How to find startup ideas (breakdown) | Starter Story

"I would love if you walk through your process for ideating and validating an idea that you're going to end up working on in building." That question, asked early in the conversation, gets a surprisingly concrete answer. The founder describes a five-step system that starts not with market research or competitor analysis, but with a specific kind of frustration.

The pain-first filter

The entire process begins with the founder's own pain at work. Not a vague dissatisfaction, but a concrete problem they personally experience while trying to get something done. The logic is straightforward: if you don't feel the problem yourself, you won't have the stamina to solve it for others. "It all starts with my own pain at work that I want to solve," they explain.

Once that pain is identified, the next step is to look for existing solutions. If a satisfactory product already exists, the search continues. The founder only moves forward when they cannot find anything on the market that adequately addresses their specific frustration. This is the first filter: a problem that is real, personal, and unsolved.

Testing resonance before building anything