If you have an idea, here are some question you should ask yourself before getting too excited about it:
- How difficult will it be to launch a worthwhile version 1.0?
- Is it clear why people should use it? (i.e. what’s broken)
- How much value can you ultimately deliver? (i.e. how deep could it go)
- How many people may ultimately use it? (i.e. how wide could it go)
- How will people learn about your product?
- How hard will it be to extract the money?
- Do you really want it to exist in the world? (i.e. is it personally compelling)
I think the last question here is perhaps the most important of all.
All of these come from Evan Willians, who has some credibility in this area as the founder of Blogger (subsequently sold to Google), Odeo and Twitter.
Damn you, Rowan… you’ve just led me to add another feed to my list. So much for de-cluttering.
Ben,
There is nothing wrong with adding a new feed. The hard bit is choosing an old feed to remove at the same time.
I limit my reader to 100 feeds at once. It works quite well.
I hope you don’t choose to remove my feed. :-)
Rowan.
What a great article! Thanks for sharing.
Rowan, that was really nice information, very valuable for the future. Thanks!
hey rowan – great idea about ideas!
just one question – what exactly do you mean by “How hard will it be to extract the money?” – do you mean ‘convincing consumers to pay’ or ‘exiting the business with more money than when you started’ or something else?
cheers
Tom -
The list comes from an Ev Williams article.
See:
The specific question you ask about is from the “Monetizability” (not a real word?) section.
He says …
“all things being equal, an idea with clear buck-making potential is better than one without.”
Yup!
Rowan.