Hot answers tagged ideas
58
Ideas are useless. As you said, you "had no capital, no way of monetizing, and not too much exposure". You even admit to having stopped work on it over 18 months ago. Basically, this was a failed startup. It would be one thing if you at least had some interesting technology that would make them worth acquiring- but you don't.
So what exactly did google ...
21
You can't.
I know -- that is blunt. But you can not validate an idea without sharing it.
You just can't. I am sorry. There are 100+ posts on here from people who are trying to ask the question in a different way -- how do they protect their idea, how do they not give it to a VC, to a potential partner, to a prospective incubator. And the community always ...
21
Over the last decade or so, I've either had direct or indirect experience with:
A really fantastic web team from Lahore, Pakistan
A team from India that delivered such bad software, so late, the principal canceled the contract
A team from Beijing, China that was well-liked and respected by people at the principal
A team from a different part of China whose ...
19
Well turn the problem around: can you think of a SINGLE startup that became big and that started something no one else was doing before? The goal of entrepreneurship is to build a company that grows so big that at one point it stops being called a startup. And how do you grow to become a large company? By executing in a growing market and doing it better ...
15
OK, so this may not be exciting to lots of people, but I think you're doing something interesting!
Firstly, there is room for an intermediary in this space. People who write email newsletters want an audience, and they pay for that through direct site advertising. If you can reach new audiences, or the same audience more cost-effectively, you have a value ...
15
Similar to tedivm's answer, ideas are a dime a dozen, it's all about the execution.
Unless you went to the extent of applying for grant of copyright, trademark, and/or patent there is not much recourse outside of having bragging rights that you came up with this concept in 2009 and that it was validated by Google's successful implementation.
My ...
15
Google+ is based heavily on work by Paul Adam who did the research for Google.
He also has a presentation called The Real Life Social Network for which he mentions where he got his info from here: http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2010/07/data-behind-real-life-social-network/
He also published a paper Communication mapping: understanding anyone's social ...
14
You suffer from the inventor syndrome. You believe that the idea is 99% of the solution, and the execution is just stuff that others do.
Let's revisit one of your scenarios. Let's say you just tell an existing company about this great idea you have that would make their product so much better. My guess? They would laugh and not care to implement your idea. ...
13
There is an expression that goes something like this: Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.
The point here being that the truly unique ideas are usually lost on most anybody else and you don't have to worry about people wanting to steal them. For all other ideas, there are ...
13
I love this question. The fact you've asked it makes me think you have a great chance!
You absolutely can go after gaps in the market. Here's my suggestion for a methodology.
Start with some questions.
First, what do you know about? Your particular knowledge, skills and experience will shape how you attack a new challenge. Be thorough in looking at what ...
12
From the question:
"a lot of conceivable startups have already been conceived, a lot of workable business ideas have already been worked out"
That's like saying a lot of music has already been written. Of course it has, but there's always another song. And there's always another new solution to the world's problems.
Start writing down every idea you ...
12
One of the main points I've gotten out of reading Good to Great is that it should be about the right people first. A coupling point, from Founders at Work is that you should be ready to change your idea as you work on it.
The right people will help you implement and change ideas until something works great.
Wrong people will not make a brilliant idea work.
...
12
Even if your idea is novel, within days of your site going live, there will be several imitators out there hawking a similar product. You have to do the best job you can to make your product provide as much value as possible. Thus, the issue of being novel is [almost] irrelevant, since even if it is novel today, it won't be tomorrow, so why worry about that? ...
12
This is the same as with any product
Think of some... laundry washing... liquid... selling... product... mobile phone... Something! Or think of a car!
How many with seemingly same properties are there?
Lots!
And do they sell?
Hell yeah! Most of them do.
How come?
They either target different customers with different income, age etc. Some may be selling ...
11
I thought the concept of failing fast was in order to find success sooner. Too many startups, especially web based startups, never launch because they want to get it perfect. Launch early and let your site fail fast. That will allow you to have real connection with your customers and make improvements that will get you to success way faster than if you had ...
11
No, the question is: What are you going to to when a big company copies it.
No, the question is: What are you going to do when also another scrappy startup does it, and gets on TechCrunch?
