
Ask HN: How do you decide which “great opportunity from a friend” to work on? - cylentwolf
So I now have two groups of friends who are wanting me to work on unrelated projects.  I am the only person bringing coding chops to it.  Both groups have good sales people that could sell the product once it was done.<p>I am in a rut in my day job and so I would like to work on both if I can because they would help increase my skillset.  Both are greenfield projects so I can choose any code set to work with which means I can shore up skills that I don&#x27;t have or have let languish.  But I am not sure which project to go with.<p>One is a problem that is explained by the business as something that if solved would help on boarding of customers and be able to be cross sold to other business of the same type.<p>The other is a project that while the primary has thought it all out the target audience is aimed primarily at users who are not computer savvy.<p>I can provide more details, but I am curious what constraints or measuring sticks HN uses when pursuing a project that doesn&#x27;t have an upside any time soon.
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rudasn
Whenever I'm in this situation the first thing I tell them is send me an email
describing what the idea is and what's the plan to execute.

Most times I never hear about it again, and thats the goal. If they can't be
bothered to write a simple email about their idea, it's not worth anyone
else's attention.

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DamnYuppie
My litmus test is pure and simple, how much money are they willing to spend
right now to solve the problem?

If they will not willing to pony up $$ to solve the problem it isn’t worth
doing. It doesn’t have to be your friends that pay but potential/first
customers. If you think you/they can’t sell something that doesn’t exist
either your sales people are not as good as you think or the idea does not
resonate or solve a painful enough problem.

If you build it they will come is b.s. If you sell it now you will sell a sh*t
ton later is a much better moto.

