Comments on: A Startup Idea Postmortem: Proof That Good Ideas Aren’t Always Good Business

By: Damian

Damian — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:32:53 +0000

Good idea, however the main reason it would not have worked is people are not willing pay that much for an answer although we know that time is money most people are willing to use their recreation internet time to find the answer. Also people use forums, wikipedia and other resources on the web. Another reason is that $3USD is a lot of money in other economies. The main reason is the liability of the answer – who sues who if the answer is wrong or causes monetary loss? So good idea but like many in business its the obstacles to get to fruition that make many of us scrap perfectly good ideas and stick to our core businesses unless there is an overwhelming financial or innovation compulsion to move in a new direction.

By: Landon

Landon — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:30:43 +0000

Great business idea. Maybe it would be better if the pricing was based on a bidding process, like eBay? This would work best for answers that require specific skills and can’t be solved in a short amount of time. The answerer could even have a rating based on the quality of answers determined by the askers. This way an asker would be sure to get the best answer possible, and also ensure the price can go higher for a valuable problem.

By: Dave Prouhet

Dave Prouhet — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:56:35 +0000

Rob,

Can’t tell you of how many ideas that I have had, that I thought – wow what a great idea, only to later discover there was little demand or execution was way more complicated or even the true value was never there. Sometimes persistence pays off, but frankly I like to see a great demand up front. I think that is why some experts say that it is better to go into a crowded marketplace and sell what people are buying, but make your offering different to apply to a niche, vice take a great idea and try and develop the marketplace.

Keep on keeping on…

Dave

By: Jeroen

Jeroen — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 14:34:23 +0000

Excellent post, and I too think you made the right call.

However, what about making this a corporate tool? Many knowledge intensive companies have trouble getting the knowledge where it is needed most. Something like this might help connect the right people at the right time.

By: laurence haughton

laurence haughton — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:36:15 +0000

Pretty much everything is easier the second time… home repair, trig exams, public speaking, and prototyping a business so you can test the waters.

Even “letting go” gets easier.

By: IdeaTagger

IdeaTagger — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:45:33 +0000

Great post and two things struck me particularly as I read it:

1. The relative ease with which the author seemed to be able to get from idea to prototype. It must be true what I have heard – that once you have made a success of one business, setting up new ones tends to become easier. The author’s ability to draw on his friends’ expertise is also noteworthy. I guess if you are a successful business person, your friends tend to be the sort that can help. By contrast, for people (like me) looking to start-up for the first time, their friends tend to be day-jobbers like they are, with little interest or belief in entrepreneurship.

2) The other interesting thing was the apparent ease with which the idea was given up. The author made a good case for giving the idea up but I felt that an even better case was made for at least testing the waters with the idea. It would be interesting to learn what stopped the author and his friends from launching a test service, perhaps within a niche. Perhaps it would have been too costly an experiment.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:47:51 +0000

Lord,
Our experience was exactly the opposite. In many communites, particularly with Joomla, Drupal, PHP, Javascript, and a few others, we found that only very simple questions were answered. Hard questions would show up in the forums multiple times without ever being answered.

By: Lord

Lord — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:41:59 +0000

Instead of asking the question, all you have to do is search for the answers to it on any forum. Most have already been asked and answered.

By: Wally Bock

Wally Bock — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 16:04:54 +0000

I wonder how many of us have tried to run down this “get paid for what you know” business model? I’m betting that the future is in a combination of niche players, software something like what the folks at Ask developed for Dell, and some use of social networking tools.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:44:53 +0000

While there’s a lot to be said for “trust the numbers and the research”, there are a lot of new business ideas where the numbers and the research may be so scanty as to be potentially misleading. After all, the market size statistic that a pessimist pulls out of thin air is no more reliable than the one an optimist does.

I incline more to the “trust your gut when there’s no really hard data either way, but when numbers that definitely apply to your business (because they CAME OUT OF IT) start to appear, be prepared to listen to what they’re telling you” school of thought…with a cautionary dash of “every statistic is applicable until you can explain convincingly why it isn’t” thrown in.