Ask HN: How To Use My Great Idea?

You've got nothing right now, treat it as such. Details are good and people will be willing to give you feedback on your thoughts if you give them. I've had a million ideas and most of them seem great until you start talking about them. Have you asked a potential customer, another entrepreneur, or a partner for feedback? If not, that is the first thing you should be doing.

The next thing you can do is to run some tests to validate your target market. There are a plethora of ways to do this from interacting with potential customers to adwords'ing a custom landing page. It really just depends on the idea you want to test.

The way you mention finding a technical cofounder sounds an awful lot like finding someone to do all the work for you. That is a fool's errand. If you don't have time to invest in it yourself, you're not going to own any part of it. Developing an app, and more specifically, a business, takes a HUGE time investment. You've got to be committed.

The way you mention finding a technical cofounder sounds an awful lot like finding someone to do all the work for you.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of: I don't want to have someone doing all the work for me. It's my idea, I want to take ownership of it.

How would I go about talking to people about it? There are few people whom I personally know which would be relevant to talk to. I'd rather not post the whole idea on HN, as there are probably loads of people who can make this in a fraction of the time it would take me. Should I just email random people who I come across on the net who could give me useful advice? Doesn't feel like a great idea either.

In my experience, every amazing unique idea I've had has:

1) Been created to some degree before, and 2) Been thought about by other people 100x more.

Often true, but still dozens of startups monetize, thanks to a good idea.

Correct. I was just pointing out that your reluctance to discuss your idea is misguided.

I can send you an invite to Sparkmuse if you'd like to talk about it there. Hit me up if you'd like, email is in profile.

Ask yourself who you'd sell this product/service to and try to track those people down. This isn't development, this is marketing, and it's not always easy. And yes, sometimes emailing people out of the blue works well too. If you can find someone involved in your market, such as a blogger, they might be able to provide excellent advice (just be sure to be helpful in return).

Thanks, will do!

What you are missing is that everyone else thinks their idea is the greatest idea, too. You could tell me your idea, and I'd probably laugh at you.

I believe you're making some assumptions that simply aren't true. Screaming your ideas from the hilltops is actually a good idea. People will approach you who can help, people will offer advice and suggestions, etc.

No one is going to steal your idea, and most people honestly won't care. Just as plants can't grow in a closet, ideas can't grow unless they the see the light of scrutiny of people smarter than you.

Anyone can think of a good idea but not many of them can turn it into a successful business. To create a successful business the idea/product should be the last thing you need to worry about because idea changes all the time during stages of a startup. There are many other factors that are more important than your idea i.e ( financing, marketing,legal, team). Many entrepreneurs have the same ideas but why are some more successful than others? For example Gowalla vs Foursquare. An idea is worthless without an execution plan. You can begin by researching your market and form a team who believes in your idea and vision. I give you props for your youth entrepreneur's spirit. Don't wait too long to start because you will mistakes. Just learn how to fix them along the way. Just remember Nike's Slogan "Just Do It". Good Luck

Hire an outsourced coding team to make the product. Now, its going to be really crappy , but then you will have the prototype built and can hire on a co-founder or take it in a different direction.

If you think the idea is really that great, don't throw it away, find a way to make it work :)

Just my 2cents.

That's actually an idea I wouldn't have thought of myself at all. Thanks!

This is a horrible idea generally. It's a really bad idea to outsource your core competency. If your company builds software, you shouldn't outsource software development.

Startups and ideas need time to change or pivot. If you're outsourcing, you're basically saying build this big blue box, and tomorrow (or 3 months later) you'll need to build a small red turtle and be stuck with code you can't use, maintain, or change without paying someone else.