I collected startup ideas. It changed how I think about ideas completely
At some point I got tired of that and did something slightly different. Instead of picking one idea and obsessing over it, I started collecting them. Just dumping everything interesting I came across into one place, patterns, half-baked thoughts, things I’d normally ignore after a day. That eventually turned into a small database (I later called it StartupIdeasDB, mostly for myself), but the useful part wasn’t the tool,it was being able to see ideas next to each other without being emotionally attached to any one of them.
And that’s where things started to shift. A lot of ideas that felt “solid” in isolation looked pretty weak when placed next to 20 similar ones. You start noticing how often the same concepts repeat with slightly different wording. You also start realising how easy it is to convince yourself something is good just because you spent a few hours thinking about it.
The bigger realisation for me was that I was asking the wrong question the whole time. I kept asking “is this a good idea?” which is a very easy question to answer with bias. What actually helped more was asking “who is this immediately useful for, and how would it reach them?” Most ideas don’t survive that question.
Also noticed that the difference between something sounding smart and something people will actually use is… huge. Way bigger than I assumed earlier. Ironically, going through hundreds of ideas didn’t make me more creative or inspired. It made me a lot more skeptical. In a good way, I think.
Now when I come across something interesting, my default instinct is to try and disprove it quickly instead of getting excited and building around it. Still figuring this out, but this shift alone has probably saved me months of going in the wrong direction.
How are others here evaluate ideas before committing to them ?
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[ 93.4 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadThe literal application of "do things that don't scale."
Beyond that, I look for ROI besides wealth. Even if it doesn't blow up in popularity will it still improve my life if just a few adopt it/appreciate it?
Product-market: Are folks already spending money on such products or problems? How does my product solve that issue? What are their alternatives, including doing nothing? Are there big players? If yes, there's plenty of money. How's my product different? Any smaller niches that are underserved?
Distribution: How can I reach the target customers? Is that a channel I can actually access? Do i even have a chance to reach them?
Founder: Is that product-market-distribution combination my thing? Is that a distribution channel I want to use, or does it turn me completely off? Do I even want to serve those types of customers?
It might be a super product-market-distribution fit, but if it includes stuff I dislike or even hate, the risk of procrastination, etc., rises sky-high, and everything becomes a pain, a dread, and a constant fight, exhausting my willpower fast and thus causing me to fail.
What I usually do is analysis: SWOT: Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. In other words, why am I in position of doing it better, why other can do it better, is there an opportunity that only I see, are there threats from other places, like other industries, government, etc.
I search for a problem to solve. You need a problem that you clearly see that people are struggling. That is why experience at some area is very important. For example, working in the kitchen at a restaurant, you will see more problems and inconveniences, than me who only have ideas. Working on that place, you know the people personally, you have your PERSONAS, you first testers!
Once you have a problem, once you have a good analysis of what's possible, where you are in the market, then comes the real requirements gathering, and subsequent. Don't hurry, talk to people gain more information, read more books on the topic, meet people.