Successful Startup 101: September 2014 Successful Startup 101: September 2014 | Page 17

52. Look through the customer service sections
of websites and find out what people are
complaining about.

53. Find product review forums and read about
customer frustration about products.

54. Listen when other people complain. Gather
it by listening when people tell you what’s
ruining their day.

62. Spend time with successful people in your

network and talk about the same issues. Each
will have a slightly different way of thinking
about things.

63. Create a Twitter list. Add influential users
whose ideas can inspire great ideas.

64.  You can also go deeper by tracking registered
patents. Innovative products are constantly
being protected.

55. Bring an existing idea to a different platform.
56. Study your employer’s business process and

65. The key to problem spotting is to capture

57. Spend  time reading about other companies

66. Take a service or approach applied to one

build upon it. i.e. improve it.

and their customer pain points

58. Build something you need in your company,

chances are others need it too. Think Yammer.

59. Copy business-model ideas from another
country that have yet to be imported

60.  Taking a trip to a totally different environment
is always a great way to spot interesting ideas.

61. Try things: Experiment with everything. You’ll

find things you like and things you don’t like.

a long list of problems before you start
considering possible solutions.

market, and apply it to another. Cotap is the
Whatsapp for business.

67. Take a task that seems tedious and currently
requires humans and automate it.

69.  Ask yourself if it’s a product you will personally
use.

70. Take a single category out of the many offered
by tech giants like eBay or Amazon and make
it a simple niche business.