The Idea Maze is a Useless Idea - Commoncog

[cedric]

@paul

Perhaps it’s more that the traveler’s goal and livelihood doesn’t necessarily depend on creating some business success from scratch, so can be more authentic and open to opportunities.

Yeah it was mostly this. I was trying to invoke the fact that travel, done well, is usually done with a stance of openness and curiosity, whereas ‘find a startup idea worth doing in one year’ is a narrowing, focusing stance. The former stance produces more productive travel in the idea maze than the latter.

@paul

But I want to be able to cultivate a long term obsession that serves as some kind of rudder for my projects, pursuits, and partners. Have any additional thoughts here?

I’m afraid I don’t, sorry! Perhaps someone with more life experience or better introspection could chime in here? I suspect this demands more wisdom than I have right now; I don’t personally seem to have this problem, which is probably why I don’t have good thoughts about this.

I’m going to cc @eric, do you have anything to add?

@joesweeney

This belief doesn’t hold up to scrutiny though. If anything, someone without the operational complexity of running a business with no moat can probably spend more time and attention to find an offering that could outpace the “boring business” pretty quickly. They could also flounder for years and never make any money

Yeah well there really is no one formula. You may find yourself in a better place running a business with no moat because it gives you exposure to business problems that you won’t otherwise have in a job! Or not; it could be that the business is horrible to run. There are no context-free rules here.

That said, someone sent me this link in response to this piece, and I think it is VERY helpful (albeit for B2B only): Rob Snyder on LinkedIn: B2B Product-Market Fit: Playbook for $0-$1M ARR | 19 comments … it certainly maps to most of the successful B2B engagements I’ve seen.