How to tell whether your idea is worth building yet
Before you build anything, you only need answers to four questions. Here's how to get them in a week, without a product.
Most first versions fail for a boring reason: they were built before anyone confirmed the problem was worth paying to remove. Building is the expensive way to learn something a few conversations would have told you.
The four questions
- Who exactly has this problem, specifically enough that you could name five of them?
- What are they doing about it today, and what does that cost them in money, time or stress?
- What would have to be true for them to switch?
- Is there any evidence — not opinion — that someone has already paid to solve it?
If you cannot answer the first question with names or a precise description, everything downstream is guesswork. Narrow it until you can.
Evidence beats enthusiasm
Encouragement is not evidence. Useful evidence looks like: someone describing the problem in their own words, a number attached to what it costs them, an existing tool or workaround they already pay for, or a request to be told when you launch.
A quote you can repeat back word for word is worth more than ten people saying the idea sounds great.
A one-week version of this
- Write a one-sentence description of who it's for and what changes for them.
- Have five real conversations. Ask about the last time the problem happened, not about your idea.
- Log every quote, workaround and number in one place so patterns become visible.
- Decide: sharpen the audience, change the problem, or scope the smallest thing that could remove it.
Then scope small on purpose
The right first version does one thing well for one type of person. Everything else is a later decision. If your feature list has more than a handful of items, you are still designing for a customer you have not met yet.