
Ask HN: How do you decide which idea to start on? - newsisan
How do you evaluate your ideas, and decide which one to work on?<p>Do you use criteria like time required, cost, etc?<p>What have you tried, what would you like to?
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iamwil
If you're just starting out, pick the one you can finish. Most people never
follow through, and it's a pretty basic lesson to learn.

Once you got that down, pick ones that excite you.

Later on, you'll think about stuff like potential market opportunity. And
whether people actually want what you've Built. But I think it's important to
learn HOW to build first. If you can finish things, you're already well ahead
of the pack.

~~~
joecode
Good advice. Beyond that, I recommend surrounding yourself with critical,
intelligent, trustworthy people. I bounce all my ideas off a core group of
friends, and generally don't bother with anything until they all give the
green light. Besides that, it's just ROI/risk evaluation. Unless you're
already a millionaire, it is best to focus on lowest possible investment for
the highest likely return. Later it may be worth taking bigger risks.

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vaksel
1\. Is there a market

2\. Do I need to teach people that this is important...or do I get to exploit
existing demand?

3\. Is there some sort of barrier to entry?

4\. How long will it take to build a minimum viable product?

5\. What the competitors are like, their current reputation, their current SEO
rankings, their current adwords campaigns etc.

6\. Then I usually build a quick fake page to see if there is any demand. I'd
rather piss off 200-300 people and see what the actual demand is like, instead
of relying on them to tell me what they think they want.

7\. If everything works out, I get to work. If not, I get to save 3 months
chasing an idea that has no potential.

~~~
anonymousDan
Do you see a positive answer to number 3 as a good thing or a bad thing? For
me, it could be either depending on how you look at it!

~~~
vaksel
good thing, since it means long term you'll get breathing room against any new
people who decide to enter your space.

------
8ren
There's a story about someone telling Einstein that he keeps a notebook on
hand to jot down all the good ideas he's had. Einstein said he wouldn't need
such a notebook. Because he has such a great memory? No, because he'd only had
one or two good ideas in his life.

Seriously, if none of them leap at you, grab you by the neck, and insist on
existing, it means you don't have any good ideas.

But this doesn't mean you should be discouraged, it just means you should be
in "getting good ideas" mode. And the best way to do this is to get out there,
experiencing problems, solving them, making mistakes, correctly them, feeling
stupid, making progress, all the while trying to understand things, wondering
about things, being exposed to lots of different ideas from different places,
and trying out the ideas you've had, if they interest you, just out of
curiosity. _Get busy living or get busy dying_ in Morgan Freeman's voice.
"Evaluating ideas" is a way of dying, IMHO. At least, that's how it's been for
me when I've got stuck in that way of thinking, anyway.

Then one day, you're looking at something, and you think "you know, everyone
is doing this in a stupid way. why don't they do it this way? it would be so
much better." You whip up the simplest prototype you can think of, in a couple
of hours, just to check for yourself that the basic idea does basically kinda
work. Then you whip up something, in a day, that others could try (a day's
work: that's how incomplete and limited and trivial that prototype should be -
an MVP), to see if anyone else is the slightest bit interested - if they are,
that gives you the information and the encouragement/fuel to continue. And
suddenly, without quite meaning to, your journey has begun.

That's what happened to me, anyway.

Take the heaviness away. That corporate/academic/executive approach of
"criteria" and "evaluating ideas" doesn't make giant corporations agile - and
it's only going to drag you down. Insight and intuition come not from
methodologies, but in spite of them; they come from contact with reality, and
from you. And insight and intuition is where the great startup ideas come
from.

 _disclaimer_ I'm not a wildly successful entrepreneur, just a successful-
enough one. A cool idea from many years ago is still making money for me
today. This is all just IMHO, my experience, YMMV.

------
revorad
I like to work on ideas that

1\. really excite me

2.just won't get out of my head even after it's been days since I first
thought of them

3\. keep luring me to go back to work on them even after the initial honeymoon
period is over and I've been through days when I felt utterly bored of them.

~~~
JonM
Agree.... the one that doesn't seem like work.. (at least to start with!).

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antileet
I have only one suggestion which helped me pick out the good ideas from the
bad - to get external opinion. It's almost like humans have a self defense
mechanism by which they can't adequately find flaws in their own selves and
ideas. Thus, your idea might be the biggest thing in your mind, while other
people might feel otherwise.

That's why I told everyone about my idea - presented it in startup events,
showed people demos, put it up on public mailing lists and wikis. The idea got
battered and beaten down and each time there were little changes. There's this
huge hype about being a "stealth startup" and a fear that people in some web
shop will steal your idea and clone it.

tl;dr - the idea that you start with is the one that people can't completely
tear apart and obliterate.

Also, the idea is pretty much useless. If I had an idea that I'll make a touch
screen phone with an app store, nobody would've taken me seriously. If I'd
pulled an apple and built one, people would've. Three months into full-time
development of a product, I can only say that execution is pretty much
everything.

------
raquo
\- there is some problem to be solved

\- I must understand how people solve the problem (apart from specially
designated software)

\- I must understand what's wrong with all existing solutions

\- I must be personally interested in solving that problem even if it does not
bring millions

\- I must have at least remote knowledge of how to implement that idea
(technically, I mean). I'm reluctant to rely solely on others.

\- etc.

See the YC application form, it has very good questions.

------
davidamcclain
This is how Jim Coudal selects projetcs.

1\. Am I going to make money from this?

2\. Is this going to be something I’m proud of when it’s done? Am I going to
want to show this to my friends?

3\. Am I going to learn something from doing it?

