By Ashley Gibbard

I am really glad we got to read Paul Graham’s blog post ‘How to Find Startup Ideas’ before our assignment that is due this week because this article completely changed my way of thinking.

Whenever I think of creating something, I just think about the product, how it will look, the best way to market it. Honestly, it never occurred to me to think of the problem it would be solving or if there is one. This article has changed the way I will think about products moving forward. Of course a product isn’t going to be successful if it’s not solving a problem because you don’t need it.

The steps this article lays out where the product is actually the last thing you think about makes perfect sense, but I think it’s safe to safe a lot of us don’t initially think that way. I like the idea of looking for things that seem to be missing along with the notion that you can’t always be sure whether or not there is a path for an idea. Often times things don’t work out especially on the first try, but nothing would have been created had someone not tried to follow a path for an idea.

I also liked this quote from the competition section: “Because a good idea should seem obvious, when you have one you’ll tend to feel that you’re late.” I’ve stopped myself from doing a lot of things because I have felt as though someone else must’ve already have had that idea. When ultimately, if I see a problem and I have an idea to fix it I need to have the confidence to try and do so, that’s what startup ideas are about.

I think both articles, but specifically the Neiman Report on disruptive innovation in media, tie in nicely to the Pew State of the Media 2016 article we read last week. Besides the Pew article being mentioned in this one, it demonstrated how we as journalists need to be aware of trends not only in the news but the way it is reported. We need to keep working to make it better, more efficient and more accurate to keep up with the changing times and audience.

I thought it was interesting this article viewed inventing businesses as looking at a job people need done versus the first article which viewed ideas as solving a problem.

This article really summarizes journalism as a whole: You have to keep changing to survive. As we saw in the Pew article, print and TV news are on a decline and things like podcasts are on an incline. Media keeps changing and we have to change our products and businesses or else it will become obsolete. It’s important to create a business and or product that can grow with the times.

Whenever I have an idea I will now consider trends, a problem and a job before I consider an actual product or business.

Links http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

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