How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
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How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
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Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#2Research is a pretty good way to know if your idea is worth pursuing. In my case:
1. Read one of top-voted comments on CS Career Questions sub-reddit in past year.
2. Write blog post on topic, get to #1 on Hacker News.
3. Write intro to book based on blog post ideas, turn into blog post, get to front page of Hacker News.
4. Write book.
5. Sell some books.
Compare to "I had an idea! let's do some work".
Credit: http://stackingthebricks.com/ was hugely helpful in going from "I have an idea!" mindset to "I should rely on research" mindset.
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#3If I had to ask other people then none of my ideas would have been worth pursuing. That is the problem with novelty. If an idea is truly original and fresh nobody else will see the value in it until the work is done and the value is immediately available.
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#4If I had to ask other people then none of my ideas would have been worth pursuing. That is the problem with novelty. If an idea is truly original and fresh nobody else will see the value in it until the work is done and the value is immediately available.
I agree with you to some point. It's not an absolute, some ideas will be both novel and obviously valuable.
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#5If your goal is to build a company, I think you should focus on the following:
1. Find a problem that you (or someone you know very well) have.
2. Look at the existing solutions to the problem and evaluate not only if you can build a better solution, but also how quickly people will switch to something better if they came across it today (i.e. How fed up are people with current offerings? How easy will it be for them to switch?).
3. Build and market something for a very small group of customers or users. Focus on making that group extremely happy with your product or service. (It could be as small as one customer or user at first.)
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#6I have had success using this checklist [0].
0. https://www.tillett.info/2016/01/27/a-good-idea-checklist/
Yes it is mine :)
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#7Good article. Always drowning in good ideas and never enough time to get to most of them.
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#8This post evaluates ideas from the perspective of the person who's doing it, rather than from the customer. This post is not about building a successful business, rather it is about finding out what "you" want to do. These are often, two different things.
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#9If I had to ask other people then none of my ideas would have been worth pursuing. That is the problem with novelty. If an idea is truly original and fresh nobody else will see the value in it until the work is done and the value is immediately available.
Precisely!
Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing
#10If your goal is to build a company, I think you should focus on the following: 1. Find a problem that you (or someone you know very well) have. 2. Look at the existing solutions to the problem and evaluate not only if you can build a better solution, but also how quickly people will switch to something better if they came across it today (i.e. How fed up are people with current offerings? How easy will it be for them…
What if the idea you have is for a real need/issue you face but its trivial for an established player to build in as a feature?