4 ms·
My experience has been to the contrary: I rarely find people willing to crush entrepreneurs' ideas; instead, most people seem to be quite reluctant to tell othe
by owenmarshall 15y ago
My experience has been to the contrary: I rarely find people willing to crush entrepreneurs' ideas; instead, most people seem to be quite reluctant to tell others that their ideas are, frankly, terrible. In the end, people waste money on ideas that are untenable.
I once had a old friend bring his bajillion-dollar social networking idea to me -- he liked snakes, and wanted to meet other people who liked snakes, so he wanted to make Facebook but only for people that own snakes. And he'd charge for it! And he'd make millions, because damn it, people love snakes!
I understand that almost every idea is derivative, and that I can't really understand the pet-snake market, but should I really say "Gee, buddy, I don't know..." when every brain cell is screaming "tell him to run far away from this!"?
- aspir 15y agoPeople do love snakes. And TV shows. And Sports teams. They've also had social networks for decades -- known as "Fan Clubs." Fanpop took that idea online, and according to a Mixergy interview, they're making $1 MM in profits. http://www.fanpop.com/ http://www.fanpop.com/ This is where the "advise on process" would have come in. Programmatically, there's little difference between a social network and a fan club. But changing the definition and labeling is extremely powerful.
- zyfo 15y agoI like cats who look cute. I wonder... On-topic: I completely agree. The worst thing is that even if you tell people to be brutally honest, they rarely are (there's a good Seinfeld episode on this with George being told by Elaine that he's cheap). People are socially trained not to be negative to other people unless they absolutely have to.
- jaf12duke 15y agoHelp him clarify his hypothesis--that people do indeed love snakes--and test it really quickly. A good lean development process would prove it wrong quickly.
- zyfo 15y agoEven if people love snakes that doesn't mean they a) want to spend time talking to other snake-owners b) want to do it over the internet c) can't do it already d) will pay for it
- billswift 15y agoMaybe not, but there are books and magazines regularly purchased about snakes (and just about anything else you can imagine). The trick, if you could get it to work at all, would be to get good content and build the social web around that.
- hugh3 15y agoIt's not a question of whether people love snakes (some do, most don't) but whether you can capitalize on the love of those who do in order to build a sustainable social network. And the answer is that you can't -- social networking doesn't work that way. There's already a facebook for people who like snakes, and it's called facebook.
- tomsaffell 15y agoWhen pitching my ideas, I generally assume that people who don't like it wont tell me what they really think, to avoid having an 'awkward' conversation. When people pitch ideas to me, I try to avoid talking about whether it's a good idea (as Jason says, one generally has no idea) - but what I do instead is say whether I would personally actually use it, and/or pay for it. I find it surprisingly easy to say, "honestly, I wouldn't use that" - whereas saying, "I think that is a bad idea" is not something I'd generally feel comfortable saying to a stranger, unless very specifically asked for it. Of course, it could be that I would actually use, and I just don't realize that yet, - but that is data in itself.
- ScottBurson 15y agoI agree it's not going to make millions, but it might be a viable side business. Niches are where it's at for small bootstraps! If your friend is sufficiently technical to build the site himself, on the cheap, I'd encourage him to give it a try. Who knows, it might bring in a couple thousand a month once it matures. Hey, for most of us, that's worth doing!
- wladimir 15y agoI can tell from experience that snake-owners is a pretty good niche. It's under-targeted in the mainstream, the community around it is very enthusiastic and generally has no problem spending money (for example, when a snake is a slight bit different it can be hundreds more expensive). But yeah, I agree that a facebook for snake owners is probably not going to be a great hit... there's a lot of free snake online communities already, also on facebook. He's got to be somewhat more original on what to market.