I suppose the ubiquitous nature of smart phones gives the common person more exposure to software than ever before, therefore compelling some to pitch half baked app ideas ('how about an app like Facebook, but in 3D!').
You never know though, there might be some buried gold in some suggestions. You just need your stupid-crap filter set on high :)
There's a technique for getting out of the state when you're out of ideas (writer's block & the like.) Generate a few purposefully silly or outlandish ideas and work from that.
At a risk of sounding horrible (I'm not), did you finish writing the article? I mean, if you don't listen to all ideas that people have to offer you, then you're bound to dismiss a good idea at some point.
10 years or so ago, when I was a game programmer, I used to have the same "I've got an idea for a game" problems.
Most ideas were useless, some were poorly thought out "Like X but Y", for example "Like Command and Conquer but set in space"; others were far too difficult to construct.
Then, I was told an idea for a great puzzle game. I decided the idea was so great I made the originator of the idea my wife ;)
I don't normally up-vote amusing comments but I really could not resist for this one. The most amusing comment I have read on hacker news so far and the only to really make me smile today. Thank you!
Thanks... I don't submit many longer posts since I've limited myself to checking news sites from my phone (for productivity reasons). So this one-liner generated about six months of Karma for me :)
It had a slight iPhone success. ~5,000 copies, never got very much publicity despite an average review of about 4.5, now taken down I'm afraid.
I'm currently playing around doing a HTML (DOM, not 5) version. Unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like to play with such things on the side. Everyone who has played it agrees it's fun.
Limiting the scope of your idea helps a lot with execution. Kenta Cho blows me away with the crazy number of games he releases. He releases a new one every few days! [1] But if you look at his source code, it's very short and about 90% of it is reused each time.
The tower building game mechanic in World of Goo was the result of a similar rapid-prototyping exercise. Braid started out as a quick prototype, too. Having lots of ideas isn't bad; you just need a way to spew things into a playable state quickly so you can filter out the chaff.
This talk by Jonathan Blow (author of Braid) has totally changed how I think about writing games, and certainly since I listened to it I've got much closer to finishing any of my personal projects than I have in years, hopefully will release something soon (I believe that games are one of the few areas where 'release quick, release often' is a bad idea, although I seem to be getting proved wrong by minecraft).
The best answer I give is an honest one. "I'm too busy with contracts, and I have a number of my own ideas that I'd love to be working on.[1]"
This answer brings up the commonly echoed sentiment among my mobile developer cohort of the tradeoff between client contracts and your own product work. One is easier, one pays off long term.
I get the same kind of thing, but not aimed at iPhone apps-- rather, start-up ideas.
My approach is to first ask people who their customers will be, and how they plan on selling to them-- and then, if they get past that, I'll hear what the idea is.
I don't have a problem hearing from people with ideas, what I have a problem with is 9 out of 10 people fail to execute and as a result, waste my time. It seems that to many, having a business, or an app idea, is as far as it gets. As an entrepreneur, that bugs the hell out of me.
He's not referring to the fact that they try and fail, it's that they fail to TRY. I have the same problem as well. People are always excited and impatient to set up a meeting to talk about an "app/website idea" they're really serious about. I'll take the time to put them in my schedule, go meet them somewhere and listen to them talk for an hour or two, and thats as far as it ever gets. Everybody wants to talk about their idea, and most seem to think I should be willing to work for some equity.
My last experience with this is fairly typical. A restaurant manager I worked with a couple years ago had "a brilliant idea". He was emailing and calling me constantly, refused to talk over the phone and was doing anything he could to get me into a meeting A.S.A.P. since he 'really wanted to get rolling on this'. I heard him out and quoted him $4,000. Never heard from him again. I tried calling once, left a voice mail, and attempted to follow up on two occasions via e-mail and nothing.
And _that's_ what he's talking about. People that waste our time in meetings and don't ever follow through.
This is exactly it. In fact, I was just talking with my partner last week about the fact that almost every time we get a potential client or lead that wants to meet or talk on the phone first, it almost always never turns into real work. On the contrary, our best clients rarely, if ever, request meetings or phone/face time.
His idea was that to these "idea people," the meeting is a replacement for work. I'm not sure what I think, aside from the fact that I'm tired of wasting my time.
I have an experience just like this. I was telling my (now) cofounder in glorious detail why his list of ideas sucked or required way too much work, and then one of them ... well actually, that one was pretty cool. Now we've built it!
