Ask HN: I have an idea for an app / game – how to know if they're serious? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I have an idea for an app / game – how to know if they're serious?

2 pointsFr0styMatt883 comments

I had an interesting discussion with a mate over the weekend and the phenomenon of "I have a great idea for an app! You implement it and we can go halves in the business!" came up (he's started an indie game company and now gets approached like this by family & friends with app ideas).

This raised so many interesting questions - how do you know they're serious? How do you educate them about the process? Can it work out?

So, HN crowd - what are your thoughts? Have you ever been approached in this way to do an app where it's actually worked out? Have you guided people through this process? Do you have any 'tests' that you apply to see if someone is actually serious?

Ask them to draft up a business plan, including target segment, competitive analysis, pricing model, market penetration forecasts, customer acquisition strategies, marketing plan, funding requirements, etc. Lay out specifically what you're looking for so that it gets them thinking about the real problems that need to be solved.

Basically, unless they can make a substantial contribution to the execution of their idea, it's not worth 50%, or even 1%.

99% of the time, they'll either refuse, defer, or forget about it in a few days. The other 1% are demonstrating their willingness to put in work, and now you have a document that demonstrates their level of competence, and a launch point to discuss the viability of the venture and revenue split.

Either you spent years just for them to nab the 50% whilst being utterly useless, or you make them do stuff too and before long they'll realize it's a lot of work and leave(though may come back to sue for that 50% if it ends up working well)

Either way they probably should be avoided.

If you really want to see if they are serious let them draft up a business plan, the amount of requests I've had from friends/family has made me very skeptical of all this though.

It can take two seconds to think of an idea and years to actually implement it. 50% is a tad generous for somebody who does no actual work.

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