No, the question is: What are you going to do when there's a genuinely good open-source alternative?
The answer to "How do I answer this question" is: All software ...
11
#2 - to me there's no doubt. (and one caveat at the bottom)
Couple of reasons:
The amount of #1-type ideas is infinitesimal (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter... what else?). The chances of a given person to have one are very small. You can waste a lot of time and energy looking for one and still not finding it.
Execution is far more important that idea - ...
11
Why would I invest in your company if you don't believe it's worth putting an extra 10 hours/week into right now?
That is not unheard of, but it is uncommon. The startup incubators sometimes do this (Y combinator, Sproutbox, etc)...but that's probably not a "quit your day job" scenario. Maybe so though....I'd definitely start talking to some angel ...
11
I suggest you to have a look to the basics of lean startup, like Four Steps to the Epiphany (pdf), Running Lean, or Steve Blank's and Eric Ries' blogs.
Talking with an angel or investors might be useful since they see many companies and listen to many ideas, but it's not going to make your business successful.
The best approach is to make all this ...
11
Continue building.
With several billions people on the planet and most of them living interconnected it is to be expected that same ideas arise.
Having said that it's most times of no consequence who's built it first. The winner will be decided based on many other criteria, such as the quality of the service, quality of support, perception, marketing etc.
...
11
I work at The Motley Fool, so I can share what I've seen with you.
The concept of 'unlimited vacation' by itself does not attract Talented employees. Talented employees are attracted to other talented employees. So how do you attract talent? Here at The Motley Fool, we do the following:
Have a 'food fridge', where food is brought in twice weekly. ...
11
The truth is that most ideas are worthless and not unique. It is the execution that adds value.
Having said that, it may be that you can find the time to test out your idea in a small but meaningful way. If it looks like it is following your expectations, you can pursue it. You can hire people to help you, just as any other business does.
Think about your ...
10
After doing some early research into patents, I concluded that:
it was going to cost me $10k or so per patent
it would be a huge amount of time and effort for me
it would take at least a couple of years for the patents to be granted
I wouldn't have the money to enforce them
small companies would probably ignore them anyway
So I was confident in asserting ...
10
Seriously, your pitch is: "this site will not make money. Plus it's too much work, so I don't feel like doing it".
And you expect to convince an angel investor to write you a check? Right now, you sound like you are in need of a quick lesson in how the real startup world works. I know it's a bit brutal, but check out how the pros do it and read all of ...
10
Here are the 3 questions I ask myself before considering seriously a startup:
How PAINFUL is the problem being solved ?
How BIG is the Target market ?
How REALISTIC is the revenue model ?
Atleast, those are the MAIN ones i'm interested in.
10
There are 700 ways to get in touch with someone when their phone is busy:
Send an email
Send a text-message
Tweet them
Throw a rock into their window with a note
Just leave a message on the answering machine like they wanted
I don't know of very many people whose preferred solution is "keep calling every ten minutes until you actually reach them." This ...
9
Some ideas:
Do it yourself. Teach a class, assist a lawyer, etc...
Get a job in the industry. I know financial services because I did programming for them for 15 years. You can do likewise.
Be a consultant to the industry. You will learn a lot by helping them solve on ekind of problem. You can observe and see the other problems.
It really helps if you ...
9
Don't make the beginner mistake of keeping your idea to yourself. First of all, most people will think your "genius idea" is completely stupid and couldn't care less about copying it. But that's important, because you need to understand why other people think it's stupid.
Why? Because most likely, you have a gem, but you haven't figured out everything yet. ...
9
It's all about research at this point. Some suggestions:
Learn all about your competitors. How are they funded? How big are they? How long have they been around? How big is their audience / customer base? What type of resources do they have to spend on marketing and sales? What partnerships do they have? How is their product built? What's their pricing? ...
9
Here's a Mixergy video interview with Andrew Mason, the founder of Groupon. It will probably tell you everything you want to know about how he made it work. If you're not a member of Mixergy, you can get the Podcast for free here. It's #67.
And my personal advice is to build some sales materials and hit the road trying to sell some local businesses in your ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
