Discouraged about coming up with startup ideas

1 points by SMAAART 2 hours ago

About me:

1. I am old(er), old enough to have lived the dot-com era, and I loved it.

2. My background is checkered between entrepreneurship and working in high-tech companies.

I remember the mid 90(s), I had a cushy job but the Internet was happening out there. So I desperately sought a position at one of those high-flying dot-coms, I landed at one, I was employee #30, within a few months we were 300 employees, and those 2.5 years were incredible.

I knew that the internet was going to change the world, but now, looking in retrospect, I can see that it changed the world a lot more than anyone ever thought.

I am sure that AI will change the world a lot more than the Internet ever did.

I am - again - desperately trying to get a job at a AI startup, unsuccessfully so. And - of course - I am not quitting.

At the same time I am brainstorming AI startup ideas, but I must confess that I can't come up with nothing exciting / innovating (my bad).

I am very familiar with Paul Graham essays, with "The Innovator's dilemma", and "The Lean Startup Methodology"; I have successfully applied all three in the past.

One peculiarity that I see about comparing the AI revolution to the dot-com revolution is that back in the days small(er) companies were embracing the Internet; while the large companies were oblivious. In 1995 I convinced my $20MM company to do e-commerce and VoIP.

Today I see large companies covertly adopting AI, while small(er) companies are oblivious.

And my frustrations are with myself (failure to create), and also with the marketplace:

1. Most AI companies that I see are nothing more than wrapping up ChatGPT in a single-use pretty interface.

2. I stopped using Google as soon as perplexity came along, and how come perplexity is not exploding the way that Yahoo/Google did back in the days?

3. Where are my easy to use and customizable AI agents? I played with AutoGPT but as it stands today it's above my technical abilities (I am in operations, not a real techie). Maybe this should be my unicorn start up idea?

Thank you for listening to my rant. Looking forward to read the comments.