How do you flesh out your ideas before you begin working on them?

Once you have an inkling of an idea (e.g. "Hmmmm...It would be great if there was Uber for Dogs")

The hardest thing for me was to try and stop myself thinking like that and getting these kinds of ideas in the first place!

I recommend training yourself to look for problems instead of thinking of ideas.

So instead of "Hmmmm...It would be great if there was Uber for Dogs," you want to be focussing on things like "oh wow, that's weird - pet owners spend way too much money on travel because Uber won't let them take their dogs with them in the vehicle..."

It's much easier to work forward from problem --> solution, than back from idea --> related problem this idea solves. This is because people are generally indifferent to your ideas, but are happy to spend time talking to and helping you if you're trying to solve a problem they have.

My (very, very rough) workflow is something like:

1. Discover a problem
2. Talk to people and quantify size/urgency of problem (and existing solutions)
3. Work out some product which should solve the problem (by getting commitments of the type "if I build X to solve your problem Y, do you commit to paying me Z?"
4. Do some more sales to make sure I really understand the market, problem and ideal product
5. Build the product
6. The hard work begins ;)

Good luck!

A lot of great points already that I completely agree with. I've found that it can be extremely effective to write one-page document on the problem/solution research that has been suggested by @louisswiss and others here. That writing process forces me to clear out the fluff in the concept.

Then, I share that document with as many (a) potentially relevant contacts I have willing to listen to another business pitch and (b) like-minded entrepreneurs who I can count on to give feedback since they think about these things a lot. I've found it's one of the fastest ways to get a lot of early input on something before I start doing any significant work.

Here is an example of the last one that I filled out that follows the format I like: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aMKtcrT3m4Ce_PjgQpaJongliQlJ0VN-s2wNihq37B8/edit

First, I wouldn't start with a random "idea" (Uber for X, or whatever other formula). I would start by ensuring I'm building something people want by simply picking a common universal desire of some kind.

The advantage is that you don't need to do any customer development to know that people like to eat good food, to increase their social status, to satisfy their curiosity, to gain more power over their life, and so on.

Then I would look at the way people satisfy that desire currently, and I would try to see if there's some way to create a product that does it: better, cheaper, differently.

There's a bunch of ways to differentiate a product, and just going through a list methodically will give you a bunch of ideas:

• Can you make the product more specific to a niche/audience? (segment by gender, industry, geography, etc.)
• Can you offer more features?
• Can you make it accessible to people who couldn't access it?
• Can you make it more exclusive?
• Can you improve on the design of existing products? (make it more aesthetically pleasing, more environmentally friendly, etc.)
• And so on

Before you've got a product that: a) solve a real need better than existing solutions b) has a really clear competitive advantage/differentiation, you should probably think about those.

After the brilliant idea comes to your mind:

Ask yourself what will be the difference between the people who uses your idea and the people who did not use.

What people problem you will solve?
What profit will they get?
How they solve that problem now?
If they does not solve this problem, maybe it's not a problem?

I came up with my final idea by going through a bit curated list of passion project concepts I had thought of over the past few months.

The reason why I chose the project that I did is due to the strongest gut feeling and passion towards it.
When you get bored of a project the only thing that will bring you back to continue to work on it is some form of motivation. My motivation was my strong heartfelt passion towards helping other developers.

I use the Lean Canvas. There is a subscription based online tool for it, but I simply use Google Sheets for my canvases. I recommend reading the book that explains it all "Running Lean" by Ash Maurya

I'm the type that gets extremely hyped up about tons of ideas on a day to day basis - chasing colored balloons all the time :) So I'm aware that I need a filtering process to kill most of those ideas, in order not to get distracted.
What I usually do is I sleep on it for a few weeks - try not to think about it at all. All kinds of arguments pro/against that idea will start naturally popping up (my mind will work unconsciously). This is the stage when most of those ideas die on their own.
The next step will be to make a list of the arguments why I'm the only person who can build/do that, how I'll differentiate from anyone else.
And I'll then go talk to a few people I trust - they're great strategic thinkers, they know my blind spots, and don't have a problem challenging my ideas, contradicting me, providing good reasons why my idea might not work, and also changing their minds when they're wrong.

Ray Dalio also has a process for killing ideas that he explains in his TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_where_the_best_ideas_win
Or listen to the podcast episode he did last autumn with Tim Ferriss: https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/
He wrote about these in his book Principles, but you might want to listen to the previous resources first (if you haven't already).

Wait for 1 month. If you still find the idea interesting, then try validating it.

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