So let's say I take the author's advice, 'always listen to ideas', and unlike the author, get told an awesome idea by a friend-of-a-friend with zero ability to execute.
Great, now what?
Do I really set up a working relationship with this person, who's likely dead weight and valueless now that the idea's been revealed? Do I give him the ownership he thinks he deserves, which is a 50-50 split if I'm lucky? Do I just build it myself?
I prefer to avoid such ethical quandaries, which is why I stick to my own ideas.
If the idea is solid and fleshed out (bonus: On paper) and not just a one-liner like "it's My____ but for Chilean expats in Micronesia", then they deserve more than just "build it myself and then Winklevoss them".
Maybe they can do balsamiq mocks of the interface, can run the incorporation/LLC paperwork gauntlet (if it's more than just an app), do beta testing, buy devices to test on, pay you a "solidarity" stipend, research, marketing, wrangle a QA or translation staff on Mechanical Turk.
No one ever has "zero ability to execute". It can't just be about the coding.
How are they "less than zero" if they gave you an idea that a) you would've never thought of yourself in any amount of brainstorming or b) was so insanely great that you jumped at the chance to actually do it.
Would people who are passionate enough to really think things through with their idea contribute less than zero? I'm not talking about the fictional coked-out, fast talking movie exec with logline "business plans" that want 60% + a seat on the board. If you're talking with that kind of person, then of course you don't take it on.
The vast majority of people who are aware of a single great idea probably either heard it from some other party or just got incredibly lucky. People who can consistently come up with good ideas are a tiny minority compared to the amount of people who are aware of a good idea.
It's really easy to contribute negatively to a project. On the business end, I've worked with people who changed priority/direction/feature-sets so frequently that they actually made things worse; the project would have been better without them, hence a negative contribution.
On the technical side, have you never worked with a programmer that insisted on introducing his favorite framework/language, or declared that the "current code sucks, it needs to be re-written"? That's potentially a negative contribution. Hell I've even been that guy. It's not only possible, it's common.
Sure, but if the person actually had the idea that created the entire venture, it can't really be negative unless their influence runs it to the ground and puts the company in debt, I guess.
In my experience, rewriting code almost always ends up a net positive.
I think the negative influence is usually more in line of those who resist change such that so much cruft accumulates, that it truly becomes too dangerous to change anything.
Yes, in a perfect world they could contribute those things but the chances of that being so are just too unlikely. If they could afford/justify any financial contribution, they'd probably just pay you to build it for them and have complete ownership.
If you have a bit of a track record, you will get people looking to partner with you and coast on your experience - in 99% of cases, it won't be enough to carry their part of the bargain or even be anything but a distraction or pressure.
Then there's the issue of feeling like you must persist with an idea you've lost faith in because they're still keen. Maybe you have countless other ideas to push that should be a greater priority, while this is their only bun in the oven.
I'm uncomfortable when people want to volunteer their ideas to me for exactly that reason. There's also usually an implicit question: how much will it cost you to build this for me?
Rather than hearing someone's idea for an app I'd much prefer to hear about an existing, unsolved problem that they have. You know, an actual problem worth solving. Those tend to be the more fruitful variety of ideas, IMHO.
I had this friend who called up to talk about an idea. I listened for about 20-30 mins, made what i thought were meaningful questions, then asked him, i have an idea too and if he wants to listen? He said, he'll call back in an hour and was gone. I guess, he wanted me to execute the idea:-). Btw, am working on implementing that idea of mine, only it's going slower than i would like it to.
This is why movie studios explicitly say they won't read your scripts and film suggestions if you send one in. They want to be able to make a film without the danger of being sued for stealing ideas.
As the world's largest toy company, Mattel employs a large staff of designers to develop new ideas....
Because of this... Mattel does not accept or consider any unsolicited ideas or materials for products or services, or even improvements to products or services, such as ideas, concepts, inventions, or designs for toys, games, videogames, books, scripts, screenplays..... Therefore, you must not send to Mattel.... any Unsolicited Ideas and Materials. Any Unsolicited Ideas and Materials you post on or send ... will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary User-Generated Content – regardless of whether you mark them "confidential", "proprietary", or the like.
Mattel finds that many submissions that it receives... are already in the public domain; or are identical or substantially similar to products developed or in development by our own staff; or, for a host of many other reasons, are not novel or unique. So if, you send us any of your Unsolicited Ideas and Materials despite our request that you not do so, it's likely they're identical or substantially similar to ideas, concepts, and materials that, in the past, were developed by our staff or submitted to us by others.
