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Finding a (good) idea is challenging, but I feel there's lots of good advice (especially from some of HN's more prolific posters) on how to vet good ideas with
by wikwocket 13y ago
Finding a (good) idea is challenging, but I feel there's lots of good advice (especially from some of HN's more prolific posters) on how to vet good ideas with some rigor.
I feel the bottleneck is in the validation phase. You can be brainstorming dozens of ideas, but to go anywhere with them, I feel you should research, talk to people, look at stats/trends, maybe build a brochure site/MVP and capture some leads, etc. These all take time, effort, (some) cost, and of course require the dreaded act of communicating with other human beings.
Idea work comes naturally to hackers, but communication doesn't. Plus, once you're considering communicate an idea to others, subconsciously you acknowledge that it might not be well-received or fail to take off. I believe that (in my case at least) this causes a big bottleneck. I'm always happy to ponder ideas, but seem to have less enthusiasm to do the legwork to validate them!
- skarmklart 13y agoHow do you usually go about communicating with people when validating the idea? Emails? Cold calling? Something else? To whom do you reach out? I hope to provide the reader with a good arsenal of tips and tricks on communication in my upcoming book, might be worth signing up for updates :) /shamelessplug
- wikwocket 13y agoIf I could completely answer this question, it would not be my bottleneck! ;) What I have done: post a brochure site, promising more to come, and offering a free whitepaper/guidebook in exchange for an email subscription. Use free $100 Adwords coupon to send traffic there. Count email signups. Send out a newsletter to them, try to gauge engagement. Other tactics I know of: - Offer pre-sales - Talk to business owners casually - Go to trade shows and chat - Offer surveys - Ask mechanical turk for feedback - Lurk in forums to see what people are discussing - Surf Amazon reviews to gauge how people feel about X
- skarmklart 13y agoCan I do an interview with you for my book? info@howtofindsaasideas.com :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]