Ask HN: You have a start-up idea. Now what?

Way different than how I usually do it.<p>1) Meet someone at a pub and introduce each other.<p>2) Learn everything I can about his work/business, rank within the organization and what they do.<p>3) Discover something we can work on, either on the spot or after another planned meeting, this time over coffee.<p>4) Bet the farm and everything you own on a potential joint venture, give them a 2 month timeline til project.<p>5) Research like crazy and learn everything you can about the project, the client, their business.<p>6) Have the client write you checks weekly while you solve the <i>general</i> case.<p>7) Deliver the project, launch a "startup" on the side and get support and improvement contracts from the client.<p>8) Work 4-5 hours a day on <i>this</i> startup, reach out to the world and see who else is interested in the product and how can you help the industry.<p>9) Write articles for industry and trade publication and be sorta famous for computerizing one aspect of their business.<p>10) Gather ideas for sub-projects and launch a software sweatshop of one man, churning out good stuff for a handful of big boys, work like crazy, and be wired the whole fucking time.<p>11) Look around you for an exit, having discovered you pretty much painted yourself into a corner in terms of interesting problems to solve ;-)

Step 1: Figure out a way to quickly and flimsily implement the idea and release it.<p>Step 2: See what happens next and react to it.<p>Step 3: Repeat step 2 until the idea becomes a success. Or give up if its clear it could not possibly succeed.

Perhaps replies should include the business(es) that was/were yielded from the the steps outlined.<p>I'm all for discussing ideas, but this question is more about getting <i>better</i> results than merely throwing out "this is how I do it".<p>I'd want to know how the dropbox, reddit, google, basecamp, balsamiq, uservoice, pbwiki, weebly... idea-flow worked.<p>Not so much the "yeah this is how i come up with ideas that never really ...uhhh...worked out ....".<p>No offense of course, but just so we can be clear on the matter!

I think one of the earliest questions to ask is whether would you, the builder, use it yourself and secondly, whether you would pay for it. If both answers are yes, then that is a start. Build a simple workable prototype (without too much effort and cost) and start finding customers and listening to them.

I built a social news site this past spring called cuuute.com. It was a reddit for cute stuff. I built the site because I thought my wife would enjoy it, and I thought I would enjoy working on it. I was wrong on both accounts, so I shut the site down 3 months after it started. I still think it's a viable idea, I'm just not the person to make it happen.<p>I took a few months off, and mulled different ideas around. I'm a nurse, so I thought a lot about opportunities in health care IT. I kept coming around to "I really don't like health care, and I don't want to work in it".<p>I bought a list of 50,000 top paying google keywords, and cross referenced it with a google scrape of how many hits per keyword there are. That gave me a ratio of (top paying keywords)::(# of hits). I sorted the list by that ratio.<p>There were thousands of items near the top of that list on financial terms.<p>So, during the months after my last project, I traveled visited family, and rolled a lot of this information around in my head. Two weeks ago I decided to make a social news site devoted to financial news. Why? Because 1) I think it's a subject that can hold my attention for several years, and 2) I think there's a need in the market for news aggregators/filters and 3) I think it can be monetized.<p>Friends and family have both tried to talk me out of the idea and have encouraged me. Most of those conversations have not been helpful at all. The really helpful people have suggested ways of iterating on the social news idea to improve it.

Define idea as a problem<p>Find someone that has this probem [ID your target market]<p>Ask them if they would use your solution

"see if anyone's posted about a need"<p>I think most people just accept the status quo of living, so few would be likely to post about needs. Unless you read between the lines, like people complaining a lot about certain things (mostly the weather and late trains?).

- Be prepared to sell, sell, and sell - But first, you need to be sold yourself. So start answering questions in a structured way. Dave Mcclure gives a nice framework here: <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/</a> - Even though the slides are for a VC, that's a good framework no matter who you are pitching. - Once you are convinced, start looking at building a well balanced team. - Your team / co-founder(s) will be the most critical piece. Don't compromise on the quality of people you build around yourself.<p>Good Luck!