Most (all?) video game developers do the same: A disclosure that says "we have LOTS of ideas already, and your ideas may be similar, so we can't agree not to create anything that includes your ideas."
You explain the situation to them, and ask them if they'd be ok with 5% for the idea, expanding to more if they take an active role and actually help execute the idea. If they're not OK with that, explain that it just isn't worth it to you.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's not like that's the one and only Great Idea out there and it's certainly not worth ruining a friendship over.
How would you actually go about giving them 5%? It seems very complicated. Presumably it's after Apple's cut. There are also expenses. Is it a handshake deal? Is there a legal document? Is it 5% for all time? What about tax considerations since the government may think you got 100%, instead of just 95%?
Exactly. The other day I was hanging out with some relatives from out of town and my uncle dropped that famous line, "I have an idea for an app." I had been functioning under the same notion that I should always listen to people's ideas, so I listened.
He then says, "I'll tell you, but if you build it I want 50%." I said, "Fine." In my mind I'm thinking, "No way I'm building this." Then he says, "OK, my idea is a contact management application for the iPhone. They have them for the PC, but they don't have them for the iPhone." That's it. That's his whole idea.
That's when I realized I should stop listening to people's ideas about apps because he just basically told me that I can't build any contact management apps without giving him half the profits. If I listen to too many people's ideas, I won't be able to build something without being sued because someone else "gave me the idea".
Was your relative asking for a percentage stake in the company or a percentage of the profits? In either case, what I would tell him is that his percentage will be in rough proportion to his overall contribution to the project. Lots of ideas are needed to design, create, market and sell an app. Why should his one idea be favored above the others? At best, one could weigh his idea in proportion to its usefulness toward the end-product. He thinks he contributed 50% to the end product but why that number? Why not 10%? In any case, I don't think he should be paid anything until you recoup your fixed development costs. What if the idea doesn't pan out? It seems to me that he wants the risk-free part of supplying the ideas but wants you to go through the trouble and expense of building it. Did he offer to pay you anything for the trouble? I think most people would love to spend their days just dreaming up ideas and getting paid for other people implementing them. Indeed, this is my big problem with software patents and patent trolls in particular.
You fell down when he started talking about ownership split and you continued the conversation. At that point, I would decline politely to continue the line of discussion.
"Do I really set up a working relationship with this person, who's likely dead weight and valueless now that the idea's been revealed? Do I give him the ownership he thinks he deserves, which is a 50-50 split if I'm lucky? Do I just build it myself?"
This is pretty much the plot of the Social Network.
Just out of curiosity, what would you advise these people who have ideas, but aren't technically proficient, to do? Is there a correct way to approach someone? Should they prepare something before talking to you to show they are serious (maybe a short write up, or a sketch)?
Haha... I will say "mock up" from now on. Thanks! (My dragon would probably end up looking like a fire breathing cow anyway) Great advice about securing customers first. If you can't do that it's probably not worth either of your time.
I wasn't poking fun at your word choice, don't worry. I'm just sort of skeptical that product-related process documents actually add any value. Money? Customers? These are things I don't have enough of. Documents? Any idiot can write documents. Many do.
Yes. The number one, guaranteed way to get a developer's attention is to go and sell your idea. Literally. Sell the would-be product to someone and get a contract. Sure, that contract will be full of outs for the buyer, but it's still a contract.
Getting to this point is a lot of work. It means you will have thought things through. It means you will have talked to your customers. It means you probably have mocked something up. You have probably invested a small amount of cash.
But mostly it means someone will pay for it which elevates your idea from "nope - waste of time unless you give me $20k" to "ok, we may have something here".
If you want to pay market rates (cash), I'd say show up with a mockup. If you want to convince a developer to join you for equity, show up with a sale.
Some years back, a guy named Bill and his buddy contacted a company making kit computers and said "we have a BASIC interpreter we'd like to sell you". The company said "a dozen others have said the same thing; we'll pay whoever delivers one." A few weeks later, Bill & pal delivered.
Thanks for the advice. I honestly hadn't thought of securing commitments prior to developing a prototype. But it's definitely better to find out if people are willing to buy prior to investing a substantial amount, if possible.
hi frankiewarren; I was a Java/Sql/PHP/HTML programmer for several years and now I'm a senior BA. This is how I'd interact with you..
