Ask HN: How do you decide which idea to start on? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you decide which idea to start on?

56 pointsnewsisan33 comments

How do you evaluate your ideas, and decide which one to work on?

Do you use criteria like time required, cost, etc?

What have you tried, what would you like to?

If you're just starting out, pick the one you can finish. Most people never follow through, and it's a pretty basic lesson to learn.

Once you got that down, pick ones that excite you.

Later on, you'll think about stuff like potential market opportunity. And whether people actually want what you've Built. But I think it's important to learn HOW to build first. If you can finish things, you're already well ahead of the pack.

Good advice. Beyond that, I recommend surrounding yourself with critical, intelligent, trustworthy people. I bounce all my ideas off a core group of friends, and generally don't bother with anything until they all give the green light. Besides that, it's just ROI/risk evaluation. Unless you're already a millionaire, it is best to focus on lowest possible investment for the highest likely return. Later it may be worth taking bigger risks.

Once you have started a project, you might feel this idea is not worth doing and you will have some other ideas. But don't change your mind. Finish what you are already building. If you leave this project incomplete and switch to another, you will never have a complete project. Instead note down all the ideas you have. Once you are done with current project, go to that list, see what you want to do next.

1. Is there a market

2. Do I need to teach people that this is important...or do I get to exploit existing demand?

3. Is there some sort of barrier to entry?

4. How long will it take to build a minimum viable product?

5. What the competitors are like, their current reputation, their current SEO rankings, their current adwords campaigns etc.

6. Then I usually build a quick fake page to see if there is any demand. I'd rather piss off 200-300 people and see what the actual demand is like, instead of relying on them to tell me what they think they want.

7. If everything works out, I get to work. If not, I get to save 3 months chasing an idea that has no potential.

Do you see a positive answer to number 3 as a good thing or a bad thing? For me, it could be either depending on how you look at it!

good thing, since it means long term you'll get breathing room against any new people who decide to enter your space.

There's a story about someone telling Einstein that he keeps a notebook on hand to jot down all the good ideas he's had. Einstein said he wouldn't need such a notebook. Because he has such a great memory? No, because he'd only had one or two good ideas in his life.

Seriously, if none of them leap at you, grab you by the neck, and insist on existing, it means you don't have any good ideas.

But this doesn't mean you should be discouraged, it just means you should be in "getting good ideas" mode. And the best way to do this is to get out there, experiencing problems, solving them, making mistakes, correctly them, feeling stupid, making progress, all the while trying to understand things, wondering about things, being exposed to lots of different ideas from different places, and trying out the ideas you've had, if they interest you, just out of curiosity. Get busy living or get busy dying in Morgan Freeman's voice. "Evaluating ideas" is a way of dying, IMHO. At least, that's how it's been for me when I've got stuck in that way of thinking, anyway.

Then one day, you're looking at something, and you think "you know, everyone is doing this in a stupid way. why don't they do it this way? it would be so much better." You whip up the simplest prototype you can think of, in a couple of hours, just to check for yourself that the basic idea does basically kinda work. Then you whip up something, in a day, that others could try (a day's work: that's how incomplete and limited and trivial that prototype should be - an MVP), to see if anyone else is the slightest bit interested - if they are, that gives you the information and the encouragement/fuel to continue. And suddenly, without quite meaning to, your journey has begun.

That's what happened to me, anyway.

Take the heaviness away. That corporate/academic/executive approach of "criteria" and "evaluating ideas" doesn't make giant corporations agile - and it's only going to drag you down. Insight and intuition come not from methodologies, but in spite of them; they come from contact with reality, and from you. And insight and intuition is where the great startup ideas come from.

disclaimer I'm not a wildly successful entrepreneur, just a successful-enough one. A cool idea from many years ago is still making money for me today. This is all just IMHO, my experience, YMMV.

I like to work on ideas that

1. really excite me

2.just won't get out of my head even after it's been days since I first thought of them

3. keep luring me to go back to work on them even after the initial honeymoon period is over and I've been through days when I felt utterly bored of them.

Agree.... the one that doesn't seem like work.. (at least to start with!).

I have only one suggestion which helped me pick out the good ideas from the bad - to get external opinion. It's almost like humans have a self defense mechanism by which they can't adequately find flaws in their own selves and ideas. Thus, your idea might be the biggest thing in your mind, while other people might feel otherwise.

That's why I told everyone about my idea - presented it in startup events, showed people demos, put it up on public mailing lists and wikis. The idea got battered and beaten down and each time there were little changes. There's this huge hype about being a "stealth startup" and a fear that people in some web shop will steal your idea and clone it.

tl;dr - the idea that you start with is the one that people can't completely tear apart and obliterate.

Also, the idea is pretty much useless. If I had an idea that I'll make a touch screen phone with an app store, nobody would've taken me seriously. If I'd pulled an apple and built one, people would've. Three months into full-time development of a product, I can only say that execution is pretty much everything.

- there is some problem to be solved

- I must understand how people solve the problem (apart from specially designated software)

- I must understand what's wrong with all existing solutions

- I must be personally interested in solving that problem even if it does not bring millions

- I must have at least remote knowledge of how to implement that idea (technically, I mean). I'm reluctant to rely solely on others.

- etc.

See the YC application form, it has very good questions.

This is how Jim Coudal selects projetcs.

