Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea whilst employed? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea whilst employed?

#151

Post by ativzzz » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #61

Don't overthink it. You can validate the idea using SEO tools, check if the competitors have traffic and do some detective work to see if they are viable companies. Check the SEO space, and see how many people are running ads on the main search terms, how hard is it to rank for the the main keywords. Check if forums exists, and discount coupons for similar products in marketplaces, check for similar products on produ…

> Interact one on one with at least 15 or 20 people and ask them about their needs.

How do you actually do this? Message random people to hop on a zoom chat for 30 min to discuss their problems? How do you word this? Am I weird that I can't think of anything that someone else could come up with that I would want to chat with a random stranger on the internet if they approached me for this?

Re: Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea whilst employed?

#152

Post by spoiler » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

unity1001 wrote: post #140

psd1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI, that's an unfair conclusion. I'm happy to be corrected, of course. tl;dr: unfair outcomes are more caused by local implementations than by the legal structure. IMO the unfairness in the American legal system comes from the expense of civil litigation, and a criminal justice system with no upper bound on how long defendants can be remanded. Those are not inherent in the English legal system. It is extremely rare…

> tl;dr: unfair outcomes are more caused by local implementations than by the legal structure. Nope. In your defense, you went into intricate details to defend common law. Which is a blunt demonstration of how this framework shapes perspectives of people. That in some detail, something can be found to demonstrate some argument. That's common law. Even that type of thinking is something that is shaped by it because it…

Thank you! I really appreciate the effort and thought that went into this response. Great job!

Re: Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea whilst employed?

#153

Post by AlchemistCamp » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 2:41 AM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #146

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW almost all entrepreneurial efforts I’ve started were while living in east Asia. I did start a house painting business in America when I was 19, though. Due to liability concerns and the fact that I franchised through a chain, I did have to form a company for that. It cost about $150 in fees and took a week. It was a bit of a pain but ultimately not that hard compared to getting a loan, buying a truck, buying lad…

Unrelated but since you're big into Elixir, any thoughts on Gleam? Personally I like it because I like the concepts of Elixir but I can't do dynamic typing anymore after being burned too many times by it. And I'd much rather have a full statically typed language than something bolted on later like type hints in Ruby or Python.

I’m not that interested in Gleam.

I’d embrace the language for what it is and try to discover why it is so many people who generally prefer typed languages still use Erlang/Elixir. After getting to that point, maybe try Gleam if you still feel the need.