When anyone approaches me with an idea, I immediately tell them I'm not going to program it, but I'd be happy to guide them in the docs they need to successfully contract it out. We have a short sitdown chat and I walk them through vision -> target audience -> user goals -> stories -> use cases -> flowchart -> actions -> screen mockups. It's their job to write all the docs. I read them, make suggestions of what areas to look into, a minimal feature set to launch first, errors and recovery, etc. This idea development work encourages the serious people and stops the dilettantes. I get to hear new ideas (I love ideas) and I can choose which ones I'd want to be involved with.
There have been a few awesome ones, and one is being built.
My advice is:
* Think why your idea better than what's already there (or why it's easier to find, easier to use, etc)
* Practice your enthusiastic sales pitch of why it's so awesome. If you don't love it noone else will.
* Don't give up if the first 10 people don't like it. (but, consider a new idea after 30 people run away)
Good advice indeed. The process of analyzing ideas itself is implicitly difficult so, at the very least, it's nice to have an opportunity to hone that skill.
I always get this tiring feeling when someone comes up to me to talk about an idea. Especially if it's one of these "fast talking" kind of people. Most of them involve some kind of "social X". Even more saddening is how the people that have these "ideas", have no clue how to market it, where profit comes from, and so forth.
I believe that the only time I've heard of a decent or good idea was from fellow programmers or designers, rather than "business men" or founders of small companies and claim they know it all. Then after they explain their idea, they expect you to invest 90% of your time on the product, promise you a certain ownership percentage (usually ~10%?), rather than paying a good salary up-front; so if it flops they didn't lose any of their time or had to invest any amount of cash. I believe something similar to this happened to some dude who then open-sourced the project. I forgot what project that was, it happened recently.
You can of course listen to anyone's idea, but as the article stated, the chance that it's not another dumb or over-done idea is usually very slim.
Ha, and what'll be next..? Well, I guess I'm also quite thankful in a way that noobs like that don't actually get good idea's in the first place, although it can be quite annoying.
I know this is not directly related but being a web developer I generally get something similar. I get the old "Oh we should meet up sometime, my brother is looking for a website". And they think they are doing me a favour when they offer me £100 to do them a site.
Yup, this has happened to me several times back in high school, when all the shitty bands used to approach me asking to make a website. At first I was like "yeah, cool!" and then they automatically expected me to update it consistently and do things like handle merchandise sales. LOL. Yeah right. Then they get mad at me for not maintaining it. I'm like "I made the thing, you update it".
That was my lesson. I don't make websites anymore for people without charging thousands of dollars and an hourly fee for any future work.
I think every programmer in some respects goes through that, that's how we make mistakes and learn from them.
I wouldn't be surprised if most developers actually did their first project for nothing at all, I think we all under value our skills to start with and it takes time to realise how much our skills are worth.
That's what I find funny when you put a "real" bill into do a site and you see the owners face, if their initial reaction is, "how much??!", I know it's time to go quoting for a different project.
I think people always expect you to be on a learning curve when creating sites, like they think they are doing you a favour by you building it for them as it's good experience for you.
I don't know what it is with jobs where it is more of a service than labour but I feel we all get a bum rap, it's the same with SEO, I think people think it hardly takes any time at all. If I asked my friend, who is a joiner, to do some work for me, I can see the work being done and I can appreciate the time and effort gone into it, it's almost like people cannot appreciate the time projects take us.
Don't get me wrong, I have put sites together in 16 hours from scratch but they are basic sites and I don't want to maintain them. They have been favour jobs or such like, it's not how I plan spending the rest of my life.
I think the one thing I take from this story is that all people think their idea is unique or will always work. 99% of the time, the people have done no research into competition or if they have they have not evaluated the competition well enough. It's good when you do get a good idea but this does again come down to the execution, you have to be able to rely on your partner to do their fair share.
Actually to expand on this, I once put a price in to do a site, it was a brochure site, nothing amazing. I put in a low price as it was for a business a friend worked at (a beauty shop). It was a small business, not much free cash so I did it at a very good rate. I then found out via a phone call one day that I had not got the project as she had hired a company that was charging her twice as much.
To give me a real kick, I actually found out when the other company rang me to ask for DNS login details to change the A records, she had not even told me herself I had not got it or given the chance to show designs and a development plan.
It turns out she thought she would be getting a better service and end result as I was charging less when in fact I was doing it as a favour. It goes to show it can work either way!
