Worth building?
Before you build anything. Most of the cost is decided here.
Is there a problem here worth anyone’s time?
Nobody skips this stage. They just do it badly, in their head, on a walk, and call the result conviction.
I spent most of one summer building a tool for organising interview notes. I was sure about it. I had the problem myself, which felt like the strongest possible evidence, and I never checked whether anyone else did. Six people told me it sounded useful. Not one of them had ever done anything about the problem before I described it to them. That should have been the end of the conversation, and instead it was the beginning of three months.
What I got wrong was the question. I was asking whether the idea was good, and everybody is polite about ideas. Now I ask whether anybody is already solving this badly, by hand. A spreadsheet somebody maintains on Sundays. A group chat with a naming convention nobody agreed to. A recurring reminder to check something manually.
That ugly thing is the proof, and it’s worth more than any amount of agreement. If nobody has built the ugly version, the pain is probably not there yet, which is not a verdict on the idea, only on the timing.
Three ways to lose
time here.
- Asking people whether they would use it. They will say yes, because saying no to somebody’s idea is rude. Ask what they did the last time the problem happened instead.
- Counting your own excitement as demand. It’s the least reliable signal available and the one you have the most of.
- Researching until it feels safe. It never will. Past a certain point you’re collecting reassurance, not information.
You can name two people, actual people, not job titles, who already do this the hard way.
What to check
before you commit.
Everything at this stage comes back to one question — Is there a problem here worth anyone’s time? Each of these takes a different run at it, and gives you a verdict rather than a score.
They are free and they take under a minute. That is the point: the cheapest thing you can do at this stage is find out you were about to be wrong, and the most expensive is finding out a quarter later.
There’s a version
where I help.
A working session on whether to build it
Bring the idea and whatever you have heard about it so far. We work out together whether there’s a real problem underneath, and you leave with a decision rather than a maybe.
Four questions on that page tell you whether this is worth it for you — including when it’s not.
Words this check uses.
- Nine conversations
- The cheap version of research: nine people, one afternoon, asked only about the last time the problem happened to them, with no mention of your product.
- The second person
- Somebody other than your first enthusiastic user who describes the same problem unprompted. One person with a problem is an anecdote; two who found it independently is a pattern.
- Workaround
- The ugly, manual thing somebody already does to cope with a problem, a spreadsheet, a group chat, a recurring reminder. It’s the strongest evidence a problem is real, because nobody maintains one for fun.
About this stage.
How do I know if an idea is worth building?
Find two people who already deal with the problem in some improvised way, a spreadsheet, a group chat, a recurring reminder. A workaround is the strongest evidence a problem is real, because somebody paid a cost to solve it without you. Enthusiasm in a conversation is not evidence; it is manners.
How long should this stage take?
Days, not months. Nine conversations fit in a week, and the answer they give does not get better with a tenth. If you are still here after a month you are usually not gathering evidence, you are looking for permission.
What is the first thing to do at this stage?
Ask five people what they did the last time this problem happened. Not what they would do, not whether they would use your thing — what they actually did. The answer is either a story about a workaround or a shrug, and those two mean completely different things.