First, I want to ask, "okay, and then what did you do?" That kind of feedback, to me, isn't a sign to give up, but that the idea needs more thought at a minimum

First, I want to ask, "okay, and then what did you do?" That kind of feedback, to me, isn't a sign to give up, but that the idea needs more thought at a minimum. Second, read BlueTie's response (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32013983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32013983) because that is also important but usually comes after they build the product on how to turn a viable product into a company/startup. There's a series of steps. Features < Product < Side business < Lifestyle business < Company/Startup. For me, that usually means the idea is an incremental improvement, but if you built a full product for it, it wouldn't be attractive enough for existing users to migrate unless it could be sold as a plugin. Unless it is a ridiculously trivial process to adopt the new solution (i.e. a plugin), you won't overcome inertia. To be a viable product, you can't be 1-10% better than existing solutions but need to be 20, 30, 50+% better. You must overcome loss aversion and sunk costs (time and money). The improvement needs AT LEAST a significant step-wise improvement for a vital feature of the existing solution. If anyone looks at your idea and the existing solution and says, "Yeah, it's better, but ..." or "Eh, the current way is good enough." To be a product, there HAVE to be people who say, "I can't live without this feature!" A good example is Anki. By most measures, it is terrible software, and every couple of months, you see a new flashcard program on Show HN. Most of the time, they are a flashcard program with a better UI, collaborative flashcard decks, or some other piece that's usually objectively better. These are almost always features, not startups. Now, if you took several of them and had them implement all of their ideas into a single product, you might have enough value to overcome inertia.