Problem with being a smallish web development company is that you're either getting the difficult dregs, or you're hoping large multi-disciplinary agencies don't lure away your lucrative gems.
I don't see the problem? You just tell them your fee is more than that, and that's it.
Basically, you either work for free (as a favour to friends or charity) or full charge. No in between.
The power of "free" over "friend's fee" is that they know it's a favour so they can't feel entitled to anything--and if they still do, you may feel entitled to take a dump in their kitchen sink (free of charge).
I feel like I have to jump in here. The worst clients I've ever had (and also the worst clients other businesses I've worked with have had) are the ones you do charity work for (family included). When people aren't paying for something, they place absolutely no value on your time, and without fail the relationship will sour at some point.
I'd charge a friend or charity a lower rate that they can afford but strategically set such that their budget (and amount of work they get) seems finite to them. Forces them to come up with their plan and execute, instead of "yeah that's nice, but my friend said THIS would be a better idea...can you just redo the whole thing??" Yes, you can say no, but like I said if there are expectations on either side, it can sour the relationship.
I'm with you. I lie about what I do to half my friends to avoid their hurt expressions when they find out that I'm not going to bunker down for the next 2 weeks writing their app for free.
Or, "It's sure to make millions of dollars, but the idea is so revolutionary and so top secret that I can't tell you anything about it until you agree to do all the work." Oy.
There is no value in ideas. It is always about hardworking with intelligent sense.
Ideas are like seeds. You can grow a Giant Sequoia out of it. But if you don't know how you can not even grow a bean bud.
There are still a tiny fraction of vary good ideas that are worth something. Pagerank is a classic example where the idea was clearly worth something the problem is even great ideas tend to be worth less than 5% of the company after a year or so.
The hard part is sticking to your guns and actually telling your 'friend' that sounds like a good idea. You can pay me X/hour to build and market it or I can build it and hand over 5% of the profits it's up to you.
Acting condescending towards people who don't understand my field for not understanding my field could be counter productive? Yeah, this is a no-brainier.
The anti-"idea guy" attitude was all ego, no logic. I can't say I'm surprised that it took off as well as it did, it felt good and matched the reality that most ideas suck so it was easy to adopt. I'm not surprised, but a disappointed that more people didn't recognize it for what it was. Oh well, being the only guy hearing the good ideas was fun while it lasted.
I got an email the other day, from a young kid wanting me to sign a NDA, so I could quote him on his idea. I suggested he look at programming himself, and he did not take it well. I did explain to him that signing an NDA would be a disservice to me, if I was working on a similar idea, but he did not see the problem with that.
This is the same philosophy I take with regards to meetings. I'd gladly take a coffee, lunch, or other meeting with anyone who is interested because you never know what may come out of it. Sure, sometimes I'm busy, but there's always time for lunch and coffee. Take meetings, have conversations, let 1,000 flowers bloom or whatever the relevant expression is. But I also state in advance that our conversation is not subject to any non-disclosure agreement, and I explain that we are both free to do with the information whatever we like. If they're not comfortable with that, I explain that the purpose of the meetings is to see what mutual value we can bring each other. That's enough to screen the random meetings.
I've found that the fastest way to get people to stop telling you their ideas (that they want you to build), is start telling them exactly how THEY could accomplish it.
Them: "I've got this awesome idea for software that tracks traffic jams!"
Me: "Sure, you just need to link up existing maps and satellite imagery from Google to traffic cameras...."
Them: "Uh..."
Me: "Of course, you have to be able to monetize the massive amount of data you'll be moving around, so you need to consider how people will be accessing this? Would it be through a GPS device, or is it a smartphone app, or is this just for commercial (TV stations, police, DOT) applications?"
Them: "Uh...I also had an idea for this other thing..."
Thats a great suggestion, I usually listens for some time and ask a few from my point of view meaningful questions.
I usually finish off by asking them to send me an email and summarize their thoughts and to explain it in more detail.
Most of the times, the email never lands in my inbox, but when it finally does, theres usually something to it.
You're right, this will be a fast way to get people to stop telling you their ideas. But if you're trying to shut people up then you've missed the OP's point.
You can easily make normal people feel like their idea is worthless and you have mountains of business acumen that, obviously, they must lack. Do this enough times and what you'll find, just like you'd hoped, people stop telling you their ideas.
