What's on your idea checklist?

The book “Side Hustle” gives these five criteria for ranking and comparing ideas:

1. Feasible (possible to even do it, at low cost)
2. Profit potential (clear path to profit)
3. Persuasive (are people compelled)
4. Efficiency (can it be done quickly)
5. Motivated (how interested are you?)

Here is my go-to list for assessing whether I'll start on something:

1. Can I build the MVP in 6 weeks or less?
2. Can potential customers be found online for free?
3. Does a subscription model make sense?

Making sure the businesses have an addressable target customer has been the biggest key to my successful businesses. A lot of hackers(especially engineers) focus too much on the launch and don't spend enough time thinking about building a repeatable process to get new sales.

I absolutely want to point out this video on what flavor of software business to start, by Jason Cohen of WPEngine. It's about financial viability:

B2B versus B2C. Desktop software. Webapps. Mobile apps. Recurring revenue. One-time sales. Yearly versus monthly payments. Marketing budgets. And on and on. So much good stuff in this video!

https://vimeo.com/74338272

The MicroConf videos are some of the most practical in my journey as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, and this one in particular caught my attention, given the various headlines I see on IndieHackers frequently.

Hi Gareth!

Here's an approach I follow:

1. Sleep over it, if it stays -- time to begin
2. Research and gather as much information
3. Have a conversation with a friend/mentor/expert

If I am able to confidently answer the known and the unknown questions I'd give it a go. If not, I'd dig deeper into the topic and weigh it with my existing/current capabilities. :)

Have been mulling over this idea lately.

For me, there are two different checklists depending on where you are financially.

If you are in a situation where you are restrained financially - can't invest in the product, can't spend 40hrs a week on it (need to keep your job), can't afford to outsource tasks you cannot do etc.

Then it is checklist A, which is heavily influenced by revenue.
-Is there an existing market?
-Do I have the skills to provide/create a service or product?
-Can I have everything set up to get my first paying customer within 1 month?
-Do I have a usable superpower in the niche? (established network/deep knowledge/audience)

Checklist B is when financial constraints don't apply.
-Am I the best person to solve this problem?
-Am I passionate about it?

If you are in situation B, profit potential, feasibility, and all the revenue related items can go out the window.

Now you are in a position to go for that long shot and maybe invent a new category, change the way people behave, or have fun trying.

However, it doesn't mean your idea can't go from checklist A to checklist B, for example, you want to create a SAAS business that will help influencers connect with brands.

Initially, you could start it by consulting and calling up influencers and brands and connecting the two and taking commission. Then as your consulting income lets, you have some financial freedom, you could carry on consulting and pay a developer to build the app to connect influencers and brands.

This way could help optimise version 1 of your product as you will build up deep domain knowledge from consulting in it.

Just my two cents.

I found the 10 ways to evaluate a market from The Personal MBA (https://personalmba.com/10-ways-to-evaluate-a-market/) quite insightful:

1. I found out about some aspects that I haven't thought about before.
2. It helps to lay it out in a spreadsheet and see how your ideas compare to each other, you can think more clearly that way.

Of course, it's not precise, but I believe it's good to at least cluster my ideas into promising, maybe and throw-away buckets.

Also, having it written down enables you to revisit your evaluations once you learn something new or the circumstances change in any other way, e.g. you find it's easier to reach an audience than you thought it would be.

Right now, the ideas have to pass following criteria:

1. I'm really passionate about the idea
2. I possess a large junk of skills needed for realization
3. the missing skillset is something I want to learn
4. it has to be small enough that I can build and maintain it myself. Grow and evolve slowly.
5. i see at least a tiny bit of chance to earn something with it

I'm currently really building up my skillset, especially outside of development. Also, I want to finally work on all the ideas i have been thinking about since few years, but never did because they do not seem lukrative enough.
So it's really about doing things that I have a lot of passion for it, at the moment.

I take a different approach than most.

1. I go on with life and when I stumble into a problem and cannot find an easy solution, I begin to craft one in my mind.
2. Is my solution realistic and capable of being brought to fruition?
3. What is the trajectory? Where do I see this thing going?
4. Do I have a potential disruptor on my hands?
5. If the answer to 4 is yes, I begin piecing together details of how things are going to work, profit potential, how big of a team is required, possible future innovations, et al.

I would say the main thing is how confident you are about this idea. In my opinion, to be confident you should:

1. Know very clearly the problem you are trying to solve;
2. Test the idea with a sample of people (there are easy ways to do it, starting from communities like IH or Hacker News);
3. Make a research about existing competition (and be confident you can build something better);

Hi @gareth I am curious. Why do you believe you need a methodical approach for this?

My approach is little methodical but probably boils down to something like this:

1. Does this specific idea support my overall goals?
2. Do I repeatedly think about this idea?
3. Am I confident I will succeed with it?