1. Am I going to make money from this?

2. Is this going to be something I’m proud of when it’s done? Am I going to want to show this to my friends?

3. Am I going to learn something from doing it?

Source: http://lifeinperpetualbeta.com/blog/bloggers/field-testing-c...

Summing up what's being said in the comments, the two main points are:

1. Subjective: are you really really willing to spend a lot of time and energy (not to mention money) on the idea, to the point that it becomes the only subject of your thoughts? (Paul Graham wrote two inspiring pieces on this: http://paulgraham.com/top.html and http://paulgraham.com/determination.html)

2. Objective: is there really a market, is people really willing to pay for your solution? etc... There was a submission a while ago on HN about a technique dubbed "Ghetto Testing" that was quite interesting: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485057

The one that smart, hardworking cofounders believe in, too.

what if you don't have any co-founders?

Then try one of the other heuristics suggested in this thread. :-)

I'm really guilty of spreading myself too thin with projects. Recently I asked myself a different set of questions to evaluate what projects I wanted to work on, and it made deciding very easy:

  1) Which ideas can be turned into a company?  
  2) Which have the most attractive success scenario?

I spent too much time focusing on any idea that could make money. Well, the problem is that making money really isn't that hard if you know how to ask for it. Every idea that came into my head was good enough to work on - if you ask yourself question number 1 a lot, you'll have the same problem.

Once I started focusing on question 2 everything became much more clear. You have to ask yourself a lot of questions to get to an answer; the questions (and answers) are far more personal than you can ask advice about. If you're going to give up a significant portion of your time to succeed, it's important that there's a big enough payoff for you at the other side. For some people, this is purely financial; some people want to make "popular" software that everyone uses. There are people who just like working on interesting problems, and people who really just want a day job where they can be "the boss".

If you decide what's most important to you, it should be much easier to decide what to work on. You'll end up with the added benefit of being much more motivated to work towards a goal that is desirable to you; not one that everyone else thinks is desirable.

I would ask myself.

Will it change the world or compliment it?

Are there people who need it? Do they know that they need it?

How is it going to solve their problem?

How much is the solution worth to the customer?

Can I do it myself? If not what else do I need.

What is the core product that I am trying to create. http://000fff.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/product_feature...

How much time am I willing to spend on it.

I have ideas all the time. A few good ones and a swarm of bad ones. Filtering them down is sometimes tough.

I believe you should work on the one you feel the most passionate about. Ideas do not need to be great to succeed. But, unless you have a fantastic game changer of an idea, you need to work hard and passionately to get it off the ground. The more you are vested in the project emotionally the more likely you are to always push through.

Hate cats but have a great idea for a new cat toy? Screw it. Love dogs but have an iffy idea for a new product (doggles anyone?)? Go for it.

As Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." Pick the project you are most willing to perspire over.

Careful with subjective measures. Measure interest.

Invest some $$ in google ads, have a purty-looking landing page that says "coming soon!" Build a site and ads for each of your ideas and chase the one that has most interest.

The one I would want to build even if I can't earn anything with it and could only use it myself. Once that one was determined to be commercially viable.

In your case I think you are should learn what are your strengths and weakness. So you should ask yourself what type of idea can I develop that can give me some feedback about my capacity to built something valuable. Once you know something about yourself you should look for a good team. A good team is the one that gives you the best opportunity to built the valuable idea that you have.

* Take out a spreadsheet, put down the names of your ideas in every row, put your evaluation criteria in the columns (Ease of development, New Skills, Current Progress, Real Life Value, etc). * Add a row at the bottom to specify the weights of your criteria. * Add a column to sum up the scores. * Sort Z-A by total score and pick the top 2/3.

There's a saying that "you are married to your business" (or something like that). So I normally go beyond the tangible things to pick ideas (or spouse)...

I pick the one that I keep dreaming of and can't stop thinking about every seconds of the day.

And it works alright so far (both idea and spouse).

I tend to go with magnitude of possibilities. Specifically, if I'm still thinking of new applications/markets for the idea days later, it's probably worth pursuing.

The one that is so good that you don't just find people who like it, but people who act on that hunch and become your co-founder.

The one that keeps you up at night.

Sounds good, but actually imo flawed advice. Almost every new idea I've had that has "kept me up at night" has started to seem much more mundane after a few weeks of work.

I watch out for the ones that come back to keep me up at night after the inevitable phase of boredom.

Pick something you'll enjoy working on where there's a bigger goal than just making money.

The one that you can finish first

is it within a domain you know a lot about?

is it fun?

can you build it?

can you sell it?

what makes it stand out? someone will copy it if you're successful, so what makes it sustainable e.g. brand, customer engagement, network effects etc.

I have a list of ideas and I rank the ideas by how much I like them. So the top idea in the list is the idea that I'm most passionate about.

Then from the top of the list I think about these factors:

1) How big is this idea, can I achieve it with the time/resources I have budgeted for? Resources can be funding, helpers, co-founders, technology, etc

2) What is the market size of the idea? Can my team support the overall vision?

3) Who are the competitors? Or is there a competitor? If there is a competitor, can I compete with the available resource/time that I have?

Start from the top idea and if any of the questions raises a red flag, move on to the next idea. You don't have to use the 3 questions I provided above, just add your own questions but the methodology is the same.

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