There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true?<p>Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution.<p>The hero ingredient is luck. Using all the tricks of the non scientific entrepreneurship self-help literature may grant you better odds at getting lucky, or may not.<p>You know if the problem/idea/execution was good/real after you have customers paying you. And even after that you don't really know was it execution or idea that won the game, only that they were enough good to succeed.
Fantastic post. Lots of weight on the problem discovery area which is the right move and engineers turned entrepreneurs skip this step a lot. I know I did.<p>A book recommended by YC's Aaron Epstein is The Mom Test[0]. The first 50-60% of the book is dedicated to how to discover problems with end clients/users that are worth tackling.<p>I have used the techniques personally and it's great to see what users say is a huge problem vs a problem they're willing to pay for.<p>It is easy to get stuck in a self-fulfilling trap that a user complains is a big problem. I recently spoke with a customer:<p>- "What's your biggest problem?" (book says this question is a no no)<p>- He replies, "If I sell 3 cars at the same time, I'm out of available float (cash) while I wait for those deals to close. This is a HUGE problem for me!"<p>- "How do you solve this today?" I ask.<p>- "I have other, larger car sales company who will lend me money at XX rates."<p>Right there, it's a solved problem. The end user figured out their own way. Turns out other smaller dealers like him rely on large trade line companies.<p>The only way I could complete is either on lower cost of financing or speed. At which point, for me, it's not a problem worth solving. The problem isn't so big for him where he's willing to throw cash at me for it.<p>Talk to users.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...</a>
I am a serial idea writer and I have to agree with the author.<p>Ideas are inherently valuable, maybe not financially, but they're valuable to have and valuable to society to share.<p>It makes me angry that people actually believe ideas are inherently worthless. Or that without any code or implementation they're worthless. It's a meme that needs to die. It's like having your cake and eating it too. Here's a free idea for you to think about and contribute to but it's not enough, you want the outcome without any effort too. So you say my idea is worthless.<p>Ideas are the precursors of RFCs and ISOs and any thing that humanity has ever accomplished. And ideas are meant to be shared.<p>People that think ideas are worthless are shutting down conversations about good ideas because of this obsession with the idea that execution is all that matters. And so many ideas die on the grape vine because of this poor attitude.
I very much agree with this post in that analysis of the problem has to be the first step. There needs to be both a contextual and a granular appreciation of the problem.<p>You get far too many founders looking for the most intense problem when that is just one facet of a problem. Christmas songs are a problem, painful, intense, etc. But it's only once a year, which would mean not very active users.<p>As well as the Mom Test, off-the-top of my head, check out<p>1. Talking To Humans <a href="https://www.talkingtohumans.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.talkingtohumans.com/</a><p>2. Testing With Humans <a href="https://testingwithhumans.com/" rel="nofollow">https://testingwithhumans.com/</a>, both by Giff Constable.<p>There are some medical pain evaluation papers that I found highly informative, but I would need to go through my notes as I can't recollect them.<p>And if anybody is interested, I have a free tool you can download, that will aid you to assess your idea by breaking it apart into its elemental composition and looking deeper into the problem, the audience, and the market.<p>It's at MVP v2, so long way to go yet, and it is only for MS Access, so PC only: <a href="https://startizer.com/" rel="nofollow">https://startizer.com/</a>
It’s a nice framework for many ideas I suppose, but there too many examples of “non-obvious” “stupid ideas” with no market or problem to solve that eventually succeed. And plenty of successes that were not innovative but had great execution.<p>Like most things in life timing is everything and we only know the right timing and “ideas” in hindsight.
I would also add learning to evaluate your idea(s) objectively.<p>When you think you've thought of a great idea, by definition, you're biased toward it.<p>If you then start building it, the sunk cost makes you even more resistant to abandoning it.<p>In my experience, just "building the product" can take a lot longer than you expect. I've spent several months building out what were mostly CRUD apps.<p>Why? I didn't realize it at the time, but I was working part time, I had to figure out how to do many things for the first time, I had to keep myself motivated, and I had to do development but also design and PM work.<p>If I was working on something new, I probably would:<p>1. think of a problem to work on<p>2. talk to a lot of users following the Mom Test (keeping in mind your product has many personas of users) to validate the problem<p>3. think of a lot of ideas to solve the problem<p>4. somehow identify what idea to prototype first and what the feature set should be<p>5. prototype it in Figma, show it to users, improve the prototype until customers are asking "when can I buy this?"<p>I haven't done this yet. If anyone has any suggestions for getting from set of ideas -> a prototype users want, I would love to hear them!
It's a good article I guess, but a bit over-optimistic about execution.<p>> You can build anything.<p>Not really, though. The article suggests that there are no constraints to what can be built, but there on constraints to what people want / need, how you'll make money, etc.<p>There are significant constraints around what can be built. They change over time, and in fact, finding ideas that were rejected for being too hard in the past can be a good indicator of something that could be built now.<p>And many great business ideas that solve huge problems with clear distribution channels can fail, because the solution that works isn't possible or feasible to build yet.
Points 2 and 3 are almost identical for every single business on Indie Hackers.<p>Subscription model. Internet delivery, with email and social media marketing.<p>After that, you're back to the square 1 of "now I need an idea". The post had some good points, but for the IH audience I'm not sure it would change much about how they analyse business ideas.
In a roundabout kind of way, if you find the solution first, its called learning and if your mindset is aligned to this article, its defined as research.<p>Though in a monkey see, monkey do world, there is no shortage of mimicked expertise and flattery, so plan accordingly.
egghead founder downloaded a bunch of youtube vids and zipped them up and sold them to a mailing list? Weren't there copyright issues? I'm not sure if that sort of advice is sound, but the rest of the article resonated nicely.
Starting small isn't universally applicable advice. It depends on competition and availability of substitutes. It's also an approach that will yield no more than small gains at a time.
This is good advice, but I think the fundamental issue for many people is that they are looking for a formula to supplement their own brain.<p>In reality there are many classes of successful businesses. It’s hard to explain the success of a restaurant franchise and of flappy bird in the same formula except to over generalize it as, “decent idea with decent execution and decent timing in front of a decent audience.”<p>I do think posts like this are very helpful at eliminating dead end habits. I know I’m guilty of searching for a lock.
From the article :
"It's been said that ideas don't matter, execution does. I wholeheartedly disagree. You need both to succeed, but you can only get so good at execution. A great idea gives you much more leverage."<p>I think it underestimates execution. A great execution makes the dumbest ideas succeed. Reminds me of 'potatoparcel.com'. The business is solely focused on mailing potatoes, which sounds ridiculous, but it found its place.
The big nugget to me from my own experience is pricing. Early or inexperienced business founders charge too little. They charge just enough to make some money but not offend the wallet of the customer. This is all wrong - if your solution provides a real ROI then companies will pay a lot for it. Of your solution costs $1000 to solve a $1000000 problem then you are an idiot and priced too low by an order of magnitude.
Good article but execution matters. Execution is like sperm. There are plenty of eggs (i.e., ideas), never a shortage. But unless an egg is properly fertilized it's going no where.<p>Futhermore, Team A can faulter at the execution of Idea X, but later Team B can pick up Idea X and do it right. For example, the ipod. The idea of an mp3 player wasn't new.
> iOS users who need to get tasks done but prefer modern, clean UIs", that's not an actual group of people. You're just describing the features of a product you're already biased toward building.