Need BIG Ideas? Mine Craigslist & Twitter

I don’t get it.

Ideas are everywhere.

The internet is still a dust particle. No matter what your level of expertise or experience, you can still participate. Invite yourself to the party and pull up a chair.

If you’re curious how founders come up with their ideas, try these out.

What pisses you off? What wastes your time?
What are you continually annoyed about? What are you wasting your time on? What’s hard that shouldn’t be?

Don’t complain. Contribute.

Now, think through the solution. Only this time, insert both the technology we have available today and what’s possible in the future into the equation. Is there a way to capture a transaction this without relying on advertising? Are you solving a real problem? Who is the competition and why can you do it better?

While you’re working on a project or idea, what resources do you need that aren’t good enough or that you can’t find?
I’ll admit, B2B isn’t sexy. However, revenue is. If you can offer something that no one else is in the area of burgeoning technology, bundled resources, data feeds, etc. you can build something bad ass in a relatively short period of time. Look @simplegeo. They pivoted from a social gaming company to create a startup that serves companies with location data on the fly.

Keep an open mind, even while you’re moving one direction. If something else comes up, consider it for a moment before refocusing on what you originally intended to do. Is that thing better?

Still stuck?

Craigslist and Twitter are social streams of consciousness that reveal what people are looking for and thinking about.

Craigslist
If you look at it this way: coworking, car sharing (@zipcar), vacation rentals (@airbnb), shared office space (@loosecubes), offline events and groups (@meetup), exchanging goods (@freecycle) and many more have had roots on good ol’ Craigslist.org. Sift through the “wanted:” ads, sections and seemingly off-the-wall requests. In the future, there will be a lot more of those. That’s where the growth market is at. Think about it like one person represents thousands.

Twitter
If you’re paying attention, you’ve probably figured out how much I heart @twitter. There are so many voices, ideas, and waves of collective thought in the twitterverse. Twitter is interesting because you have to tune it correctly to listen to innovators and thought leaders. Here’s how to find people on twitter that don’t suck. Once you do that, pay attention! That’s it.

Next, use the twitter search to find new ideas. Search for “We need” or “Why don’t” or “How come” Also, do cliche searches for “idea” or “business idea.” People share a lot on twitter. You just have to listen.