

How to Evaluate Your Startup Idea Part 1: The Basics - mattmaroon
http://mattmaroon.com/2012/03/01/how-to-evaluate-your-startup-idea-part-1-the-basics/

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staunch
A very solid list of the intellectual side. The other equally important side
is the emotional.

I would at least add: #8 Expected Long-term Passion

I have _tons_ of startup ideas. I think my current list is around 50 and those
are just the ones that I write down because they're nagging at me. Just about
any of them _could_ be successful to some extent. Most of them would make it
over this list.

The thing that would prevent me from work on 98% of them is my own self-
awareness. I know that I couldn't sustain my motivation to work on them over
the long-term.

Any sufficiently ambitious startup idea is going to be a 3+ year commitment to
fully execute on. That means you have to be deeply and genuinely be interested
in the problem enough to sustain your for _years_. That's a very high bar that
very few ideas make it over.

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mattmaroon
I thought about something like #8. It's a legitimate concern for sure. I just
tend not to naturally come up with ideas that I wouldn't like working on. I
don't feel I can judge very far in advance how much I'll like something 3
years down the line, and most startups are dead or evolved into something else
by then anyway.

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keeptrying
The idea is very different from the work you'll be doing to implement it. So
this #8("Expected Long-term Passion") is a REAL requirement.

For example: you love adventure sports and want to create a marketplace for
adventure sprots. The truth is you WILL NOT be doing any adventure sports
during the next 3 years. You'll be doing marketing, getting partners to give
discounts, sales etc ... On top of that you might have to pivot to doing
something only slightly related.

OR for another example: you want to create a nutritional tool that will help
people lose weight. You think it will be getting together great nutrtional
content and showing it to users is a meaningful way but instead it could
involve creating better image recognition of foods.

Also as soon as you take money, your locked into the idea and need to see it
through or your never going to work in this town again. Investors hate one
thing more than anything else - low effort.

I've just been through all this so I've finally reazlied that "passion" is
VERY VERY VERY necessary.

So in addition to all of the above requirements for an idea, it should also
satisfy the following :

"If I do this and it fails - I'll still be VERY HAPPY that I spent the last 2
years of my life doing this."

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revorad
Great list Matt, thanks for sharing.

One test I now use is this: Is the core feature, without any additions, enough
to cater to a big market? I've noticed that some of the best startups solve
one really important problem and are able to ride that for a long time.
Examples include Google, Dropbox, Facebook, and now Stripe.

If no one gets really excited when you show them the most basic version of
your idea, then padding it with more features is probably not going to help.

~~~
mattmaroon
Good point. I think an MVP should be exciting for sure.

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dkrich
My new favorite that I use now almost immediately is simply, "If I were to
give the core product away absolutely free, would people take it? If so, how
enthusiastic would they be about getting it?"

It sounds ridiculous, but I have found it brings a quick dose of reality to
ideas that I come up with on a whim that are subject to my own bias. For a
grossly simple example, if I were to start a restaurant, there is a safe bet
that it COULD be successful because anybody would accept food if it were given
away for free, especially if it were of high quality. The rest of the process
of building a successful restaurant is fairly complicated, but without a
product people would be happy to receive for free, there is no business. The
level of enthusiasm the people show for the core product is a good indicator
of how much they would pay.

Contrast that with a lot of software/internet businesses and that question
gets very murky. With a lot of the sites that I start work on I think "if I
offered this product for free, would people be excited to get it?" and very
often I realize my idea, while perhaps creative, just isn't solving a real
need.

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ggwicz
No future posts/parts necessary.

Just put a price tag on your idea and give it some time; an idea worthy of
strangers' money is validated.

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jgmmo
Good article, but question -- why is the 'WTF' linked to Sleep.fm?

~~~
mattmaroon
An Easter egg for anyone who has been reading my blog for 5+ years. It used to
be my example of the dumbest idea around. It was back at a time when "social"
was the big buzz and people were trying to apply it to everything, including,
apparently, the alarm clock.

It's original incarnation, if I remember correctly, was some software that you
ran on a computer in your bedroom (with your speakers on) that allowed your
friends to wake you by changing your alarm time. The new incarnation looks
just as bad. But they did mix in mobile and Twitter and Facebook!

~~~
jgmmo
Ah I see, that's funny. Whats interesting is that I personally know the guy
who made that, and worked next to him at Dreamit Ventures years ago (Dreamit's
first class) during a whole summer. So you can imagine my surprise to find the
link on your site. For the record, very nice guy.

I agree completely though, 'social' was all the rage. Much like 'Big Data'
today.

