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The Paul Graham essay on start up ideas comes to mind [1]. Everybody kinda wanted this product but they didn't need the product. This paragraph sums it up: > T

The Paul Graham essay on start up ideas comes to mind [1]. Everybody kinda wanted this product but they didn't need the product. This paragraph sums it up: > The danger of an idea like this is that when you run it by your friends with pets, they don't say "I would never use this." They say "Yeah, maybe I could see using something like that." Even when the startup launches, it will sound plausible to a lot of people. They don't want to use it themselves, at least not right now, but they could imagine other people wanting it. Sum that reaction across the entire population, and you have zero users. Granted, it's not like I possess a magical "good startup ideas" power. And I don't have a successful startup under my belt. But still, I find it curious that many people haven't read this essay. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

andrewstuart 7y ago
Hindsight is 20/20.
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  Completely so. I don't want to act like I know better–I don't. But the lessons of this post do line up with the lessons in the essay.
EGreg 7y ago
I actually use a completely different criterion. If I see people constantly resorting to bad solutions and complaining, when a tech solution could solve the whole thing, I like the idea. Then I think whether I can make it viral and engaging to bring user acquision costs to zero. If yes - it can be done!
mritchie712 7y ago
He did get people to pay before even launching, so I don't know if reading this would have swayed him much. He had a considerable amount of positive signals. The lesson may have been how much these signals were skewed by the source of the signal (e.g. fans of his podcast).
quickthrower2 7y ago
The problem I see, from briefly looking at the landing page is that you can achieve what you want on Slack by disabling notifications and then checking slack every hour or so, when you've just committed some code and feel like your mental cache can be flushed. This is what I do. There isn't a big enough problem being solved, especially to move away from the slack ecosystem. Even if the 'other' product had all the things slack has, the cost of getting another tool and getting used to it seems too high when that effort could be put into swapping a different tool for a different reason with more upside for the team. The cost of the product itself in this equation is almost irrelevant. Having said that no one wants to be the "Dropbox is just rsync " guy. Or Lily Allen turning down thousands of bitcoins (although she's successful anyway so she probably shouldn't care). If you see what I mean ... no one wants to say an idea sucks before hand, and if they do you can just say "well they said that about Dropbox".
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  If there's one thing Hacker News lacks, it's biting criticism and pessimism :P Kidding aside, I see your point. I guess it's important to distinguish between criticism and dismissal of an idea. "Dropbox is just rsync" seems like a dismissal, not a critical look at the validity of the idea. And Lily Allen turning down bitcoin? Well honestly I'm a little with her on that one. "Oh yeah can you perform and we'll pay you with a totally legit online currency we swear." Not exactly a great sell.
edisonjoao 7y ago
this is what I needed to hear

andrewstuart 7y ago

Hindsight is 20/20.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago
Completely so. I don't want to act like I know better–I don't. But the lessons of this post do line up with the lessons in the essay.

EGreg 7y ago

I actually use a completely different criterion. If I see people constantly resorting to bad solutions and complaining, when a tech solution could solve the whole thing, I like the idea. Then I think whether I can make it viral and engaging to bring user acquision costs to zero. If yes - it can be done!

mritchie712 7y ago

He did get people to pay before even launching, so I don't know if reading this would have swayed him much. He had a considerable amount of positive signals. The lesson may have been how much these signals were skewed by the source of the signal (e.g. fans of his podcast).

quickthrower2 7y ago

The problem I see, from briefly looking at the landing page is that you can achieve what you want on Slack by disabling notifications and then checking slack every hour or so, when you've just committed some code and feel like your mental cache can be flushed. This is what I do. There isn't a big enough problem being solved, especially to move away from the slack ecosystem. Even if the 'other' product had all the things slack has, the cost of getting another tool and getting used to it seems too high when that effort could be put into swapping a different tool for a different reason with more upside for the team. The cost of the product itself in this equation is almost irrelevant. Having said that no one wants to be the "Dropbox is just rsync " guy. Or Lily Allen turning down thousands of bitcoins (although she's successful anyway so she probably shouldn't care). If you see what I mean ... no one wants to say an idea sucks before hand, and if they do you can just say "well they said that about Dropbox".

_hardwaregeek 7y ago
If there's one thing Hacker News lacks, it's biting criticism and pessimism :P Kidding aside, I see your point. I guess it's important to distinguish between criticism and dismissal of an idea. "Dropbox is just rsync" seems like a dismissal, not a critical look at the validity of the idea. And Lily Allen turning down bitcoin? Well honestly I'm a little with her on that one. "Oh yeah can you perform and we'll pay you with a totally legit online currency we swear." Not exactly a great sell.

edisonjoao 7y ago

this is what I needed to hear