Action.<p>Ideas are a dime a dozen. Its only worth its value when ideas are converted in to action. Without action, your ideas are just that, "ideas" and everyone has one.

Have a passion for an idea, get feedback from friends and family; majority dig it, go build it!<p>That's what I did, yet it was not sucessful in terms of getting an audience, but it did get a lot of attention and some funding. THough I learned from that experience, but the process for building an idea remains, except next time go around - all ideas will have solid and interesting biz models out of the gate.

Looking for competitors can be discouraging. When is it a good idea to seek out the tougher aspects of the idea? If you get discouraged too early then that's no good. Ideally one would be able to stay excited and keep working either way.<p>Anyone have any experience with this?

1. What can I build to improve some aspect of my life 2. Is there something out there that already does this and satisfies my needs well? If not, exit. 3. Build it 4. How can this be made into something that can generate money? If it can't, exit (not likely). 5. Modify it.

1. Code a demo.<p>2. Show prospective consumers of the app. The more the better.<p>3. Use their feedback along with your judgment to scrap or enhance the project for the next cycle of feedback. Your judgment is just as important as their feedback, maybe even more so. Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut or else nothing would ever change. OTOH, if they brutalize your dream, maybe they're right and you just gotta kill it and move on.<p>#1 is the most important. By taking immediate action by building something, you'll probably learn a lot and even modify the idea. So get started!

&#62; 1. Lots of Google searching for potential keywords to see if anyone's posted about a need<p>That's good. Make something people want.<p>#2, ideally, is get some money. Like, make your first $20 ASAP in the market. There's been lots of "cool ideas" that don't make money. A lot of smart people in tech gun for a Facebook-style massive victory. But for every Facebook/Linkedin/Myspace/Youtube, there's orders of magnitude more sites than never catch on.<p>Or worse! They do catch on, but then you can't get any money! I imagine nothing hurts as much as being wildly popular and bankrupt. There are many of these stories.<p>So try to get some money fast. Money does all sorts of wonderful things in terms of letting you expand or getting some security, but most importantly, it proves that people really, truly want you're selling. And if you are going to be looking for funding, there's not many things that are going to be as good for getting quality terms as being profitable. You can wait out the right deal and you're not desperate. And one of investors' biggest fears - no market - is alleviated. Get that first $20 ASAP. It'll teach you what you're doing wrong and show you what to do next.<p>Edit: Also, don't do excessive planning on your first business, competitive analysis, and all that such. Your assumptions are wrong, you don't have the instincts for what people pay for yet, and competition doesn't matter when you're small. Seriously, leave the SWOT analysis for big corporations fighting over 3% market share and distribution in supermarkets. I've learned this lesson the hard way. Damn near all of that planning is useless if not validated with getting some money. Your assumptions are almost certainly wildly incorrect when not validated with the getting of money from customers.

"Just curious what everyone's process for turning an idea that you just thought of into a real opportunity. Essentially the period between idea generation and actually executing on that idea (if there is a period of time)."<p>Live my life. Solve my own problems. Go talk to people and discover that other people have the same problem(s) and their solutions suck compared to mine. Discover there is tremendous need (demand) and some folks are strongly interested in what I do. Spend a lot of time helping people for free. Get burned out on that and on being so freakin' controversial. Take about 2 years off from that while I get myself well and also try to figure out how to package threatening/controversial information so it's palatable -- so it's taken as an opportunity instead of a criticism/personal attack. Work on figuring out how to monetize it without killing it because you can't pay someone to care about your welfare. Either they do or they don't. Realize that the only effective way to commodify what I do is to uncouple the income stream and the output stream -- ie not charge directly for the thing people really want/need from me. Currently pursuing those efforts as a "hobby" and working on monetizing it.<p>Not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme. But that's roughly the process I have been going through.