
How New Ideas Almost Killed Our Startup - revorad
http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/08/03/new-ideas-can-kill-your-startup/
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daleharvey
I think you can go further, this post talked about ideas that are completely
unrelated to your company.

In my experience, completely related on topic great ideas can still kill your
startup, its an easy thing to bury your head in code and produce feature after
feature without looking up and evaluating what that feature gave you apart
from more code to manage. Microsoft can afford to make massive bloated
software that does everything and the kitchen sink "decently" startups can
rarely afford to do anything more than one thing very very well.

~~~
revorad
The OP is writing about choosing that one thing you want to do very very well,
which I think is a bigger problem than feature creep.

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kevt
People usually "fall in love" with ideas, which is why its so hard to pull
away from it. Its hard to be rational and objective when you're in love. This
isn't so much of an issue in a relationship (in love with a person) because
how you feel is what matters. However, in a startup, what matters is how the
customers feel, and that love potion will be your Archilles heel if not
treated carefully. I generally try to fall in love with problems before an
idea (solution). When the idea comes before the problem, its been disastrous.
Customer Development helps, but its still a rough ride.

~~~
thewordpainter
"I generally try to fall in love with problems before an idea (solution). When
the idea comes before the problem, its been disastrous. Customer Development
helps, but its still a rough ride." i think that's a great way to put it...the
problem will remain until somebody fulfills, but there can be a variety of
potential solutions to just about any problem.

reminded me of a quote i tweeted recently & then saw @bmull include today: "As
long as I listen to my customers, I never need to have another original idea"
-@nielr1 in Do More Faster

~~~
hallmark
Sometimes advice sounds perfect for any situation but actually needs to be
applied judiciously. It is easy to succumb to the "wow" factor of another
person's story of their success. I will use Henry Ford to counter nielr1:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

~~~
thewordpainter
agreed. the way i interpreted neil's quote was that a startup has a certain
trajectory in mind, but once they release and start collecting feedback
(surve.io anybody?), then the inspiration for the pivots will come from the
users of the product.

of course you can't listen to what everybody says, but as a team, take all of
the generated ideas and determine which are the best. i think it removes a lot
of the assumptions that are present going in.

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sahillavingia
Sometimes ideas are necessary intermediates to the next-big-thing. SimpleGeo
comes to mind: _The original plan of CrashCorp was to create mobile games
using augmented reality, but the young company soon learned that the hardest
part was developing the back-end geolocation infrastructure that would support
their applications. Thus was born SimpleGeo._ [1]

[1] -
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/most_promising_company_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/most_promising_company_for_2011_simplegeo.php)

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mechanical_fish
Thanks for this link; it could not have arrived at a better time. Need to go
paste this into a couple email threads... ;)

~~~
thewordpainter
no surprise this topic comes from yipit's founder as i think it's pretty
ironic that so many of the daily deal startups started as something entirely
different.

plenty know about the groupon story, but who remembers when livingsocial was
emerging by having people share their top 5 lists on facebook? what about
scoutmob which began as a wifi provider?

both of those companies noticed that they were sitting on an large amount of
consumer data, and they both figured they could use it to pivot their model
towards the emerging group discount space.

~~~
wisty
Or that Twitter started as something completely different? And Microsoft?
Google, Apple, and Facebook are counter-counter-examples.

But the point remains - don't be fooled into thinking that the grass is always
greener. Unless it really is.

~~~
danielayele
Apple and Facebook also both started as different things than they are now
(computer manufacturer, college social network). It becomes increasingly hard
to recognize the pivots/changes over time because people tend to be very
forgetful/associate brands with their current product or service.

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joevandyk
I bet the guys at Twitter are glad they didn't take this advice.

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srveit
Why?

~~~
texel
Read up on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo> ... Twitter was a side project
that ended up taking over.

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exactlee
As entrepreneurs I believe we are hardwired to search for the "next big
thing." I agree with this article in that it can be detrimental to our success
as entrepreneurs. With my first business we launched and had decent revenues
for almost two years. Then things started going south and instead of searching
for a solution within our business, we tried starting another company to
support it. And when that didn't work and I returned to "tie myself to the
masthead like Odysseus" my ship had already sunk. Moral of the story: Stay
focused!

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digitalclubb
Argh, this article is so true and should not be ignored.

I have recently been building projects, when in the middle, I suddenly get an
idea for another project, I would down all tools to kick start something new
with the belief I could multitask and do both.

The truth is, you can't! Give your initial project 110% and get it out of the
door before you try anything new. That way all of your products will have the
quality they deserve.

Great article.

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lloydarmbrust
Counter point: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035316>

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AtTheLast
I discovered notepad really helps me when new ideas sweep me off my feet. I
write down my idea and a few key nots about it. That way I don't lose the idea
and spend a lot of time thinking about it. If the idea still sounds good after
a month or so, then I might spend a few more hours clarifying the idea into a
more concrete concept.

~~~
jaredsohn
I've developed this habit, too. One problem I've run across (which I'm
thinking you also might have) is I end the day with a whole bunch of notepads
open and it is a pain to save/close them.

If you have that problem, too, you should check out a program I wrote called
Notepad Consolidator (<https://github.com/jaredsohn/NotepadConsolidator>) that
writes the contents of all open untitled notepads to an autonamed file.

~~~
wiseleo
I converted the lean startup worksheet into a Freemind mindmap. For new ideas,
I simply open this mindmap template, fill it out, and store it in my main SVN
repository under ideas. It makes documenting a new idea and running a quick
feasibility analysis a matter of a few minutes.

Definitely beats notepads :)

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erikb
that graph is my new desktop background. I hope it will help fight these
distractions!

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Charuru
You don't want to make any absolute statements. Sites like flickr are siren-
like ideas that turned out very well. It's always a tough judgement call for
when to get distracted.

The important thing is to make sure you're pursing this other idea because
it's actually something worthwhile not just as an escape from your startup not
doing so great... Basically, think about things rationally and not
emotionally.

~~~
dctoedt
> _You don't want to make any absolute statements._

All categorical statements are bad, including this one.

