Ideas ​

I share all ideas of things I want to build or building now in Height. And I share ideas I published here.

I am focusing my time on building Learn Anything & KusKus. KusKus will hold all public ideas I will have once it's built.

I try to give my full attention to any ideas I am working on. As well as trying many things. Everything I try build benefits me in some way.

I try to expose myself to novel experiences and be attentive to everything. Conversations I have, things I notice. What I feel. Any kind of friction I feel is an idea to build something to get rid of the friction, so I write it down, sort by priority and build it or let someone build it by sharing the idea.

Few things that inspire new ideas are travelling to new places, meeting new people (asking what everyone is excited about right now), going for walks and nice showers. Plus listening to great podcasts, movies/series. Well everything really can spark an idea. Just make sure to note it down and work on them as all ideas start fragile and can be easily killed or forgotten.

I note all my ideas in LA. For ideas I am exceptionally excited about, I share it on Twitter or friends that may have interest in it, to get a feel of what others think. It could be others have solved the problem well already.

Notes ​

• Good ideas don’t have owners. They belong to everyone.
• Find a problem. Tell a story. Sell a service. Deliver a result. Build a product.
• If your idea already exists it's validation that there's a market for it. If your execution of the same idea is 1) better, or 2) cheaper, you can reach customers in that market.
• Make the first draft deliberately bad. It’s hard to write something good from nothing. But it’s easy to look at something and say “I can at least do better than this idiot.” Be the idiot. Then be better. Then be better again...
• Create what you want to exist.
• There's no upside in hating on someone's idea. You come off as non-believer or ruin their confidence. Instead, just ask the questions that make you hesitate & let them come to their own conclusion. If you're right, you helped them think it through. If you're wrong, you'll learn.
• Personal website is the perfect side project / try out new ideas / learn new things playground.
• If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange them, we both still have one apple. However, if I have an idea and you also have an idea and we exchange them, we both have two ideas.
• Audience (who needs help?) > Problem (what do they need help with?) > Product (this solves a problem for my audience) > Success
• Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew. > 95% of everything I ever did failed. My hit rate is only about ~5%. So...ship more.
• It is incredible how utterly useless software is for organizing your personal life better. Personal relationships/calendars, house logistics, entertainment, travel, life goals, shopping, archives, photos/videos, goals, health (!), to-dos - we are still in the Stone Age.
• More people should make "1% products". Tiny little gems that have 1% of the functionality, but are obsessively polished and perfect.
• My best advice for people trying to figure out what’s next is figure out what they want to do after the next thing—the next next thing—and do the thing next that will increase the success of that next next thing (which may just be skipping straight to the next next thing).
• Good idea generator: 1: Have any idea. 2: Pursue it. 3: Build something that makes it easier to achieve. 4: #3 is your good idea.
• Build things for yourself. It's much more motivating and fun to build for yourself. You know precisely what you want.
• Everything is a remix. Human brains are wired for pattern recognition, and this is what we do. Pure spontaneous creativity doesn't exist.
• One of the things that I trained myself to do a few decades ago is pulling ideas out and pursuing them in a way where I’m excited about them, knowing that most of them don’t pan out in the end. Much earlier in my career, when I’d have a really bright idea that didn’t work out, I was crushed afterwards. But eventually I got to the point where I’m really good at just shoveling ideas through my processing and shooting them down, almost making it a game to say, ‘How quickly can I bust my own idea, rather than protecting it as a pet idea.
• We win, not when React wins, but when an idea survives into the next generation of tools. We compete to let an idea survive.

