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I'm at the Imagine Cup Finals, and I'm getting to see lots of students' projects, and lots of ideas. For competitions like that, there are of course a set of objectives that are slated as part of the competition -- work toward those goals and do better than everyone else. Sure, the Imagine Cup's goals are broad -- "Make the world a better place" -- but they're still a set of "mission objectives."

Real life does not have such easy, slated goals.

Let's say I wanted to start a startup tomorrow, with several ideas. How would I choose between them for general applicability to the masses?

(There's lots out there on how to take an idea and sell it, but I'm trying to choose the idea based on sell-ability)

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imaginecup.com/about/Theme – DKnight Jul 8 '11 at 18:57
@DKnight: Yes, if I was looking to judge an Imagine Cup presentation itself, I would need to check there. I'm looking for "real life" judging though. E.g. "Idea XXX which can be explained in 5 seconds." is better than "Idea YYY which needs a PHD to understand." – Billy ONeal Jul 8 '11 at 19:00

migrated from programmers.stackexchange.com Jul 8 '11 at 19:05

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Answer these questions.

  1. Is there an existing market for this idea? If so, go to first set of questions - if not, go to the second set of questions.
  1. How much is this market worth in actual dollars?
  2. How established are the major players?
  3. Do you think that your product can reasonably compete with the established players?
  4. How much of the market do you think that your product can actually take?
  1. Does your product solve an actual problem?
  2. Is your product technically feasible? (easy to get into people's hands!)
  3. Is it marketable? (will people pay money for it/advertising, etc)
  4. Do I have the resources to properly develop it before somebody eats my lunch?
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Good checklist -- however I would also suggest that there is a sanity checkpoint of "Do you know anything about the segment you will operate in" -- that is, without prior knowledge of the market you should get education before trying to enter, and also you need to unserstand the peoples mindset two whom you want to pitch to. – Soren Jul 10 '11 at 6:45
up vote 1 down vote

"Let's say I wanted to start a startup tomorrow, with several ideas. How would I choose between them for general applicability to the masses?"

Well why is that the criteria... applicability to the masses?

Would you rather try an idea that everyone alive might want (Pet Rock!) that has a 10% chance of success or a niche idea that few would want that has a 90% chance to become real?

I'll take the niche...you can make a hundred of them.

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up vote 0 down vote

From the context of your startup I would say the best of your ideas would be the one you think you could follow through on without stalling. If you don't believe in your idea enough to think you can follow through on it from the beginning it probably isn't the best idea, for you to execute.

On the other hand if you a merely judging if an idea is good in general I find it very hard to figure that out on your own. You will definitely need to get reactions from other people to feel out if your idea is extremely good.

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