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7 questions to determine whether your idea is worth turning into a product
by
Alessandro
https://garrickvanburen.com/is-this-a-good-idea/
I love that this emphasizes the importance of identifying a specific customer segment and their frustration as the starting point for any product idea. 🔥
It's so easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new idea and lose sight of whether it actually addresses a real problem for a specific group of people.
Love this. Spot on. We lay out a really similar framework in our DIY Startup School, but with more of a service focus than a SaaSy one. Which brings me to the question of question 6: "What does this look like at >$10K/transaction?"
Are you advocating that any worthwhile idea should ostensibly sell for 10k a pop one day, or is the point more the thought experiment itself?
The question number 4: What’s our unique insight that everyone else has missed? Is the harder question to answer for me.
I'm just a guy trying to solve this frustration for me and for others. Hopefully as I go further into the project I can have more insights on whether my vision would work and how. It may take longer, I know.
Any advice on how to mitigate this issue?
Hey Federico. We work with a similar startup framework and there are a few things I would recommend:
Make sure you really dig into your market research. You won't be able to know what everyone else has missed without knowing what 95% of your competitors are doing and targeting
Actually, it looks like you're still pre-validation so I think after talking more with potential customers and user interviews yadda yadda etc, you'll have a much clearer picture :^) Ideas about the heart of the frustration and your angle should (hopefully) emerge through those conversations.
Could I ask what it is you're thinking of solving?
worth reading..
Excellent read!
I like the point where you mention why will the number of people with this frustration exponentially grow over the next 3 years.
Looking at it that way, it kind of make it easier thinking of a product idea because you can use this type of thinking to develop an idea.
Thanks for this.
Found this to distilled version of questions to get the mindset right before jumping into a project. Certainly bookmarking this.
One important one I've noticed is definitely monetization. There are just some "products" that are better off free.
Good post..!
Great find! Thanks for sharing
Thank you for sharing. Will try to apply these 7 points for our current product.
Good post.
The most important question in this list is question number 4: What’s our unique insight that everyone else has missed?
It's the key to marketing success - what do you bring to the market that is different. It doesn't have to be your product either, you can sell commodity products like pens & notebooks if you combine it with a unique belief system like Bullet Journal for example.
Great blog post! Really important to validate the idea and make sure that there are actually people who will use the idea!
New startup founder here. These questions are spot on. Went through similar questioning myself. The future growth thing is always so difficult. Times change so quickly it really is impossible to say whether interest in your product will grow or whether the product may even become obsolete - well, in tech anyway. I should have got into selling clothes, haha. They're a certainty, aren't they???
These are some great questions. It's especially important to try and predict the future in terms of customer growth. Just because your idea/product is popular now, doesn't mean it will be in 1, 3, 5 years time. This aspect is often overlooked but could be what kills your product.