One neat way to think of startup ideas is to think of a big problem.
That’s how Solar City and SpaceX and Tesla were created, I’m pretty sure.
It’s part of the Thiel method — though his approach focuses more on the secret that might solve something and applies it to a mega problem.
Mega “problems” — aging, need for more bandwidth, getting more people online.
Here’s an obvious one: carbon in the atmosphere.
I have yet to hear of an effort to simply remove carbon from the atmosphere directly. Surely this isn’t completely insane straight off. Trees do it. Just slowly.
So that’s a great topic for a startup: find a way to eat carbon out of the air and have countries pay you to do it. Done.