When I'm trying to help founders find new startup ideas, I usually start by trying to figure out what's unusual about them. What do they know or care about that few other people do? There's usually something, and it often leads to an idea.
If this new idea was already inside them, why hadn't it bubbled to the surface? Two reasons: they didn't realize what was unusual about them, and they discounted it as a source of ideas.
One reason people discount their unusual qualities as a source of ideas is that they think of them as random, or even weaknesses. But even apparent weaknesses can be sources of ideas.
Having failed to make their previous idea work is a particularly fruitful source of ideas, because in the process of working on it the founders will have seen things that very few other people have seen.
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