Ideas are Worthless

Talk given at FOSSMeet, NIT Calicut in February 2024. A mix of two talks, interleaved together:

1. Picking Ideas, Executing them, and the theory of Innovation.
2. Interludes with project ideas for the audience to take home.

Transcript

1. ideas are worthless, please take some home
2. nemo
3. nemo captnemo.in/projects/
4. SDSLabs.co InfoSecIITR.in Razorpay
7. There's no such thing as an original idea. Every idea worth having has been had thousands of times already. - swombat
8. captnemo.in/ideas github.com/captn3m0/ideas
9. Execution Idea Good Bad Good Bad
10. Execution Idea Good Bad Good Blender, Slack WhatsApp, Linux Bad Segway Ramar Petrol
11. Interlude: Standardize GTFS
12. seek out problems
13. build for yourselves
14. build for yourselves The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
15. Interlude: Solve Your Problem
16. Interlude: Solve Your Problem
17. Interlude: Solve Your Problem
18. Interlude: Solve Your Problem • Libre CT Scanner • Libre software to book an auto using Namma Yatri • A journaling app for linux (phones) • Port postmarketOS/lineageOS to a new device • A search engine for “your hobby” • A PDF convertor that fixes indic font ascii issues
19. multiple cheap solutions
20. the adjacent possible
21. the adjacent possible
22. Interlude: Create Datasets • indic chat dataset • people cursing in indic languages • pics of shop signs in [your language] • requests on r/datasets • Posters in Indian Universities • Indic Synonyms • republish all/most/some of data.gov.in with RDF/LOD. • "important places (#reviews) in Google Maps missing in OSM"
23. multi-disciplinarity
24. exaptation
25. Interlude: Steal Ideas • aboutideasnow.com • samsquire.github.io/ideas/ • chromeextensionideas.substack.com • ycombinator.com/rfs
26. “Eureka!” is a lie
27. be ready for serendipity
28. Interlude: my ideas • A scoped-semantic search engine. • captnemo.in/ideas/
29. project hopping
30. backburner problems The Mosaic Problem - How and Why to do Math for Fun, Jack Hanke
31. feasibility
32. feasibility money
33. feasibility money interest
34. Interlude: “hacks” • blr.vote • savetheinternet.in • speakforme.in
35. Recommended Readings
39. captnemo.in/talks captnemo.in/contact