

Where can I discuss about my ideas? - naf

I have a lot of ideas crossing my mind lately. I need people to comment on them. I can't figure out myself whether they are useful or not. I'm too focused, one might say. Friends and family aren't an option, because they're just not interested. I don't blame them. I want honest opinions from complete strangers. Where do you discuss about your idea(s)?
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jschuur
Can you code? Try and build small prototypes. Many people think 'talk is
cheap, ideas aren't worth much'.

Then post some progress to a blog and cross post to social media.

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ChuckMcM
You can discuss them anywhere. However, given the simple nature of the
question I am wondering if there is some missing subtext here.

One common concern I have heard when folks ask this particular question is
that someone will 'steal' their idea and run with it, ruining the chances of
fame and fortune.

The truth is, ideas are like offspring, they are always more attractive to the
progenitor than they are to the unrelated viewer. Many times when an idea is
shared in a collective, a number of people will assert that it is a 'stupid'
idea, and for folks who did not originally have that idea they will read or
hear those comments and believe them more strongly than your assertion that it
is a good idea.

Further, an idea expression is rarely communicated as clearly as an example of
an idea does. So just talking about ideas rarely gets them stolen (except
perhaps in the case of movie scripts)

Ideas are by their nature _unproven_ , which is to say their merits are a
matter of opinion rather than rigor, so few people feel compelled to rip them
off or otherwise attempt to develop them.

I had the pleasure of working with Bill Joy at Sun Microsystems for several
years, and one of the things that struck me about him was his ability to
stretch the idea box way out of shape. He proposed some truly horrible ideas,
but in the discussion enabled folks to step outside their own limitations and
come up with some great things. Certainly not all of Bill's ideas were
horrible, but wide ranging discussions were empowering on several levels which
one would not have predicted.

So if you've got some ideas that you're wondering about, talking about them
with others, any others, will help you develop them. Its one of the great
things enthusiast clubs are good for, robust discussions about ideas related
to club activities.

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Ecio78
What about creating some polls and using Amazon Mechanical Turk to get
opinions? You can read something about this approach here:
[http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2009/10/29/crowdsourcing-
your-p...](http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2009/10/29/crowdsourcing-your-product-
name/)

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richardlucas
<http://whynot.net/> is a good place to start.

My dog rental business idea was shot to pieces.. (its still a great
idea)..<http://goo.gl/yLNtU> but it got 5000 views. years back

Yahoo Answers...

Final one, is to find the community that your idea is relevant to, post it on
the forums of the web sites that serve it. .. so if you idea is relevant to
people who make high temperature adhesives go to Adhesives World and look
there, if you are writing about fashion accessories for Ruby on Rails
developers go there, more work but more useful..

good luck

Richard Lucas

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dotBen
You need to work out whether you want opinions from potential customers or
from industry peers.

Arguably both are important when considering any startup idea.

I can't help you find the potential customers, but when it comes to peers it
is important to have a strong network of industry friends, contacts and
mentors. If you don't have that to bounce an idea of then you're going to come
equally stuck later on down the road when you need to lean on a network for
potential hires, business advice, etc.

A strong contact network you can rely on is a key part of success.

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xxqs
why not publishing them in a personal blog and sending links in various social
platforms, like HN or google+?

although with HN, lots of topics remain neglected, especially if they appear
in non-US daytime

~~~
chalst
_lots of topics remain neglected_ \-- Breaking your idea down into two or
three pieces as a series of posts to your blog and linking them from HN can
overcome this, and it might help you organise your ideas better.

 _Postscript_ \- Per HN noise factor: do be aware that most HN readers are not
as excited about your idea as you are.

~~~
xxqs
... and it will pollute HN's topic flow even more :)

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Buddy7878
How far have you gone in developing these ideas?

If they are in the form of a simple web page, and you've got some sort of
tracking in place, then feel free to post on here, I'm sure you'll get some
valuable feedback.

Oh, and I've just dropped you a quick email if you want to chat over Skype or
whatever!

~~~
naf
They're just ideas floating around in my head. I want to make sure I'm not
reinventing the weel.

~~~
xxqs
if you start posting at G+, feel free to add me, will be glad to share
thoughts.

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davidw
You could stop by #startups on irc.freenode.net. Discussion is a lot less
'serious' than here though, at times.

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Kaizyn
There aren't that many outlets. Most of my discussions of the type you're
describing have been with co-workers. This would make for a useful online
community.

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willmacdonald
Try the Startup Guild

<http://startupguild.net/>

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jiggity
Hi Naf,

I love thinking through new ideas and I would be glad to help.

You can see some parts of the framework I use to evaluate ideas in my past
comments.

Shoot me an email if you think I can help.

cheers,

jiggity

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petervandijck
Post them here.

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cubicle67
email me if you like. I'm only one data point but more than happy to offer
some friendly feedback

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chalst
sed -i~ $comment_title s/discuss about my/discuss my/

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