You may be asking yourself, "how do I come up with a good startup idea?" The most important thing to consider when developing an idea is whether the idea solves a customer pain - something that causes a problem for customers. We'll go into more detail on customer pain in Unit 4. But at the very least, be aware at this stage that the most successful ideas solve pains and problems for customers.

For example, Amazon.com was founded on the problem of not being able to find desired books at physical retail locations. LinkedIn was started on the premise that professionals did not want to connect with other professionals over existing social media platforms like MySpace or Facebook. And Fedex was built on the notion that customers were sufficiently dissatisfied with government-run postal services. A company built on an idea that solves a real customer pain has a far greater chance of succeeding than one that is not.