Source: [http://lifeinperpetualbeta.com/blog/bloggers/field-
testing-c...](http://lifeinperpetualbeta.com/blog/bloggers/field-testing-
creativity-with-jim-coudal/26)

------
gregschlom
Summing up what's being said in the comments, the two main points are:

1\. Subjective: are you really really willing to spend a lot of time and
energy (not to mention money) on the idea, to the point that it becomes the
only subject of your thoughts? (Paul Graham wrote two inspiring pieces on
this: <http://paulgraham.com/top.html> and
<http://paulgraham.com/determination.html>)

2\. Objective: is there really a market, is people really willing to pay for
your solution? etc... There was a submission a while ago on HN about a
technique dubbed "Ghetto Testing" that was quite interesting:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485057>

------
ekidd
The one that smart, hardworking cofounders believe in, too.

~~~
GVRV
what if you don't have any co-founders?

~~~
ekidd
Then try one of the other heuristics suggested in this thread. :-)

------
icey
I'm really guilty of spreading myself too thin with projects. Recently I asked
myself a different set of questions to evaluate what projects I wanted to work
on, and it made deciding very easy:

    
    
      1) Which ideas can be turned into a company?  
      2) Which have the most attractive success scenario? 
    

I spent too much time focusing on any idea that could make money. Well, the
problem is that making money really isn't that hard if you know how to ask for
it. Every idea that came into my head was good enough to work on - if you ask
yourself question number 1 a lot, you'll have the same problem.

Once I started focusing on question 2 everything became much more clear. You
have to ask yourself a lot of questions to get to an answer; the questions
(and answers) are far more personal than you can ask advice about. If you're
going to give up a significant portion of your time to succeed, it's important
that there's a big enough payoff for you at the other side. For some people,
this is purely financial; some people want to make "popular" software that
everyone uses. There are people who just like working on interesting problems,
and people who really just want a day job where they can be "the boss".

If you decide what's most important to you, it should be much easier to decide
what to work on. You'll end up with the added benefit of being much more
motivated to work towards a goal that is desirable to you; not one that
everyone else thinks is desirable.

------
ThomPete
I would ask myself.

Will it change the world or compliment it?

Are there people who need it? Do they know that they need it?

How is it going to solve their problem?

How much is the solution worth to the customer?

Can I do it myself? If not what else do I need.

What is the core product that I am trying to create. [http://000fff.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/product_feature...](http://000fff.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/product_feature1.png)

How much time am I willing to spend on it.

------
jcamp
I have ideas all the time. A few good ones and a swarm of bad ones. Filtering
them down is sometimes tough.

I believe you should work on the one you feel the most passionate about. Ideas
do not need to be great to succeed. But, unless you have a fantastic game
changer of an idea, you need to work hard and passionately to get it off the
ground. The more you are vested in the project emotionally the more likely you
are to always push through.

Hate cats but have a great idea for a new cat toy? Screw it. Love dogs but
have an iffy idea for a new product (doggles anyone?)? Go for it.

As Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent
perspiration." Pick the project you are most willing to perspire over.

------
jjguy
Careful with subjective measures. Measure interest.

Invest some $$ in google ads, have a purty-looking landing page that says
"coming soon!" Build a site and ads for each of your ideas and chase the one
that has most interest.

------
chris_l
The one I would want to build even if I can't earn anything with it and could
only use it myself. Once that one was determined to be commercially viable.

------
readtodevelop
In your case I think you are should learn what are your strengths and
weakness. So you should ask yourself what type of idea can I develop that can
give me some feedback about my capacity to built something valuable. Once you
know something about yourself you should look for a good team. A good team is
the one that gives you the best opportunity to built the valuable idea that
you have.

------
shahriarhaque
* Take out a spreadsheet, put down the names of your ideas in every row, put your evaluation criteria in the columns (Ease of development, New Skills, Current Progress, Real Life Value, etc). * Add a row at the bottom to specify the weights of your criteria. * Add a column to sum up the scores. * Sort Z-A by total score and pick the top 2/3.

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bearwithclaws
There's a saying that "you are married to your business" (or something like
that). So I normally go beyond the tangible things to pick ideas (or
spouse)...

I pick the one that I keep dreaming of and can't stop thinking about every
seconds of the day.

And it works alright so far (both idea and spouse).

------
bkrausz
I tend to go with magnitude of possibilities. Specifically, if I'm still
thinking of new applications/markets for the idea days later, it's probably
worth pursuing.

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c1sc0
The one that is so good that you don't just find people who like it, but
people who _act_ on that hunch and become your co-founder.

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stefanobernardi
The one that keeps you up at night.

~~~
edanm
Sounds good, but actually imo flawed advice. Almost every new idea I've had
that has "kept me up at night" has started to seem much more mundane after a
few weeks of work.

~~~
revorad
I watch out for the ones that come back to keep me up at night after the
inevitable phase of boredom.

------
ct
Pick something you'll enjoy working on where there's a bigger goal than just
making money.

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nolite
The one that you can finish first

------
jesperbergmann
is it within a domain you know a lot about?

is it fun?

can you build it?

can you sell it?

what makes it stand out? someone will copy it if you're successful, so what
makes it sustainable e.g. brand, customer engagement, network effects etc.

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startupcto
I have a list of ideas and I rank the ideas by how much I like them. So the
top idea in the list is the idea that I'm most passionate about.

Then from the top of the list I think about these factors:

1) How big is this idea, can I achieve it with the time/resources I have
budgeted for? Resources can be funding, helpers, co-founders, technology, etc

2) What is the market size of the idea? Can my team support the overall
vision?

3) Who are the competitors? Or is there a competitor? If there is a
competitor, can I compete with the available resource/time that I have?

Start from the top idea and if any of the questions raises a red flag, move on
to the next idea. You don't have to use the 3 questions I provided above, just
add your own questions but the methodology is the same.

