Self-evaluation toolkit for your ideas
May 04, 2011
I have seen many ideas on Garage48 projects and elsewhere. I thought it's time to share my ideas on this matter. It's a long text and requires non-trivial
amount of effort, but good ideas need time to develop and mature. None of the
questions below will give you clear-cut good/bad answer but they hopefully help
to extend your view on the idea.
This is a guest post by Tarmo Tali, a long-term software project manager and team leader from Skype. Warning - this text is neither
approved nor endorsed by Garage48 team. Tarmo is not serial entrepreneur nor Internet
whizz-kid, so I may be completely wrong. Use at your own risk.Step 1. - Search for existing solution
Search for 10 competitive solutions or solutions what can be used for same or similar purposes. I mean really 10 as number not 10 as "I found few and there seems to be many". For each of these highlight your strengths over it and existing solution strengths over your idea. If you want it to sound fancy you can call it "competitive advantage analysis".
Step 2. - Is your idea clear?
If your idea is about "A revolution in doodle games!" or "A location-based service on mobile which allows you to spot and track interesting objects and persons at your location." then keep asking "what it is?" until you have something that you can explain to your mom.
Step 3. - Who are your users and what is your offering?
Try to estimate number of potential users using "how many piano tuners there is in New York" type of assessment.
What is the area you try to change? Retail, entertainment, media, culture, education, trust, public service? What do you want to achieve?
You can create "An anonymous smartphone app will allow people to register bribes and see all registered bribes by area and by type of services involved (police, healthcare, technical standards etc)." but what it is you are aiming for? Reduction of corruption by increasing risk of gettin caught? Raising public awareness? Helping Secret Service with valuable information?
It may be that you are creating entirely new business or activity category but more likely you participate in something that already exists. Is this area already part of government services? Do you duplicate some major effort? Can you fit in as value adding partner?
Step 4. - Stay out of jail.
Understand the legal context of your activities. You can break the rules only if you know them. Recording bribes may sound like good Robyn Hood thing, although in many countries offering bribes can be criminal offence and you may end up with policeman knocking on your door on Sunday morning and getting your server logs and going after your users. Legal/illegal is not undisputable and absolute, there are enough stupid laws to fight them but know what you are doing and be prepared - move your server to Iceland, establish no-log policy, know your rights and obligations.
Step 5. - Does it matter?
Do a hallway testing, find people who are not related to Garage48 or IT or software development. Your friends are like minded so cast your net wider - ask from your spouse' friends or relatives, ask from your mom, ask from your corner shop shopkeeper or security guard before leaving work in the evening. Do they understand your idea? Do you get back blank stare or flash of inspiration?
What is your impact on gross domestic happiness? Will it make lots of people little bit happier or it is life- changing experience for few? Technology that always helps you to find your car keys may be useful as it affects many. Mobile app that helps to manage life better for Alzheimer patients may affect few but may be life changing.
If it's little bit happier for few is it worth going after? 1000 people is not a lot, 100 000 neither. Aim high.
Step 6. - Who is your team?
What kind of skills and knowledge you need to succeed - not only in terms of web, mobile and design but who are the people who know the area. What is the most important problem in the area? Do you address it? Try to contact several people who work on the area. Is there common theme?
How things are working in other countries? Some things we take as granted in Estonia - "everyone can make instant bank transfers through Internet" - can by utopia in UK there checks are still going strong. Get yourself international team.
Do you know people who are passionate about the idea? Can you recruit them to donate their time once adrenaline-high weekend is over?
If you rely on crowdsourcing your content, can you recruit team who helps to boot your content. More about booting and sustaining later.
Step 7. - Value is more important than money.
I know that "What is your monetization model?" may well be most asked question but at that phase it does not matter. Concentrate on value - if you offer something that many people find very valuable you most likely will find some monetization model around it. But your services must be good. "I really need to use it daily" good, "I want all my friends to use it" good, "I can no longer live without it" good.
Step 8. - Stand on the shoulders of the giants.
Even if you have some of the world top engineers in your team you most likely can not build compelling solution from scratch in 48 hours. If you build web app, that enables to enter some data, mangles it one way or another and shows it back, possibly also as a spot in the map - it's unlikely that it will attract many users.
Where the hot technology front is moving? Do you take advantage of possibilities which were not available 2 years ago? Do you take most out of location-enabled, acceleration-provided, always-internet-connected, HD-video-showing-and-recording devices? Or is it's just Frogger reinvented for new generation?
Can you change the rules of the game using technology? Instead of searching for lost pet you can provide GPS/GSM chip and provide continuous information about whereabouts of my dog.
"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." - Wayne Gretzky
Step 9. - How you boot and sustain?
Think about how you boot your project if you bet on crowd-sourcing or viral marketing? Why should I want to tell my compelling story between "Mupo tegi protokolli piletiga sõidu eest. Hiljem vaidlustasin ja sain õigluse võidule." and "See lugu juhtus paar aastat tagasi Tallinnas.". Or between Test24 and Test48? Recruit yourself team who will provide attractive non-trivial seed for crowd-sourced content. Remove your test-content from public. Moderate content or provide moderation mechanism which separates valuable content from trash.
Plan on sustaining service - do you have people who will moderate, assist and promote solution in next 2-8 weeks? Or everyone goes their merry ways after weekend?
Step 10. - Learn from history.
Check for previous G48 projects and try to understand why they are in the situation there they are now.
- Is it service no-one actually needs?
- Is it useful but no-one knows about it?
- Is it useful but it has technical flaws which prevent it to be more popular?
- Try to get hold of team behind it to understand their viewpoint and opinion of the current state of the project.
What can you do to avoid the fate of the previous projects?
If everything above shows that it's not much of the idea but you still believe in it, and even after 2 weeks you can't sleep because of it and it does not go away - go for it. You may well be into something.
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Comments: 2
I like this Post. It has really given me some ideas. Thanks for that.
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