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'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

williamwilkinson.com

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Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#21

Post by Mikushi »

phillco wrote: post #17
MicahWedemeyer wrote: post #10

Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers…

Survivorship bias. Pretty common. "Look I failed" posts are much rarer.

And that's a shame, i think we could learn a lot from Post Mortem posts of projects, especially if the project fails. It's also a good habit for yourself, to look back at the project, and analyse it, the mistakes that were made, why it didn't work, what would you do differently if you were to start now. When i was a freelancer, and doing my own little flash games, i was almost always do a small report for myself on why it did/didn't work, always a good process to avoid making the same mistakes again and again.

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#23

Post by j_baker »

phillco wrote: post #12
gyardley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds you that when your small ideas require proportionately small efforts, you might as well do them and see what happens. Too many people inappropriately shrug off their smaller thoughts as not worth doing, because they're not going to 'change the world' or some other low-probability outcome.

I noticed this a lot when I tried blogging a couple of summers ago. The articles I thought would be hits bombed, and the stupid ones I wrote just for fun [1] ended up being huge successes. Inevitably, I just resigned myself to the fact that I don't know what'll be successful, and the only way to find out if something will work is to do it. [1] http://phillipcohen.net/articles/simcity/ (got like 30,000 hits)

I've noticed the same thing with comments on HN. More often than not, it's the silly one-liner that gets voted up rather than the thoughtful, introspective, and deep comment. I suppose human attention is always the biggest force you have to contend with.

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#25

Post by GBond »

IMO his big win was getting an iPhone app dev (who can actually execute) agree to make an app for him on the premise of splitting revenue. Either this was real early time of the "App goldrush" before anyone knew money could be made or the dev was a friend (post seems to imply it was a random twitter follower).

Anybody with a reputation as a good iPhone app dev get the age old "idea guy" proposition at least 3 times a week: "I got a great app idea.. I'll give you some of the $ if you code it just for me."

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#26

Post by rgbrgb »

MicahWedemeyer wrote: post #10

Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0 If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree. Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app: http://fakewhale.com I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or acquirers…

What does fakewhale even do? Kind of not a good sign that I couldn't figure that out.

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#27

Post by rgbrgb »

GBond wrote: post #25

IMO his big win was getting an iPhone app dev (who can actually execute) agree to make an app for him on the premise of splitting revenue. Either this was real early time of the "App goldrush" before anyone knew money could be made or the dev was a friend (post seems to imply it was a random twitter follower). Anybody with a reputation as a good iPhone app dev get the age old "idea guy" proposition at least 3 times a…

For what it's worth, if anyone came to me with those screens and that idea, I'd code it in a day. There's a difference between "I have this idea for a game, here's a sketch of a character" and "I have an idea for a simple app that I've already done most of the work on and it will only take a few hours to code".

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#28

Post by zackattack »

rgbrgb wrote: post #27
GBond wrote: post #25

IMO his big win was getting an iPhone app dev (who can actually execute) agree to make an app for him on the premise of splitting revenue. Either this was real early time of the "App goldrush" before anyone knew money could be made or the dev was a friend (post seems to imply it was a random twitter follower). Anybody with a reputation as a good iPhone app dev get the age old "idea guy" proposition at least 3 times a…

For what it's worth, if anyone came to me with those screens and that idea, I'd code it in a day. There's a difference between "I have this idea for a game, here's a sketch of a character" and "I have an idea for a simple app that I've already done most of the work on and it will only take a few hours to code".

can you send me an email? zackster@gmail.com i have an ultraquick iphone app i want to make. i have kickass wireframes already.

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#29

Post by [deleted] »

zackattack wrote: post #28
rgbrgb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, if anyone came to me with those screens and that idea, I'd code it in a day. There's a difference between "I have this idea for a game, here's a sketch of a character" and "I have an idea for a simple app that I've already done most of the work on and it will only take a few hours to code".

can you send me an email? zackster@gmail.com i have an ultraquick iphone app i want to make. i have kickass wireframes already.

[deleted]

Re: 'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.'

#30

Post by GBond »

zackattack wrote: post #28
rgbrgb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, if anyone came to me with those screens and that idea, I'd code it in a day. There's a difference between "I have this idea for a game, here's a sketch of a character" and "I have an idea for a simple app that I've already done most of the work on and it will only take a few hours to code".

can you send me an email? zackster@gmail.com i have an ultraquick iphone app i want to make. i have kickass wireframes already.

^ I rest my case ;)
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