Of course, you will have to have an idea of how your startup would look like, what it does, why people need it and why they would use it. But to get going you just as well think of how to get press attention by the time you’re online.

I started to think about new technologies and what would be cool as well. I wanted to support OpenID. Pretty new back then so I thought it would be cool for early adopters to try my startup, even though I didn’t even know what that would be by that time. I also read about guidelines. I found out that for people with sight disabilities, image controlled websites are very hard to navigate. So that made me want to have a text-based website. One that would also work in the Lynx browser. I also noticed that language is a barrier but brings people together as well –> I wanted my startup to be easy to translate in more languages.

I researched all sorts of websites, mostly those that were succesful and the ones that could have been a great success but had failed. Why? For instance, I decided I wanted a special Press Room (A reporter may like the idea of you thinking of him and help him out). I noticed that advertisements can only be done when users can hardly see them. I did not think of any business model, even though so many books told me I should.

I wrote down things I hated on websites I liked. Advertisements, obligations, privacy concerns and such. Although I may have written down a lot, most of those notes are gone. I may have lost them. But writing it down helps you think.