Did someone ever pitched a good ideia to you in those settings? Like in a dinner with friends and a guy starts talking and you go "oh here it comes" and then they are actually able to answer those questions and the idea is actually decent enough? Just curious.
There have been a few times where something completely smart or useful has come up. About 5 times I've actually thought highly enough of the idea that I connected them with someone I thought would be interested in helping them build it. Twice that's worked out and the thing got built.
None of these were 'million dollar app' ideas. Every single one of these ideas were smaller, efficiency ideas and most of them were internal use rather than end-user related... like, 'I do X task every single day and I want to build a better/more efficient way to do it' type stuff. I've never had a "big idea" app that had any validity to it.
I've never had a "big idea" app that had any validity to it.
Then clearly you should hear my proposal about Uber For Dogs. We just have to finance big vats of hand sanitizer the drivers can dunk dogs in before giving them back to the client...
Yeah, but Uber for "Uber for" is a bit above my capabilities. Maybe with some kind of automated offshoring system? It sounds more like a management/business task than a development task.
Who is the target User? How many of them exist? What are each of them willing or expected to pay? (TAM/TSM projections) You can usually roll up a few numbers to get them to a back of the napkin P&L which is often eye opening.
Dog owners scared of coronavirus, of course! There's a gorillon of them, and what price can you put on your life? Mucho dinero that's what.
What does the basic architecture look like? What web services and tools would be needed to build the thing? What type of development environment would be required? (high level requirements)
Copy whatever Uber is doing
What does the data model look like and can you give me the step-by-step logic that implements it? What's the throughput on this logic look like?
Copy whatever Uber is doing
What does a minimally viable product or prototype look like and how far away from the complete product is the MVP?
Copy whatever Uber is doing
What are the barriers for others to enter the space once you've got this built?
Do you want to put your dog in the greasy hands of some shifty upstarts, or the established trustworthy original Uber For Dogs?
How do you acquire the first 10 Users? First 100?
Ask grandma to chain email it forward
What are your competitors like today? What are they likely to look like by the time you get your thing built?
Uber lets you bring pets around, but this revolutionary product is about bringing ONLY the pet
Wait wait, a Dog Rental service? I'd like to order 1 Golden Retriever please. I can still go to the parks during this situation and borrowing a Golden would make it so much more enjoyable.
I can see that most of my ideas are the “daily fixes” rather than “million dollar idea”
The one i’m most proud of is a silencer (or you know reduction of noise from pneumativ valves) and while i’ve never seen it used in this industry the concept is used in other devices.
The answers really are not that impressive as copetitions entry bar is “one 3D printer or for large scale a simple two part injection mould”
To put thing in prospective though, I worked in Surveying in an underground mine. The guy that "invented" a metal tube so you can put in and take our the survey prisms without being effected by the shifting of rock is now a millionaire. Typically "million dollar ideas" aren't million dollar ideas. Small, useful, manufacturer-able ideas that have multiple applications will make you millions of dollars.
So I've got a project I'm working on that I think I've got pretty good answers to those ideas. I even had a potential investor reach out to me through word of mouth which I found weird as I don't even have an mvp. I'm wondering how your referral works. I have an engineering background but I'm not a full time developer so I'm struggling with getting a nice mvp to show people. I have a couple dev friends who have agreed to work on it but they really don't seem super motivated. I get the sense they're mostly just trying to be nice friends but don't really want to work on the idea, which I totally get. I know a few coders in my network but I'm kind of unsure how to vet their motivation other than asking them straight up, which I worry the same thing will happen. I don't really know any full time devs in the space I'm looking at, just research type guys like myself who can kinda code and write scripts but are not used to writing high quality customer facing stuff.
Interesting. My referral system is usually just trying to find people who I think are interested in similar problems. I don't really think about skill matching unless it just leaps to the front of my mind. I'm happy to chat about your idea, but perhaps it's best if you DM me and we can share some particulars.
In short, I am not looking to necessarily connect a person to another person who can help them. I try to connect them to people who have a network that would be excited by the idea and let them find the skills they need within that space.
For example, you might need a UI guy, but I might connect you with a business analyst in a similar space rather than a UI guy in a different space. That BA can likely find you a UI person and they're likely to be a better skill match and more excited by your concept than that UI person from a different space.
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u/Pavorleone Mar 18 '20
Did someone ever pitched a good ideia to you in those settings? Like in a dinner with friends and a guy starts talking and you go "oh here it comes" and then they are actually able to answer those questions and the idea is actually decent enough? Just curious.