Quick, Dirty, and Accurate (?) Idea Validation
A potential path to constructive criticism of Founder ideas
This one’s a break from the series. I want to share something I created and get some feedback. I hope you’ll take some time do a critical review. My goal is to find ways for startups (founders and investors) to quicky vet their ideas in a way this constructive.
We’re all inundated with ideas on a daily basis. Many of them are our own. None of use enjoy hearing that our idea sucks. We love our ideas!
So, extend that out to your stakeholders and leaders who think their job is to come up with ideas for your to take action on. Trust me, I’ve worked in those environments and they are cluster f*ck. No wonder the failure rate of projects, products, and other initiatives fail so often - or at least have no durability beyond a few months or a year.
It’s not the ability of professionals to execute. It’s their inability to execute on the right problem! It’s also their inability to explain the problem to leaders in a meaningful way.
Everyone corporate discipline thinks that they own the problem-space when in fact, they all bring solution-space tools and biases to the show. And I do mean show. It’s all about them, after all. But I think systems are about to completely obliterate white-collar work, so there’s something to be hopeful about - if you enjoy leveraging systems. I do!
My Idea
LOL. That’s right, my idea.
Since I’ve been working on a new toolset that completely obfuscates the need for innovation consultants (in the long run) by obfuscating their closely gaurded methods using artificial intelligence, I made the assumption that this was the only way to get a low cost, fast, and efficient tool in the hands of investors and founders to vet their ideas. Possibly you read my critique of YCombinator the other week? If not, read it:
Why "Make Something People Want" is Bad Advice
Introduction: The Allure and the Flaw of the YC Model
I believe that a lot of my peers in this small circle of true Jobs-to-be-Done (end-to-end) practioners - where the output is more than a set of job statements - would agree that most founders are not tinkering around the edges of the current solution-space. Or at least that’s not what they intend. They want to be the next unicorn, and incremental improvements or sustaining innovation is not the place to find that.
How do they focus on the right problem in order to at least have a chance at that?
Well, some people will tell you to get outside of the building. Then what? That approach has always been about existing categories and products - asking people what they wanted. As I pointed out in the article referenced above, that approach is a proven failure. Which is actually not good. No matter how fast you do it. The odds of success are the same every time. It’s like the lottery.
Which is exactly how the incubators work. They invest in thousands of startups and only one or two are hits. That’s enough to get the investor return and raise the next round.
Meanwhile, the founders have become flounders.
Okay, here’s my idea. I thought it would be interesting (well, someone put the idea in my head the other day) to attempt to create an agent that does a high-level analysis of an idea.
I have thousands of pages of research and framing instructions that I’ve developed over the past two years that I’m using to do this. The system instructions are voluminous. Although, I’m open to tweaking them based on your suggestions. So please do offer your suggestions in the comments 👇.
So, here’s what I’d like you to do. Read these analyses. Let me know what you think I addressed well, what I addressed poorly, and what seems irrelevant to you. I’ve prepared three ideas for you to consider, with a link to the analysis for each.
Stablecoin-based Payment Rails
I just did a blog post and video on this. Here’s what comes out of the Idea Validator:
https://www.pjtbd.com/stablecoin-validator
Twitter ‘Reply Guy’ App
This is about an app that helps you grow your audience on Twitter (X) through deep analysis and content construction. Someone recently created this.
https://www.pjtbd.com/reply-guy-analysis
Revenue Re-Router
This idea came from IdeaBrowser.com. How do you ensure your revenue stream is resilient in cases where Stripe shuts payments down for weeks while it investigates whatever?
https://www.pjtbd.com/revenue-rerouter
I know for sure I’ll be improving this. For example, it needs to be completely reformatted. Once I’m at the right point this will be wrapped in an app (I know, the grifters say ship now on X and YT). It might be standalone, or it might be a tier in my larger platform for performing end-to-end JTBD simulations for extremely complex market dynamics over time. Haven’t decided yet.
Is anyone intersted in that? I think your leadership will be 😎. It’ll cost a lot less than an army of staff and/or consultants and they’ll get the answers they want in minutes, and not months (for pennies). At a minimum, it will help all of you better frame your ideas into research that will actually move some levers.
Follow me on 𝕏: https://x.com/mikeboysen
If you'd like to see how I apply a higher level of abstraction to the front-end of innovation, please reach out. My availability is limited.
Mike Boysen - www.pjtbd.com
Why fail fast when you can succeed the first time?
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