What Makes a Good Idea?

Tim Draper

09.26.19

As a third-generation venture capitalist and founder of Draper University, Tim Draper has seen a ton of good ideas. But what separates the good ideas from the ones that change the world? As Tim puts it, this isn’t “out of the box” thinking--it’s “What box?” thinking.

What Makes a Good Idea?

Summary:

As a third-generation venture capitalist and founder of Draper University, Tim Draper has seen a ton of good ideas. But what separates the good ideas from the ones that change the world? As Tim puts it, this isn’t “out of the box” thinking–it’s “What box?” thinking.

Tim Draper shares some of what he looks for when entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to him. It’s not just little incremental changes that fire Tim’s imagination.

Stan_McChrystal

Stan McChrystal

If you say hey I've figured out how to teleport all of a sudden then people are going whoa teleporting, seems a little crazy but if you really can do it it's gonna to be awesome. So I'm looking for that.

Thuy

You're looking for really out-of-the-box thinking.
Tim_Draper

Tim Draper

Well it doesn't have...what Box?

Thuy

Good point! In your universe there is no box.
Tim_Draper

Tim Draper

I'm looking for people who are taking not just the one leap but sort of multiple abstract leaps to get to where they're going. They say oh this is interesting Energy is coming way down and and compute power is coming way down and so so mining will be...like bitcoin mining will be much much cheaper take a lot less energy, so what does that mean for the future? And this is what we're doing because of that.

So I'm looking for people that are looking at trends. People are living longer lives what does that mean for trends, how does that So you look at a trend and you say - Oh hey we could do something that could take advantage of this in 5 to 10 years and so I'm looking for that future. When they come in, so The things I'm generally looking for Is it new technology, is it being applied in a new way to an industry that's run by by monopolies or oligopolies By big companies that are charging you whatever they want and providing you bad service and we all know what those might be. So then there's an opportunity for an entrepreneur to get in with a little wedge and then grow and start changing the way consumers work and operate.
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