Starting from scratch

Building a startup idea for a $100B market from nothing

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be updating this newsletter on a regular basis. TL;DR- I’m building something big, and I’m documenting the journey.

I’m living in an experimental co-living/co-working community called Hack House: A dope NYC clubhouse with top engineers from around the world all building cool stuff.

I joined Hack House with a single goal in mind: Build something amazing enough to quit my job for. (Product, traction, growth, and all).

Easier said than done.

The Challenge

Hack House wants us to think big. And they’re hosting a hackathon with some incredible prizes. The challenge: Build a product scalable for a $100 Billion market.

(In 7 days).

Thankfully, I’m not totally clueless going in. I’m not new to working at and on startups. I’ve also won 10 professional hackathons. (If I’m being partial, I think I have better than random odds of landing a success).

Finding an idea. The thorough way.

And as a unique starting point, I’ve been collecting a massive list of 320 startup projects idea over the years. Some of these are venture scalable businesses. Others are just cool little side projects. Many turned into actual businesses without me knowing. And some are completely ridiculous. But from this list, I’ve managed to build some pretty amazing projects in the past

It took 4 days to go through all of them and seriously think about what to build

For each idea, I ranked them from 1-10 for a variety of difference features:

• Scalability: Do the variable costs go down as the project gets bigger?

• TAM: What’s the size of the market (TAM SAM SOM)

• Feasibility: How hard is this to build?

• Competition: How many competitors are in the space and do they pose a threat?

• General Usefulness: Does this solve a real problem? How much pain would people experience if they didn’t have this solution anymore?

I even did some data science-ing on them to see if there were any clusters. (None that I could make out).

There’s also one last column that’s more important than the others: Do I like the idea? This is the one I used to filter from 320 ideas to around 80

Hacker Homies Helping HAfter Hours

Some people have noted that I’ve spent a little too much time sorting this list out.

Maybe, sniff, maybe.

But I’d prefer not to go in totally blind here.

From this list, I’ve whittled it down to 4 main ideas. But I also wasn’t alone, fellow hackers wanted to join in on the fun!

Which one will we be working on? TBD :)

And starting today, we build.