I'd argue that every time you do this you are shutting down opportunities to collaboratively create ideas that would probably work. Part of being "lucky" is increasing your exposure to failures [1].
When someone approaches you with an idea, you've certainly got a better feel for what will "work" more than you're average person. Consider taking the time to give feedback, help shape it, brainstorm with it. You might find that between the two of you what you create is bigger than what either one could come up with individually.
This applies in all areas of personal relationships, not just iPhone games.
[1] "To increase your chance of success, double your failure rate" - attributed to Tom Watson
My point isn't to "shut people up". If it was, that's what I would have written.
My point is to get people out of the mindset of "if I could someone ELSE to do all of the hard work, I'd be a gazillionaire."
My approach is to tell YOU how to seize the opportunity and get your idea rolling; I'm far too busy to do all of the work for you so you can retire rich, but I will gladly point you in a great direction and lay out your next steps. The reality is that you won't do it once you realize that YOU will actually have to do the grunt work.
this is brilliant! in fact I used this technique out of instinct a couple of times (including with my father, who is an avid web app idea maker, lol!).
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadI suppose the ubiquitous nature of smart phones gives the common person more exposure to software than ever before, therefore compelling some to pitch half baked app ideas ('how about an app like Facebook, but in 3D!').
You never know though, there might be some buried gold in some suggestions. You just need your stupid-crap filter set on high :)
".. That’s when I decided: always listen to ideas .."
Most ideas were useless, some were poorly thought out "Like X but Y", for example "Like Command and Conquer but set in space"; others were far too difficult to construct.
Then, I was told an idea for a great puzzle game. I decided the idea was so great I made the originator of the idea my wife ;)
Was it successful?
I'm currently playing around doing a HTML (DOM, not 5) version. Unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like to play with such things on the side. Everyone who has played it agrees it's fun.
1. http://wonderfl.net/user/ABA/codes
The tower building game mechanic in World of Goo was the result of a similar rapid-prototyping exercise. Braid started out as a quick prototype, too. Having lots of ideas isn't bad; you just need a way to spew things into a playable state quickly so you can filter out the chaff.
http://the-witness.net/news/2011/06/how-to-program-independe...
You mean Star Craft?
Yeah, that kind of game could never become popular, right? ;)
This answer brings up the commonly echoed sentiment among my mobile developer cohort of the tradeoff between client contracts and your own product work. One is easier, one pays off long term.
[1] This does not necessarily mean for profit. See http://rawsyntax.com/post/5982784556/importance-of-side-proj...
My approach is to first ask people who their customers will be, and how they plan on selling to them-- and then, if they get past that, I'll hear what the idea is.
You think it's a bigger problem for you than it is for those who fail?
I don't understand your point.
My last experience with this is fairly typical. A restaurant manager I worked with a couple years ago had "a brilliant idea". He was emailing and calling me constantly, refused to talk over the phone and was doing anything he could to get me into a meeting A.S.A.P. since he 'really wanted to get rolling on this'. I heard him out and quoted him $4,000. Never heard from him again. I tried calling once, left a voice mail, and attempted to follow up on two occasions via e-mail and nothing.
And _that's_ what he's talking about. People that waste our time in meetings and don't ever follow through.
His idea was that to these "idea people," the meeting is a replacement for work. I'm not sure what I think, aside from the fact that I'm tired of wasting my time.
Great, now what?
Do I really set up a working relationship with this person, who's likely dead weight and valueless now that the idea's been revealed? Do I give him the ownership he thinks he deserves, which is a 50-50 split if I'm lucky? Do I just build it myself?
I prefer to avoid such ethical quandaries, which is why I stick to my own ideas.
Do you only listen to ideas from people that can execute? What would you do if you got an awesome idea from someone who couldn't?
Maybe they can do balsamiq mocks of the interface, can run the incorporation/LLC paperwork gauntlet (if it's more than just an app), do beta testing, buy devices to test on, pay you a "solidarity" stipend, research, marketing, wrangle a QA or translation staff on Mechanical Turk.
No one ever has "zero ability to execute". It can't just be about the coding.
Would people who are passionate enough to really think things through with their idea contribute less than zero? I'm not talking about the fictional coked-out, fast talking movie exec with logline "business plans" that want 60% + a seat on the board. If you're talking with that kind of person, then of course you don't take it on.
The vast majority of people who are aware of a single great idea probably either heard it from some other party or just got incredibly lucky. People who can consistently come up with good ideas are a tiny minority compared to the amount of people who are aware of a good idea.
