How to Get Startup Ideas

Graham's core claim is that you can't reliably think up good startup ideas by sitting down and brainstorming — the process of deliberately 'coming up with startup ideas' tends to produce bad, generic ones. Instead, the best ideas are noticed, not invented: they show up as a byproduct of living close to some frontier (an emerging technology, an unusual expertise, a niche you're deep in) and personally running into a problem sharp enough that you build a fix for yourself first. Good ideas often sound bad or small to outsiders at first, precisely because the market doesn't exist yet in an obvious way.