I had previously writeen about the possibility of starting your own business without leaving yout job. (Here) It was based on my assumption that most people know what to do but are not able to do so as they are not ready to leave their jobs. However the comments to the post clearly showed that many of us do not know what we want to do. As Suku says so very clearly no one can tell you what to do but atleast I shall try to guide you.

Look for the problem

I think the problem lies in our education system that needs us to find answers/solutions. The problem is always defined by someone else. But entrepreneurship needs you to find a problem and then go ahead and solve it. Noone told larry and binn to develop a better search engine, they identified it themselves and then solved it. Same is true for any great startup. Unfortunately the same is true for you as well. You shall have to identify the problem to solve.

Fortunately it is not that difficult to identify. Just recall how many times in a day you wish that things were better. You get irritated everytime windows crashes, go and design a operating system that does not crash ;-) .

Well jokes apart that is the exact way atleast we go about selecting an idea. Frustrated with having to go through 10 different newspaper to find a walkin in hyderabad we started mywalkin. Mostly Pari does not have anything  to do at office and we started bakarbakar

So here is a 5 step approach to finding an idea to work on

  1. Carry a frustration diary. Everytime you feel frustrated note it down.
  2. Mention about the situation to your freinds. You will be surprised by how many of them have already faced such a problem.
  3. Once you have 2-3 problems that you think 4-5 of your freinds have faced, start thinking about possible solutions.
  4. Finally select the one that you feel is interesting. This is definitely important because you will have to work on it for atleast 3-4 months before any result is visible.
  5. There is no fifth step :) Go and start working on the problem.

Hope it helps.

P.S: These are my views. I am sure many of you have much better idea than that. Please feel free to post them as comments.

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