How do you decide on new ideas?
Both my co-founder and I have many random ideas, and often find ourselves diving right into development after we’ve come up with something new or novel or just quirky.
A few months ago we decided to have a process to help us think through our ideas so that they can go further than just fun for us to build.
Here is what we came up with — 3 criteria and 3 questions to answer for new ideas.
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Criteria for projects and ideas
- ideas we are excited about. Gets us out of bed in the morning excited.
- Something the customer pays for directly. Business model should be simple. Not relying on donations.
- Start generating revenue from day one or from first non prototype/MVP version
- Something we can at least relate to. Know who it is for. Who do we want to help?
- Project is viral in nature, can grow organically
To address on each idea
- Who does this help?
- How do we make money?
- How will it grow organically?
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(I've written more in detail about this on a blog post here)
What do you think? Do you have a similar kind of rule/process for filtering ideas?
#ideation #ideavalidation
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sometimes I feel like there needs to be an existential imperative for you to pursue an idea. and the criteria isn't: who does this help, how do we make money - these things are more "byproducts", the reality being, this needs to be done and someone has to do it, and I think its worth staking my life on this because this idea is so important.
Sounds like a hyperbole, but I think all the greatest ideas came out of existential necessity, and in order to survive through the hell you'll have to go through to realize it "who does this help, and how can we make money" are not going to be the prime motivators to get you there.
I also think that if you think about ideas as "what is so important its worth risking my life for", you change the structure about the kind of ideas you come up with. Crap wont make it through.
Starting a business is a lot like strategy in war but the casualties don't lose their life, they lose their business - for some, a fate worse then death.
The desire and passion (morale) for project is definitely important. I've had experiences where the morale dwindled and progress stopped. Good point!
Really great question Brandon, struggling with it often myself as well. I'm really curious after you applied this thinking what was the first product idea you had which was ticking all the boxes? (it's more of a question for the general audience as well, since you posted Howdy.page)
Thanks Peter. Yeah the first one we decided on was Howdy - an async video messaging service. Notes from answering the questions:
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howdy.page
Who does this help?
People with too many emails in their inbox and struggle to keep up.
How do we make money?
14-day trial, than $[tbd]/mo for every [#] of messages.
How will it grow organically?
To use the service, users will share their Howdy pages for others to record videos, which drives traffic and helps awareness.
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We did a landing page test to test conversion before deciding to go ahead so we have an idea what the conversion to trial is, and a rough guesstimation of trial to pay.
(landing page testing is a topic for another day. I recorded a series of videos on my process and past experience last year: YouTube Link, Skillshare Link)
We've also started testing with different use cases for different target audience. I think we might have found another market that this is good for ;)
Thanks for sharing Brandon, I'll have a look on the additional materials you just linked. Sounds exciting that you found another potential target. I have to say I really like the methodology of deciding on the idea, so I will certainly try it the next time.
The main thing driving the stuff I've built has been to fill a need I've had. I figure that if I have a problem there's probably some other people out there that have it as well, and at the very least I've scratched my own itch. I'm a developer, so the act of building things is enjoyable for me, so even if a project doesn't make a single cent I'm still happy.
It's not the most scientific of methods, and has certainly led to me building things without a large market, but I've never been too concerned with all that and build for the fun of it.
Being able to scratch your own itch is certainly one way to validate an idea - with 4 billion (?) people on earth, you probably won't be the only one having the problem.
The issue for us though is if the idea can sustain a business - we are happy that we get to build things we want to build, but at some point they need to generate revenue so we have to be a bit strategic about how we spend our time.