On the technical side, have you never worked with a programmer that insisted on introducing his favorite framework/language, or declared that the "current code sucks, it needs to be re-written"? That's potentially a negative contribution. Hell I've even been that guy. It's not only possible, it's common.
I think the negative influence is usually more in line of those who resist change such that so much cruft accumulates, that it truly becomes too dangerous to change anything.
If you have a bit of a track record, you will get people looking to partner with you and coast on your experience - in 99% of cases, it won't be enough to carry their part of the bargain or even be anything but a distraction or pressure.
Then there's the issue of feeling like you must persist with an idea you've lost faith in because they're still keen. Maybe you have countless other ideas to push that should be a greater priority, while this is their only bun in the oven.
Rather than hearing someone's idea for an app I'd much prefer to hear about an existing, unsolved problem that they have. You know, an actual problem worth solving. Those tend to be the more fruitful variety of ideas, IMHO.
See the following excerpt from Mattel Website TOS at http://service.mattel.com/us/tandc.asp:
As the world's largest toy company, Mattel employs a large staff of designers to develop new ideas....
Because of this... Mattel does not accept or consider any unsolicited ideas or materials for products or services, or even improvements to products or services, such as ideas, concepts, inventions, or designs for toys, games, videogames, books, scripts, screenplays..... Therefore, you must not send to Mattel.... any Unsolicited Ideas and Materials. Any Unsolicited Ideas and Materials you post on or send ... will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary User-Generated Content – regardless of whether you mark them "confidential", "proprietary", or the like.
Mattel finds that many submissions that it receives... are already in the public domain; or are identical or substantially similar to products developed or in development by our own staff; or, for a host of many other reasons, are not novel or unique. So if, you send us any of your Unsolicited Ideas and Materials despite our request that you not do so, it's likely they're identical or substantially similar to ideas, concepts, and materials that, in the past, were developed by our staff or submitted to us by others.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's not like that's the one and only Great Idea out there and it's certainly not worth ruining a friendship over.
He then says, "I'll tell you, but if you build it I want 50%." I said, "Fine." In my mind I'm thinking, "No way I'm building this." Then he says, "OK, my idea is a contact management application for the iPhone. They have them for the PC, but they don't have them for the iPhone." That's it. That's his whole idea.
That's when I realized I should stop listening to people's ideas about apps because he just basically told me that I can't build any contact management apps without giving him half the profits. If I listen to too many people's ideas, I won't be able to build something without being sued because someone else "gave me the idea".
This is pretty much the plot of the Social Network.
Isn't that Instagram? So yeah, always listen to ideas :-)
There are few niches still unexplored. :)
Checks, letters of intent from customers who they've sold the pre-extant system to +, customer lists, etc.
Sketches are nice, too. I prefer charcoal as a medium and dragons as a subject. A good sketch makes a great complement to a check or LOI.
+ Happens all the time. Really.
* You're serious * You're a good salesman * There's a market for your idea
Getting to this point is a lot of work. It means you will have thought things through. It means you will have talked to your customers. It means you probably have mocked something up. You have probably invested a small amount of cash.
But mostly it means someone will pay for it which elevates your idea from "nope - waste of time unless you give me $20k" to "ok, we may have something here".
If you want to pay market rates (cash), I'd say show up with a mockup. If you want to convince a developer to join you for equity, show up with a sale.
Some years back, a guy named Bill and his buddy contacted a company making kit computers and said "we have a BASIC interpreter we'd like to sell you". The company said "a dozen others have said the same thing; we'll pay whoever delivers one." A few weeks later, Bill & pal delivered.
And thus Microsoft shipped its first product.
Sadly so far no one has taken up my offer. I can't help but feel that it's never I can't do it, but it's more like I can't be bothered with it.
I believe that the only time I've heard of a decent or good idea was from fellow programmers or designers, rather than "business men" or founders of small companies and claim they know it all. Then after they explain their idea, they expect you to invest 90% of your time on the product, promise you a certain ownership percentage (usually ~10%?), rather than paying a good salary up-front; so if it flops they didn't lose any of their time or had to invest any amount of cash. I believe something similar to this happened to some dude who then open-sourced the project. I forgot what project that was, it happened recently.
You can of course listen to anyone's idea, but as the article stated, the chance that it's not another dumb or over-done idea is usually very slim.
To quote one, "I'll bung you £100 to do it".
Thanks, I get paid that a day.
