
How to Know If an Idea Is Worth Pursuing - linardzb
https://www.indiehackers.com/@thwiv/how-to-know-if-an-idea-is-worth-pursuing-75501f81ad
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thewayfarer
Our educational culture has us convinced that we need to have some kind of
complete mental process before we produce an answer for some problem. In
school, you answer a question by recalling information, making deductions, and
only after eliminating your doubts to a sufficient degree do you scratch your
answer on a piece of paper. Oh, and a good student is always afraid of being
wrong. It's a mentality that we carry into adulthood only to be paralyzed by
it. If only we taught kids to instinctively do and produce even at the risk of
being wrong or looking like a fool later. We should habitually be exploring,
doing, and engaging with problems and ideas. Pursuing the right ideas in your
career should amount to selecting from your experiences and the experiences
that others have shared with you. What ideas worked and what didn't? How did
the outcome conform to your expectations? It doesn't have to be a complete and
finished product. What did you learn from making this prototype? What
surprised you? No doubt you've have many bad ideas over the years. We all have
them. What projects are providing value to you because you enjoy working on
them, and what projects look like they could provide real value to others in
the world? Those are the projects worth pursuing for the long run.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
> Oh, and a good student is always afraid of being wrong.

The classical "right/wrong" paradigm followed me into my music playing too.
(Just a bedroom guitarist, not a pro.) It took me years to realize that music
- and arguably any creative activity - needs a vastly different mindset.

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itamarst
Research is a pretty good way to know if your idea is worth pursuing. In my
case:

1\. Read one of top-voted comments on CS Career Questions sub-reddit in past
year.

2\. Write blog post on topic, get to #1 on Hacker News.

3\. Write intro to book based on blog post ideas, turn into blog post, get to
front page of Hacker News.

4\. Write book.

5\. Sell some books.

Compare to "I had an idea! let's do some work".

Credit: [http://stackingthebricks.com/](http://stackingthebricks.com/) was
hugely helpful in going from "I have an idea!" mindset to "I should rely on
research" mindset.

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stevenj
If your goal is to build a company, I think you should focus on the following:

1\. Find a problem that you (or someone you know very well) have.

2\. Look at the existing solutions to the problem and evaluate not only if you
can build a better solution, but also how quickly people will switch to
something better if they came across it today (i.e. How fed up are people with
current offerings? How easy will it be for them to switch?).

3\. Build and market something for a very small group of customers or users.
Focus on making that group extremely happy with your product or service. (It
could be as small as one customer or user at first.)

~~~
yalogin
What if the idea you have is for a real need/issue you face but its trivial
for an established player to build in as a feature?

~~~
snarf21
How many "you"s are there out there? Is this a space BigCo would bother with?
Would the other "you"s trust your more/less than BigCo? Is your issue really
that important or does it just annoy you?

In general, the only way to find out is to talk to everyone you can that you
think is "you". Ask them if they care. Ask what they'd pay for a solution.

~~~
scribu
Better than asking them what they _would_ pay, ask them to _actually_ pay a
token amount, with the promise that they’ll get it back if the product never
comes to market or doesn’t meet their needs.

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danieltillett
I have had success using this checklist [0].

0\. [https://www.tillett.info/2016/01/27/a-good-idea-
checklist/](https://www.tillett.info/2016/01/27/a-good-idea-checklist/)

Yes it is mine :)

~~~
KajMagnus
Thanks for posting. From my perspective, seems like an even better checklist,
and I'm planning to apply it to a few projects I have in mind.

~~~
danieltillett
Remember to contact me if you have more than 16 :)

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austincheney
If I had to ask other people then none of my ideas would have been worth
pursuing. That is the problem with novelty. If an idea is truly original and
fresh nobody else will see the value in it until the work is done and the
value is immediately available.

~~~
rajacombinator
This is really not true. If the idea is so novel that people can’t understand
and want it when you pitch it to them, building it is not going to help. You
still have to pitch it to them.

I’ll add: if you think it’s true, it probably just means you’re bad at
pitching.

~~~
austincheney
> This is really not true. If the idea is so novel that people can’t
> understand and want it when you pitch it to them, building it is not going
> to help.

In my experience that isn't true at all. I have often found that new ideas are
often met with a lack of care but sometimes contempt or even disgust. People
being emotionally threatened by new ideas is actually a thing and there is
nothing you can do about it except fast forward to the future when those
people have gotten past their inner conservatism.

It is so incredibly rare that something screamingly original is met with a
positive reaction, likely because there is no positive frame of reference on
which to build enthusiasm. The only time I have any luck in this area is when
I pitch my original ideas to people who are extreme experts around in that
area such that the idea isn't a creative stretch for them.

Even when I build the new thing the positive reactions are, at first,
exceedingly rare. A new idea doesn't become popular until it is endorsed by
popular people or by early adopters who enjoy experimenting with wild
unknowns. People generally need to be told something new is good before they
can reach that conclusion themselves, but when it does happen it happens like
a flood.

Based upon these experiences I don't dick around with pitches. Unless you
really REALLY need a favor from somebody you are just wasting your time, time
that could be better spent just building the new thing.

~~~
brucephillips
The answer is to gather feedback from early adopters, not avoid users
entirely.

------
CalChris
Garrett Lisi has a moonshot of an idea, a grand unified field theory using the
E8 Lie Group. He works on it and it is still alive. Of it he says:

 _I consider this to be a developing theory that is worth my time to work on,
as a long shot._

 _Worth my time_. I think this sums up everything and I take it to heart.
First and only, it has to be worth your time. Before anything else this is
your deal. It has nothing to do with MVPs or investment or customers. This has
to do with you, whether succeeding or failing (and chances are high that you
will fail), whether it is worth your time.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything)

I also like Bezos' _regret minimization_ , whether you would regret _not_
attempting this.

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pascalxus
This post evaluates ideas from the perspective of the person who's doing it,
rather than from the customer. This post is not about building a successful
business, rather it is about finding out what "you" want to do. These are
often, two different things.

~~~
thwiv
You're absolutely right. When I was writing this I wasn't quite exploring it
from the perspective of creating a successful business, but rather taking on a
project from start to completion, which is something I (and I think a lot of
other people) struggle with.

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lafar6502
First make sure if it’s your decision. Maybe the idea is worth pursuing but
would bring financial ruin to you or make your family suffer? Or has some
consequences that would be difficult to reverse, like getting a reputation of
insane/maniac?

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LeonB
Does the idea solve a problem that customers DEMAND a solution to. Can you
readily find 10 actual customers.

~~~
jhayward
There very best ideas create capabilities that the customer didn't even know
they wanted or needed.

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rokhayakebe
If your goal is to create something great focus on ideaLs instead of ideas.

An ideal is your an improved version of the/a/your world according to your
vision.

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purplezooey
Good article. Always drowning in good ideas and never enough time to get to
most of them.

