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Ask HN: How do you choose, among many ideas, one to start off?

5 points by jcfausto ↗ HN
I have many ideas and each day i come up with at least 2 or 3 new ideas to solve some sort of problem or fulfill some necessity. How do i know which idea is the best to follow through? How do i minimize the risc of choosing a bad idea and time waste?

Is there something before hypotesis tests, MVP or market research that could apply in this case?

I appreciate any literature recommendation on that.

Thanks!

9 comments

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BlackDeath3
That's a problem I'd love to have! I feel like I don't come up with ideas very often, and when I do they don't seem to be very good, feasible, or original.
jcfausto
My ideas appear often when i'm having trouble with some situation and suddenly i've look at some app on the internet that with some modifications could tackle that trouble. Often i have the same doubts as you on how good, feasible or original the idea is and often this questions makes me leave the idea behind too soon.
tjr
Some recommend using the Google keyword planner tool to ascertain if very many people seem to be searching for whatever it is that you have in mind.

Obviously this works better for some categories of ideas than others; if your idea is innovative and unique, the fact that nobody is searching for it doesn't necessarily mean anything. On the other hand, few people searching for "royalty-free polka music" is probably a good indicator of a not-very-valuable idea...

JacobH
Best way to not waste time is by working on something that you especially have a problem with, and do research to see if other people have the same problem.
rpedela
If you look at many of the most successful companies, many solve a problem people already had and the solution is either simpler or cheaper than existing solutions rather than being the first to solve a problem. Google wasn't the first search engine. Craigslist didn't invent classifieds. EBay didn't invent auctions. What they all did was solve a problem more simply and cheaply than existing solutions.
jcfausto
Good points! These arguments leads us to the point that we don't need to give up on some idea just because it is too simple or is something that already exists in the market. Although sometimes it's really hard to go on over some idea that already has a strong and stablished competitor in the market.
rpedela
Yes that is true. I would add that typically most startups attack a particular niche first before taking on that strong competitor. A niche where that competitor is weak or absent.

Some of the best advice for you question is from Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

c0w
Good question. I'm pretty much the same way. Tons of ideas, tons of awesome projects, limited resources and ability for execution. I think the biggest factors you have to consider when trying to answer this question are viability, difficulty, and ROI.

When evaluating viability you want to ask yourself questions like "Is there really a market for this?", "Would this substantially improve the process of doing X?", "Am I creating a new market here?", "Is this an incremental improvement to an existing product or process or am I adding exponential value?", "Are there companies currently in a position to compete?", "Could an established player in this space do this easily and push me out of the market?", and ultimately: "Would I use this? Regularly?".

Difficulty is fairly obvious and deals with the question of energy in, and whether it's truly feasible for you to pull something like this off in a reasonable timeframe, given your resources at hand.

ROI is the ultimate question that asks "What's the upside?", "Is it really going to be worth my time to solve this problem?", "For the time (money) I invest in building this, is it going to pay out more than the other projects I could have been working on?" (opportunity costs).

Good luck!

eddyparkinson
1) write it down and review after a day or two.

2) Do home work, search for the best current way to solve the problem.

3) scale matters, a jet engine was a big improvement over a propeller engine. Focus on big ideas

Reference - this is how someone who has PhD is taught to evaluate an idea. http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/chinneck/thesis.html

4) Einstein was well known for saying that he had so few good ideas, he did not need to write them down. He had learned how to measure the value of an idea.

As a side note, I also feel very good ideas, ideas that offer at least 100% ROI are so rare that you will know when you have one. 100% ROI is a tough call, but I would only spend time on ideas that offer 100+% ROI.