
'Don’t ignore your stupid ideas.' - gyardley
http://williamwilkinson.com/post/3089051066
======
MicahWedemeyer
Not shown: 1000s of goofy iphone apps that generated close to $0

If the moral of the story is "Do funky apps for fun and be happily surprised
if they make any money" then I agree. If the moral is "Do funky apps and
expect to make $16k over a weekend" then I have to disagree.

Note: I say this as the co-author of a very nice funky app:
<http://fakewhale.com> I am currently waiting by the phone for investors or
acquirers to call.

~~~
rgbrgb
What does fakewhale even do? Kind of not a good sign that I couldn't figure
that out.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
I'll let pg explain: <http://fakewhale.com/tweets/69535>

~~~
BadiPod
I don't see the point.

~~~
ehsanul
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour>

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seanalltogether
For all the new designers out there, please don't add a CSS text shadow to the
main body of your text content. By highlighting everything, you make
everything less readable.

~~~
damienfir
And don't replace the default scrolling with javascript, it's slow.

~~~
kscaldef
And doesn't work right. Hitting "page down" doesn't work unless you first
click on the page with your mouse.

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rewind
Don't ignore your stupid ideas... that only waste a few hours of your time if
they don't go anywhere; otherwise, your first instinct is probably the one to
go with.

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GBond
IMO his big win was getting an iPhone app dev (who can actually execute) agree
to make an app for him on the premise of splitting revenue. Either this was
real early time of the "App goldrush" before anyone knew money could be made
or the dev was a friend (post seems to imply it was a random twitter
follower).

Anybody with a reputation as a good iPhone app dev get the age old "idea guy"
proposition at least 3 times a week: "I got a great app idea.. I'll give you
some of the $ if you code it just for me."

~~~
rgbrgb
For what it's worth, if anyone came to me with those screens and that idea,
I'd code it in a day. There's a difference between "I have this idea for a
game, here's a sketch of a character" and "I have an idea for a simple app
that I've already done most of the work on and it will only take a few hours
to code".

~~~
zackattack
can you send me an email? zackster@gmail.com i have an ultraquick iphone app i
want to make. i have kickass wireframes already.

~~~
GBond
^ I rest my case ;)

~~~
sgrove
Meh, Zack's the real deal, exactly what the poster mentioned looking for. He
has some pretty good ideas, executes on them as much as he can, and outsources
what he can't.

I understand your point, I just think there's a difference between the
stereotypical dude-bro idea marketing guy preying on developers and people who
can carry their own weight.

~~~
Unseelie
The issue isn't that these people don't exist, but much as happens on dating
sites, the women(devs) get message after message after message...It becomes
incredibly time consuming weeding the -few- goods out from the chaf.

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tree_of_item
What does this say? I mean, it's nice that he made a popular app and a ton of
money, but there is nothing to learn here. It was either raw luck or a stupid
populace or both that made this happen. There's no insight in to the design of
a well made and genuinely entertaining or interesting application here, just a
gimmick app that somehow made it big.

It's discouraging to read things like this, because the implied moral is "any
stupid idea you come up with has a chance of making it big". But if that's
true, then why bother taking your time to design good applications? Why strive
for excellence when some random gimmick app is just as likely to make money?

~~~
gyardley
It reminds you that when your small ideas require proportionately small
efforts, you might as well do them and see what happens.

Too many people inappropriately shrug off their smaller thoughts as not worth
doing, because they're not going to 'change the world' or some other low-
probability outcome.

~~~
phillco
I noticed this a lot when I tried blogging a couple of summers ago. The
articles I thought would be hits bombed, and the stupid ones I wrote just for
fun [1] ended up being huge successes.

Inevitably, I just resigned myself to the fact that I _don't_ know what'll be
successful, and the only way to find out if something will work is to do it.

[1] <http://phillipcohen.net/articles/simcity/> (got like 30,000 hits)

~~~
j_baker
I've noticed the same thing with comments on HN. More often than not, it's the
silly one-liner that gets voted up rather than the thoughtful, introspective,
and deep comment. I suppose human attention is always the biggest force you
have to contend with.

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scottmagdalein
Stupid ideas is all I have. Looking forward to the millions I'll be making
soon. Thanks for the encouragement, Billy!

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T_S_
When a field like apps is so new, the effort required to innovate is low.
People bring their expectations about the level of effort from areas where
expertise is well developed. Think of databases and algorithms. Eventually
novelty apps will have to become pretty sophisticated (if they haven't
already).

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octopus
Genial, simple, effective and well paid. I'm a bit jealous I didn't have your
"stupid" idea :).

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mono
Not shown: 1000s of goofy lifes have been saved from this app.

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bemmu
Good timing for the idea. Last September Apple added the following to their
guidelines: "15.5 Apps that includes games of Russian roulette will be
rejected"

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iamgoat
Sounds like he had the luck of the draw.

