It seems that the two top "tricky" questions to ask an entrepreneur pitching an idea are:
1. Who is gonna want to use this?
and
2. Yeah, but really, who is gonna want to use this?
A lot of ideas seem pretty half-baked. You sit there in front of a TV, you're not so sure exactly what you're watching, and you suddenly think "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you could point your iPhone at the TV and find out what you're watching?" And the answer is: yeah, sorta, kinda, occasionally, but multiply the number of people who want such a thing by the frequency with which they want such a thing by the amount they really care and you're looking at a pretty darn low care factor.
I don't care what anyone says about how ideas are cheap and implementation is hard. Good ideas are hard. That narrow Venn diagram overlap between "problems that people really want to solve" and "problems that are actually possible to solve" is really small.
Yeah its this set of questions that every entrepreneur has asked themselves and answered. Yet they are questions which are seemingly near impossible to answer honestly when asking oneself.
This entire clip gave me massive flashbacks to sessions with my PhD supervisor. His manner is incredibly similar as well.
1. Who is gonna want to use this?
and
2. Yeah, but really, who is gonna want to use this?
A lot of ideas seem pretty half-baked. You sit there in front of a TV, you're not so sure exactly what you're watching, and you suddenly think "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you could point your iPhone at the TV and find out what you're watching?" And the answer is: yeah, sorta, kinda, occasionally, but multiply the number of people who want such a thing by the frequency with which they want such a thing by the amount they really care and you're looking at a pretty darn low care factor.
I don't care what anyone says about how ideas are cheap and implementation is hard. Good ideas are hard. That narrow Venn diagram overlap between "problems that people really want to solve" and "problems that are actually possible to solve" is really small.