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.