Come Up with a Startup Idea

Let emotion be your guide.

How do you decide what to build? Ideas that stick often start with high emotion – frustration, curiosity, joy, or even outrage. If something makes you want to slam a door or gives you an “aha” rush, pay attention! “Things with high emotions are sticky,” says Emanuel. They're sticky in your memory – and sticky for your future customers.

Action step: Walk through your day, noticing what frustrates or excites you. These emotional reactions are valuable clues, pointing you toward problems that are worth solving.

Capture and expand your signals.

Don’t rely on memory alone. Carry a physical notebook and treat it as a two-sided tool: In the front, jot down raw sparks – a news headline that fires you up, a frustrating moment in class, a question a friend keeps asking. In the back, start sketching out possible ways to address them.

Expose yourself to volume. Pair this practice with a deliberate exercise: Look at a lot of things and see what reactions they elicit. Scroll headlines without reading the full articles. Look at the titles of new podcasts, or notice what topics at lunch make you stay much longer, talking and waving your hands. The goal isn’t depth – it’s range. The more ideas you collect, the more emotions you notice, and the more patterns will emerge.

Action step: Skim widely and write in your notebook consistently. When something triggers an emotional reaction, capture it right away. Over time, your notebook becomes a personal database of problems waiting for solutions.

Really listen.

Once you decide on a topic you want to address, your next step is to listen.

This sounds easy, but very few do it well off the bat.

First, this doesn’t mean to pitch your idea. Instead, ask people about a recent past problem they had in the domain you are interested in. “When was the last time you had a problem with…? What did you do? How well did it work for you? What do you wish it had done but didn’t?” One of the best books on this is called The Mom Test.

One rule of thumb is that you should always be asking a question you do not know the answer to – something you can’t know except by asking.

In all of this, you are listening for key pain points.

Try out ideation techniques.

Once you decide on a topic you want to address and have deeply listened and identified the critical pain points by talking with people, we enter the realm of ideation. Enter tools to turn well-chewed on problems into novel solutions.

Flip the Script

One of Emanuel’s go-to techniques is what she calls “reverse it.” Take the most important outcome and flip it on its head. For example:

• More people in a small space going somewhere usually means more emissions. But what if more people in a small space going somewhere could mean less emissions? That leads to ideas like close-knit neighborhoods, Uber Pool, or bike share.
• More trees burning usually means more emissions and soot. But what if more trees burning could mean less emissions and soot? For example, burning wood in low-oxygen environments produces biochar, which actually keeps carbon out of the air.

You can also use AI as a thought partner. Emanuel suggests using tools like ChatGPT to work through early ideas. Use AI to play with these “reversal” prompts (e.g., “What if more people in a city meant fewer emissions?”). AI can’t replace insight, but it can help brainstorm possibilities, surface assumptions, and categorize options.

Action step: Pick a problem in your notebook, identify the “obvious” outcome, and then ask: “What if the opposite result were true?” Push your brain into unfamiliar territory – surprising solutions often appear there.

Break Out of Your Box

We often default to experts in our own field for solutions. Emanuel suggests looking as far outside your usual circles as possible: What would a clown, a plumber, or a gamer do?

Creativity often emerges from the most unexpected and imaginative sources. For example, how would a model airplane enthusiast solve bad air quality? Maybe they would fly a drone with a camera over the area. How would a mime solve political deadlock? Maybe they would stage a funny and eye-catching performance in front of the local government building – and have it go viral.

Action step: Identify one problem in your notebook, then brainstorm how five completely different people (a teacher, a plumber, a musician, a gamer, a child) would solve it. You’ll uncover approaches no industry insider would think to try.

Five Whys

Sometimes discovering the real opportunity isn’t about brainstorming endless solutions – it’s about deeply understanding the root of the problem. That’s where the “Five Whys” approach comes in.

Whenever you encounter a problem worth solving, ask yourself “Why?” – then ask it again, and again, five times in total. Each answer pulls you further from symptoms and closer to the root cause.

Emanuel brings this to life with a story: The Lincoln Memorial was crumbling, so expensive chemicals were used for cleaning. But nobody stopped to ask, “Why is the monument getting dirty?” The answer: bird droppings. But why are there so many birds? Because of the spiders. Why so many spiders? Because of the gnats. Why so many gnats? The lights were turned on a bit too early each evening, attracting them. The solution wasn’t better cleaners – it was simply adjusting the lighting schedule.

Here’s how to put this into practice:

• Pick a problem from your notebook.
• Ask “Why is this happening?” and write down the answer.
• Take that answer and ask “Why?” again.
• Repeat this process, going five rounds deep, letting each answer guide the next question.

At every level, notice how the focus shifts and how entirely new solution spaces open up – from cleaning products, to animal control, to environmental tweaks, and beyond.

Action step: For any sticky problem you’ve found, go through the Five Whys and write each layer in your notebook. Pay close attention to where your answers begin to surprise you and watch for unexpected opportunities for innovation along the way. Many of the best startup ideas come from digging just a bit deeper than most people bother to go.