solved problems. Nothing in the guidelines above says that a good problem is one that nobody is solving. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Almost all successful businesses start by tackling problems that have popular, pre-existing, alternative solutions. Too many founders are struggling to solve unsolved problems, not realizing that they're often unsolved because they're unimportant and people don't care. If people are already using solutions, that's proof the problem is real.
  
  
• Being afraid to solve high-value problems. Indie hackers in particular are notorious for only tackling cheap, low-value problems. But you don't have to sell something for cheap to have a chance at success. That's backwards. It's actually harder to sell cheap things, because people care less. I've bought more cars than back scratchers in my life. This is true even if you're a small, scrappy startup. I've met 2-person teams selling their software for $10,000 per year per customer. Pick a high-value problem and charge a high price.
  
  
• Not having a specific customer in mind. If you can't articulate whose problem you're solving, how is your website going to articulate it? If you want to wait and see who the best customer turns out to be, that sounds a lot like a key looking for a lock. If you think your product is for everyone, you're neglecting to make it great for any group in particular. If you describe your target customers by combining a bunch of attributes (e.g. "iOS users who need to get tasks done but prefer modern, clean UIs"), that's not an actual group of people. You're just describing the features of a product you're already biased toward building.

Some of these points are a bit counterintuitive. That's why so many generations of smart-but-uninformed indie hackers are repeating the mistakes of their predecessors.

But it's simple to avoid these kinds of mistakes once you know them. It's more a more a matter of knowledge and discipline, rather than genius or hard work.

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