There is a great (as in large) memes swirling around the startup world these days which posits that the best ideas our counterintuitive, running startups is counterintuitive, investing is counterintuitive, etc, etc, etc. Counterintuition is the new intuition!

You could be forgiven as a young founder for reading all of this and resolving very cleverly to list out everything you know about the way the world is and how it works, and then proceed to build a startup that assumes the opposite. As an aside, if you do decide to do this, please blog your experiences.

It is true that it is easy to be dismissive of great ideas and most people are, but this frame that great ideas are counterintuitive is at best helpful in not dismissing out of hand good ideas when they come to you. And you’re a VC that might help you get a few more wins, or a tech worker looking to get into the Next Big Thing early. But, if you’re a founder looking to start a great company, it is a passive mindset that doesn’t get you very far.

If your goal is to build a startup, you need a more proactive strategy; a way to develop a novel thesis and amass the information you will need to execute against it. Think about your worldview—the thing which drives your intuition—as a framework or ruleset which is never fully complete. Intuition is how you apply this ruleset to new sets of facts. 

The best way to develop a better framework than others is to approach the task consciously, and to work constantly at it. While others will often suggest the best thing you can do as a founder is learn to code, this is in fact one of the worst uses of your time (unless you enjoy puzzles, in which case it’s great). Most important software startups in 2014 are fundamentally about solving big human problems within the context of human systems with boring technology. If you accept this premise, your time is best spent developing insights into human needs and behaviors that existing frameworks (conventional wisdom) do not account for.

Ask everyone you meet what they believe, and why. When you’re talking to your Cousin Eddie, ask him about his favorite apps. How does he buy stuff? Does he watch YouTube? How does he find new restaurants or plan his travel? How does he advertise his small business? Does he use Groupon? He loves Groupon because it helps with cash flow? That’s Interesting.

When you meet other founders, ask them how their business works. Treat them as experts with insights that can help you improve your framework. Who are their customers? What do their customers love about the product? What have they tried that customers hated? How do they explain the product to customers? They’re building a marketplace, cool! How much do providers have to make to stay engaged? How many uses before a buyer sticks?

You can do this with academics, teenagers (teens are fucking weird), VCs, etc. Everybody knows something you don’t. Take it. By approaching every conversation as an opportunity to learn about the world, you’ll not only develop a better model of the world and therefore better intuition, but people will probably like you a lot more. “He was really interested in me and my perspective. What a good guy!”

And read. Certainly read the tech press and industry experts. There is genius buried within the echo chamber and sifting through it all is the cost of doing business. But also read outside of tech. Founders would build better consumer experiences if they understood psychology and evolutionary biology. They would be more effective expanding internationally if they understood history and studied languages. They would develop better pricing and engagement mechanics if they had a firm grasp of behavioral economics.

And if you have an area you’re working, talk to customers. Every day. Talk to users of your product, active, inactive, new, and old. Talk to people who don’t want to use your product. Talk to people who are using a competitor’s product. Talk to customers of products in adjacent markets. Now, reread this paragraph and replace talk with listen. Understand how customers see the world. They don’t know the solutions, but they know the problems well. If you haven’t talked to a customer today, you’re doing it wrong.

The simple fact is that the majority of great software startups today (slightly dated) required no technical insight to start, and you can always hire experts to help you scale. The driver of these innovations is an uncommon understanding of what the customer (aka humans) wants or how to deliver an understood solution it in a better way. Note that the latter is typically a business model rather than technical innovation (aka creating win-win situations for participants in a transaction). While it may be unintuitive to outsiders, it’s intuitive to the founders because they developed a better way of thinking about their corner of the world.

So, the next time someone suggests to you that great startup ideas are counterintuitive, tell them that while that may seem to be the case, counter to their intuition, good ideas are usually obvious.