That was my lesson. I don't make websites anymore for people without charging thousands of dollars and an hourly fee for any future work.
I wouldn't be surprised if most developers actually did their first project for nothing at all, I think we all under value our skills to start with and it takes time to realise how much our skills are worth.
That's what I find funny when you put a "real" bill into do a site and you see the owners face, if their initial reaction is, "how much??!", I know it's time to go quoting for a different project.
I don't know what it is with jobs where it is more of a service than labour but I feel we all get a bum rap, it's the same with SEO, I think people think it hardly takes any time at all. If I asked my friend, who is a joiner, to do some work for me, I can see the work being done and I can appreciate the time and effort gone into it, it's almost like people cannot appreciate the time projects take us.
Don't get me wrong, I have put sites together in 16 hours from scratch but they are basic sites and I don't want to maintain them. They have been favour jobs or such like, it's not how I plan spending the rest of my life.
I think the one thing I take from this story is that all people think their idea is unique or will always work. 99% of the time, the people have done no research into competition or if they have they have not evaluated the competition well enough. It's good when you do get a good idea but this does again come down to the execution, you have to be able to rely on your partner to do their fair share.
To give me a real kick, I actually found out when the other company rang me to ask for DNS login details to change the A records, she had not even told me herself I had not got it or given the chance to show designs and a development plan.
It turns out she thought she would be getting a better service and end result as I was charging less when in fact I was doing it as a favour. It goes to show it can work either way!
Problem with being a smallish web development company is that you're either getting the difficult dregs, or you're hoping large multi-disciplinary agencies don't lure away your lucrative gems.
Basically, you either work for free (as a favour to friends or charity) or full charge. No in between.
The power of "free" over "friend's fee" is that they know it's a favour so they can't feel entitled to anything--and if they still do, you may feel entitled to take a dump in their kitchen sink (free of charge).
I'd charge a friend or charity a lower rate that they can afford but strategically set such that their budget (and amount of work they get) seems finite to them. Forces them to come up with their plan and execute, instead of "yeah that's nice, but my friend said THIS would be a better idea...can you just redo the whole thing??" Yes, you can say no, but like I said if there are expectations on either side, it can sour the relationship.
The hard part is sticking to your guns and actually telling your 'friend' that sounds like a good idea. You can pay me X/hour to build and market it or I can build it and hand over 5% of the profits it's up to you.
The anti-"idea guy" attitude was all ego, no logic. I can't say I'm surprised that it took off as well as it did, it felt good and matched the reality that most ideas suck so it was easy to adopt. I'm not surprised, but a disappointed that more people didn't recognize it for what it was. Oh well, being the only guy hearing the good ideas was fun while it lasted.
Them: "I've got this awesome idea for software that tracks traffic jams!"
Me: "Sure, you just need to link up existing maps and satellite imagery from Google to traffic cameras...."
Them: "Uh..."
Me: "Of course, you have to be able to monetize the massive amount of data you'll be moving around, so you need to consider how people will be accessing this? Would it be through a GPS device, or is it a smartphone app, or is this just for commercial (TV stations, police, DOT) applications?"
Them: "Uh...I also had an idea for this other thing..."
12 pages of the same idea later...
Moving on to other conversations.
Most of the times, the email never lands in my inbox, but when it finally does, theres usually something to it.
You can easily make normal people feel like their idea is worthless and you have mountains of business acumen that, obviously, they must lack. Do this enough times and what you'll find, just like you'd hoped, people stop telling you their ideas.
I'd argue that every time you do this you are shutting down opportunities to collaboratively create ideas that would probably work. Part of being "lucky" is increasing your exposure to failures [1].
When someone approaches you with an idea, you've certainly got a better feel for what will "work" more than you're average person. Consider taking the time to give feedback, help shape it, brainstorm with it. You might find that between the two of you what you create is bigger than what either one could come up with individually.
This applies in all areas of personal relationships, not just iPhone games.
[1] "To increase your chance of success, double your failure rate" - attributed to Tom Watson
My point is to get people out of the mindset of "if I could someone ELSE to do all of the hard work, I'd be a gazillionaire."
My approach is to tell YOU how to seize the opportunity and get your idea rolling; I'm far too busy to do all of the work for you so you can retire rich, but I will gladly point you in a great direction and lay out your next steps. The reality is that you won't do it once you realize that YOU will actually have to do the grunt work.
Nobody ever wants my books.