Chris Dixon’s Idea Maze

A colleague kindly shared this article with me: “The idea maze” by Chris Dixon [2013]

TL;DR:

  • Most ideas have been tried in the past.
  • Spend some time learning from the past to save you time focusing on ‘provably’ wrong priorities/making similar mistakes.
  1. Learn from history (especially for failures)
  2. Build by analogy (to similar businesses)
  3. Consider startup theories (for best practices)
  4. Learn from direct experience (put yourself into interesting idea mazes and give yourself time to figure it out)