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Idea Validation

Hey everyone! I've been lurking on IH for a few weeks now, and just signed up this weekend. I'd really love to find a SaaS product to build. Some of you are building really cool things.

I noticed that for me, I'm not that great at front end development. I don't know when things look "pretty" or are user friendly. I dread the styling portion of app development. But I was thinking it would be kind of cool to build a platform that would bring together developers like me who want to improve their skills in mocking up layouts, and designers who want to showcase their designs.

I wanted to build a platform that would bring these two sides together. Where if you're a designer, you can upload your design file with what you're design should look like, and then all of the assets that a developer would need, images, font requirements, etc., and then developers on the platform could download the files and use them to practice creating a layout. Because anyone can change font colors or wrap everything in divs, but it would be nice to practice building layouts from good designers, and start to get a feel for what good frontend design looks like.

I don't know if this would be a good idea, but it's definitely a "scratch your own itch" app idea for me. Additionally, I don't know if there's a way to make money from it. But it's the first idea that I thought of and I wanted to put it out there to see what those of you with more experience had to say.

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    As a designer, a concern that comes to mind is that if I spend the time designing something real nice, why would I want to put that online where a developer can basically steal it? They build it and then it's theirs, and no longer mine?

    If there were a way where you could collaborate, and this web service could me the middle man to authenticate, and act as an authority figure in case the partnership ever went south, I would be more interested.

    I've been told that if you want to start a business, you want a cofounder you've worked with or know well. The problem with this is that I could design something really well, and then a developer could build it and steal it, and since I don't know / trust this person, I don't want to share my designs.

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      That's a totally valid concern. I guess the problem I'm trying to solve is having some direction when it comes to practicing design skills. I'm not sure where the value is for the designers. Or how to make it valuable to achieve what I'm going for.

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        I mean, you never know until you build it. Earlier on when I was getting started, I might have been down to work alongside someone to try something! You could post this idea on a designer page on reddit and see what they think?

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