Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

indiehackers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 32 posts

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#11

Post by snarf21 »

yalogin wrote: post #10
stevenj wrote: post #5

If 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?

How many "you"s are there out there? Is this a space BigCo would bother with? Would the other "you"s trust your more/less than BigCo? Is your issue really that important or does it just annoy you?

In general, the only way to find out is to talk to everyone you can that you think is "you". Ask them if they care. Ask what they'd pay for a solution.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#12

Post by snarf21 »

austincheney wrote: post #3

If 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.

This is interesting but I'd push back. Maybe you can't ask them, maybe you need to show them (demo, etc.) Henry Ford was kinda right that people want faster horses but not after they saw how much nicer the car solved their transportation needs.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#13

Post by scribu »

snarf21 wrote: post #11
yalogin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How many "you"s are there out there? Is this a space BigCo would bother with? Would the other "you"s trust your more/less than BigCo? Is your issue really that important or does it just annoy you? In general, the only way to find out is to talk to everyone you can that you think is "you". Ask them if they care. Ask what they'd pay for a solution.

Better than asking them what they would pay, ask them to actually pay a token amount, with the promise that they’ll get it back if the product never comes to market or doesn’t meet their needs.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#14

Post by rajacombinator »

austincheney wrote: post #3

If 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.

This is really not true. If the idea is so novel that people can’t understand and want it when you pitch it to them, building it is not going to help. You still have to pitch it to them.

I’ll add: if you think it’s true, it probably just means you’re bad at pitching.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#15

Post by [deleted] »

rajacombinator wrote: post #14
austincheney wrote: post #3

If 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.

This is really not true. If the idea is so novel that people can’t understand and want it when you pitch it to them, building it is not going to help. You still have to pitch it to them. I’ll add: if you think it’s true, it probably just means you’re bad at pitching.

[deleted]

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#16

Post by thewayfarer »

Our educational culture has us convinced that we need to have some kind of complete mental process before we produce an answer for some problem. In school, you answer a question by recalling information, making deductions, and only after eliminating your doubts to a sufficient degree do you scratch your answer on a piece of paper. Oh, and a good student is always afraid of being wrong. It's a mentality that we carry into adulthood only to be paralyzed by it. If only we taught kids to instinctively do and produce even at the risk of being wrong or looking like a fool later. We should habitually be exploring, doing, and engaging with problems and ideas. Pursuing the right ideas in your career should amount to selecting from your experiences and the experiences that others have shared with you. What ideas worked and what didn't? How did the outcome conform to your expectations? It doesn't have to be a complete and finished product. What did you learn from making this prototype? What surprised you? No doubt you've have many bad ideas over the years. We all have them. What projects are providing value to you because you enjoy working on them, and what projects look like they could provide real value to others in the world? Those are the projects worth pursuing for the long run.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#17

Post by HenryTheHorse »

thewayfarer wrote: post #16

Our educational culture has us convinced that we need to have some kind of complete mental process before we produce an answer for some problem. In school, you answer a question by recalling information, making deductions, and only after eliminating your doubts to a sufficient degree do you scratch your answer on a piece of paper. Oh, and a good student is always afraid of being wrong. It's a mentality that we carry…

> Oh, and a good student is always afraid of being wrong.

The classical "right/wrong" paradigm followed me into my music playing too. (Just a bedroom guitarist, not a pro.) It took me years to realize that music - and arguably any creative activity - needs a vastly different mindset.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#18

Post by dna_polymerase »

yalogin wrote: post #10
stevenj wrote: post #5

If 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?

If the issue exsits within the software of such a big player, don't bother investing time (e.g something built for Google Docs, or Stripe Analytics...). If it's in the wild and a BigCo could do something, try it.

Re: How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing

#20

Post by thwiv »

pascalxus wrote: post #8

This 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.

You're absolutely right. When I was writing this I wasn't quite exploring it from the perspective of creating a successful business, but rather taking on a project from start to completion, which is something I (and I think a lot of other people) struggle with.
Post reply on HN