Comments on: Wait Until Your Idea Makes Sense, Then Start Targeting

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:40:12 +0000

I call this the grandmother test. If you have an idea you need to be able to explain it to your grandmother (or anyone's grandmother). I was once working on a new startup idea where we struggled for months presenting/tweaking what the offering was but we could never get it to a point of hyper clarity so we abandoned the idea. Part of it was that we were ahead of the market (the market didn't exist) but thats not an excuse – the initial validation with anyone is definitely important.

By: giffconstable

giffconstable — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:43:19 +0000

RT @cindyalvarez: Response to @giffconstable – I love targeting! but there’s a lot that can/shd be killed/improved before you get there http://bit.ly/cND0kg

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: ibagrak

ibagrak — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:17:32 +0000

Cindy, one challenge that we are facing now is that we are surrounded by family and friends who “get” it because they “get” us personally, and our extended social network, which for the most part shares our technical background, so they are potential competition for building the same product. I know there is no size fits all solution, but perhaps you can share some insights about getting feedback without revealing too much. I suspect that I am more paranoid than I really need to be, but still.

By: Giff

Giff — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:36:24 +0000

yes, I see your point on the need to prioritize the message. It’s like coaching in a sport — you don’t flood your player with 10 things they are doing wrong, you start with one.

The other thing I was thinking about this morning is that I do very much agree with the notion of talking to anyone you can. You might weight responses differently, but it’s so useful and cool to learn from many people’s reactions and confusions.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:59:04 +0000

I don’t disagree – but the gap between “should” and “actually do” that I see is SO huge (and NOT just with small startups, and NOT just with Silicon Valley companies) that I think you’ve gotta start somewhere.

To me it’s kind of like people trying to lose weight – yeah, there are dozens of life changes that they SHOULD make to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but it feels so overwhelming that they’re more likely to do nothing. I’d rather just say “take the stairs” and hope that more people will do that and say, “okay, now what?”

By: Giff

Giff — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:57:00 +0000

So I’m struggling with this one Cindy. I understand the gist, but come at it from another perspective. For example, if you want to design something for teens, the way you bullshit-test your idea is to talk to a teen. You shouldn’t have to burn much social capital to do that, and you should learn how to explain it to teens by talking to them, not a peer. Silicon Valley gets accused, and often rightfully so, of bubble thinking, and so unless you truly are designing a product for yourself and people like you, you need to go out of your way to get real reactions from real people.

My other challenge is that when you have an idea, it’s often effective to start a conversation not by asking about your idea, but by asking open ended questions about the problems people have in the space you are trying to address — you can discover interesting things and prioritize your thinking and evolve your idea more effectively with that kind of conversation rather than just a presentation of an idea.

I also don’t think you build an MVP before talking to target market — not unless you’re talking about a weekend project. Before wasting a lot of dev time, bullshit check your idea with the people you think you are either solving a problem for, or delighting with an experience. I worry that any other approach puts too much stress on the idea and the features, rather than focusing the entrepreneur on the problem and the solution.