Links ​

• Project based learning - Curated list of project-based tutorials.
• Build your own X
• Projects list
• Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts? (2019)
• Ideas by Paul Graham (2005)
• Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea? (2019)
• What are some good tiny projects for learning a language or technique? (2019)
• List of future of programming projects
• App Ideas Collection
• Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists? (2019)
• Finding My Next Bootstrapped Business Idea (2019) - My process for narrowing down what to build next.
• One Hundred Ideas for Computing (Code) (HN) (HN)
• Ask HN: Haven't worked for a while, best guide/advice to start a hobby project? (2019)
• An App Launch Guide
• John Carmack on Idea Generation (2016)
• Mike’s System for Ideas (2020)
• Startup Ideas 2020 (HN)
• Muse: designing a studio for ideas (2019)
• Ideas for things to program
• How do you stay inline with your vision on long term projects? (2020)
• Open Source Ideas
• What 8 years of side projects has taught me (2019) (HN)
• List of microgrant programs for your good ideas
• Ask HN: What projects are you working on now? (2020)
• 100 Little Ideas (2020) (HN)
• Ask HN: What do you do when have free time? (2020)
• Ask HN: What is your passive income 2019?
• Ask HN: How can I pick a side project and stick with it? (2020)
• Having Good Ideas (2020)
• So I’ve got this idea... (2020)
• Awesome App Ideas
• Frameworks for coming up with startup ideas (2020)
• Ideas from Josh Wolfe (2020)
• Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life (2020)
• Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project? (2020)
• Things I want to figure out/see implemented eventually
• Ask HN: Looking for Side Project Ideas (2020)
• Interesting ideas for JS related projects
• Ideas for productized services
• Kinopio - Visual thinking tool for new ideas and hard problems. (HN)
• Idea Generation (2020) (HN)
• Ask HN: Impossible Ideas? (2020)
• What to look for when evaluating a start idea (2020)
• ConceptHunt - Practice Generating Ideas.
• How I side project (2019)
• Ask HN: What kind of ideas are not VC-backable but should exist in the future? (2020)
• Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? (2020)
• What software do you dream about, but do not have time to do yourself? (2020)
• Businesses I Love
• Making The Leap (2020)
• Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? (2020)
• Early Work (2020) (HN)
• Ideonomy - The science of ideas.
• Billion dollar startup ideas (2020) (HN)
• How to find underrated ideas
• Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas? (2020)
• IdeasAI - GPT-3-powered business idea generator.
• More challenging projects every programmer should try (2020) (HN)
• Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't? (2021)
• Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
• Findnlink - Find people to work with on your ideas.
• Ask HN: Show me your half baked project (2021)
• Ideas Grab - List of +3400 ideas that you can use for your own projects.
• Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project? (2021)
• Lobsters: What side projects are you building currently? (2021)
• Free startup ideas (2021)
• Ask HN: Can build CRUD apps, what now? (2021)
• 10 perspective-altering ideas. Illustrated.
• Evaluating Modest SaaS Business Ideas (2021) (HN)
• The idea validation method Stripe uses for building new products (2021)
• My playbook for shipping side projects (2021)
• Do What Makes The Best Story (Tweet)
• Ideas Filter - List of apps people pay for but have low rating. (HN)
• Orbit - Experimental platform for publishing and engaging with small tasks repeatedly over time. (Code) (HN)
• Crazy New Ideas (2021) (HN)
• Why I prefer making useless stuff (2021) (HN)
• Steve Jobs advice on how to push back against bad ideas
• Ask HN: Post Burnout Ideas (2021)
• Your idea is brilliant, your idea is worthless (2016) (HN)
• My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry (2021) (HN)
• Project ideas for 2020
• How to come up with compelling startup ideas
• Ask HN: How do you validate your startup idea when you've no distribution? (2021)
• If you could rewrite anything from scratch, what would it be? (2021)
• Minimum Viable Testing framework (2021)
• Ideas for Software that People Would Actually Use
• Startup Ideas (HN)
• Being a maker is 1% ideas, 99% mindset. Tips (2021)
• Cool Ideas
• Self-Organizing Ideas (2021)
• Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell (2021)
• Ask HN: How do you validate demand for your side-project? (2021)
• Ask HN: Who Wants to Collaborate? (2022)
• Cocktail party ideas (HN)
• How to explain an idea: a mega post
• Ask HN: What problem do you wish someone would solve? (2022)
• Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project? (2022)
• Ask HN: What is something exciting you're working on? (2022)
• Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism? (2022)
• Nailing Your First Launch – Adam Wathan (2018) (Tweet)
• Ask HN: Have you created programs for only your personal use? (2022)
• Ask HN: What small library or tool do you want that doesn’t exist? (2022)
• Take my app ideas (2022) (HN)
• 100 Projects of Code - List of practical knowledge-building projects.
• Small Bets
• Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell
• Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on? (2022)
• Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea whilst employed?
• App that every developer builds at least once
• Project book - Collection of 100 project ideas for learning. (HN)
• Ask HN: What not-profit-seeking project are you tinkering with this week? (2022)
• Just for Fun. No, really. (HN)
• Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment (2022)
• Ask HN: What are your “scratch own itch” projects? (2022)
• Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking (Tweet) (HN)
• What software do you dream about, but do not have time to code yourself? (2022)
• Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills? (2022)
• Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built? (2022)
• Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas? (2022)
• How to draw ideas (HN)
• Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date? (2022)
• Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea? (2022)
• Ask HN: How do you recall ideas/eureka you get during walks, showers, etc.? (2022)
• Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell
• Ask HN: How to come up with ideas for micro side projects? (2023)
• Ask HN: What have you built more than twice and wish someone had built for you? (2023)
• Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell
• How to get new ideas (2023) (HN)
• Hacker News Startup Ideas (HN)
• Ask HN: Side project of more that $2k monthly revenue what's your project? (2023)
• Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself? (2023)
• YC Idea Matcher - Submit your idea and get a list of similar ideas that YCombinator has invested in in the past. (Code)
• Additional 100 Ideas for Computing
• Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on (2023)