

Ask HN: Does a new software idea make you feel intoxicated? - hoodoof

When a new idea pops into my head and it seems like it has awesome potential I feel an almost addictive intoxication and can&#x27;t stop thinking about it, to the exclusion of almost all else.<p>I suppose this is what is behind the entrepreneurial drive.<p>Am I unusual or do new &quot;great&quot; ideas give you a heady sense of intoxication?
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nostrademons
Yes, but after having felt that drive several dozen times and actually
implemented over a dozen of them, I've learned that:

1\. It will take about an order of magnitude more time to implement than I
expect. Always.

2\. I will end up hating my past self's decision-making abilities roughly 60%
of the way through.

3\. The eventual reaction will range from "WTF? Who wants this?" to "Oh,
that's mildly interesting" to "Wow, that's pretty useful, or at least really
cool", with each category having roughly an order of magnitude fewer instances
than the last.

As a result, I've gotten much more careful about what I actually start
implementing, and really try to sleep on ideas and see if I (or someone else)
_really_ needs them before I dive in. A lot of the time, I get a great new
idea that I'm crazy excited about, and then after a couple weeks I'm like
"Meh, that's not really all that great an idea after all. I can solve the same
problem in a much simpler way without writing any code."

~~~
hoodoof
The real questions to answer for each idea are

"who wants this?"

"how are they going to hear about it?"

"does it have any sort of viral push?"

"do participants have some sort of incentive to participate?"

I keep spending months building "great" ideas that don't have good enough
answers to these questions.

~~~
arisAlexis
why do you have to build something that other's want? I don't understand this
HN mentality here. You can build something that will net you money without
others, or it doesn't even have anything to do with money like an open source
project. Too much concentrated in the virality of things imo

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arisAlexis
I am frequently high in these new ideas I totally understand you. Sometimes I
am in a club and it pops into my head and then only my body is in this space-
time :)

