3 ms·

How to test if your startup idea will succeed

12 points by mgrouchy 17y ago

Vindexus 17y ago
In keeping with this quote: "Ask your target demographic if your idea would solve their pain" I'd like to ask everyone here if they'd be interested in an app I want to work on. Basically it would be a web app that would let you plug in FAQ/Help dialogs into your web app. The code would be something like <div id="helpButton"> <a href="#section/lists" class="helpdialog">Help</a> </div> <div id="webAppStuff"> Your Todo List App Here </div> <script src="http://myhelpapp.com?api_key=647y89y423hg8qg3"></script> Screenshot of the design I want to use: http://twitpic.com/1209jh http://twitpic.com/1209jh That's the OSX version of the jQuery Simple Modal plugin. You just add "helpdialog" as a class to any link or button or whatever and it would read the href attribute of that item to get the correct help section to display.
- keefe 17y ago
  I like the idea and the UI pattern quite a bit - are you thinking of this as an open source project or as something people will pay for? I think it's a great open source product but I would be surprised to see someone pay for it.
  - Vindexus 17y ago
    I think if the product was good enough people would definitely pay for it. I would just need some stats and facts to back up my claim that it's worth it. That would be the hard part. But if I can state "Use this service to reduce support emails by 30%" and have the data to back that up, then that's something people might pay for. If you spend 1 hour a day answering support emails, and you can cut that down to 40 minutes, then you're saving more than 6 hours of work a month. That's worth some money. The tough part is making it good enough to be a time saver.
    - keefe 17y ago
      The reason I made that comment is that from what I see so far, it is rather trivial to implement. There's not a lot of detail in what I saw so far so maybe I am missing something. However, if all you have is a popup or tooltip to a FAQ - the cost to implement that is much, much less than the cost of writing effective documentation for each feature. I think the tough part is putting together some set of features that justifies not only the cost - but also the risk of adding an external dependency. I hate external dependencies, particularly those from unknown players that are not open source.

12 points by mgrouchy 17y ago

In keeping with this quote: "Ask your target demographic if your idea would solve their pain" I'd like to ask everyone here if they'd be interested in an app I want to work on. Basically it would be a web app that would let you plug in FAQ/Help dialogs into your web app. The code would be something like <div id="helpButton"> <a href="#section/lists" class="helpdialog">Help</a> </div> <div id="webAppStuff"> Your Todo List App Here </div> <script src="http://myhelpapp.com?api_key=647y89y423hg8qg3"></script> Screenshot of the design I want to use: http://twitpic.com/1209jh http://twitpic.com/1209jh That's the OSX version of the jQuery Simple Modal plugin. You just add "helpdialog" as a class to any link or button or whatever and it would read the href attribute of that item to get the correct help section to display.

keefe 17y ago
I like the idea and the UI pattern quite a bit - are you thinking of this as an open source project or as something people will pay for? I think it's a great open source product but I would be surprised to see someone pay for it.
- Vindexus 17y ago
  I think if the product was good enough people would definitely pay for it. I would just need some stats and facts to back up my claim that it's worth it. That would be the hard part. But if I can state "Use this service to reduce support emails by 30%" and have the data to back that up, then that's something people might pay for. If you spend 1 hour a day answering support emails, and you can cut that down to 40 minutes, then you're saving more than 6 hours of work a month. That's worth some money. The tough part is making it good enough to be a time saver.
  - keefe 17y ago
    The reason I made that comment is that from what I see so far, it is rather trivial to implement. There's not a lot of detail in what I saw so far so maybe I am missing something. However, if all you have is a popup or tooltip to a FAQ - the cost to implement that is much, much less than the cost of writing effective documentation for each feature. I think the tough part is putting together some set of features that justifies not only the cost - but also the risk of adding an external dependency. I hate external dependencies, particularly those from unknown players that are not open source.