How do you know that the idea you want to work on or are working on is worth the time, energy and money? Not talking about side projects that you whipped up over the weekend, but medium term projects that you want to monetise, or even want to market to a medium to large audience (upwards of 100 daily/weekly users)
I see so many posts on reddit, people asking for validation. So I made a community-driven platform for it, I am attaching that link only: https://ideavo.tripivo.co.in
But my question remains, if you don't get any validation, why to take that risk of doing it?
nicbou12 hours ago
Is this an ad or a question?
I would say domain knowledge and experience. I've been in my industry for long enough to spot situations where my work will have disproportionate impact. The longer I am in this industry, the more knowledge, contacts and followers I have, so I can be very effective at building things, getting them validated, and finding users for it.
ideavoop6 hours ago
It’s a bit of both.
I’m not in the industry or part of a company yet—I’m still on the younger side.
I’ve had many ideas and I work on them, but nothing really takes off. I keep coming back to the same question: is this worth it? Especially because every idea I have, I run it by my friends—they love it, I build it, they don’t use it, and I’m left with a dead project, a half-empty wallet, and goals I could have pushed further with if I hadn't taken up the project.
Bit of an ad because I am trying my best to get my product out there everywhere.
nicbou3 minutes ago
That’s in poor taste.
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
sejje8 hours ago
It's an ad.
You can tell because the product answers OP's question.
austin-cheney2 days ago
Just build it because it’s something you want to build. My current side project is something I have been working on for 1.5 years and I have not shown it to anybody else. It does not solve for world peace but it does solve for multiple problems I have.
montague27a day ago
I've built one for about 3 years. It's simply a todo app, but it solves my personal worflow very well.
raw_anon_11112 days ago
To be frank, this is a horrible suggestion if you want to see whether it’s worth it if you are trying to monetize it.
First you validate your idea by seeing if there is a potential market for it. Talk to people. See if someone is excited about it. Show them your work in progress.
See if there is already a company in that space and find a differentiator.
austin-cheney2 days ago
My personal experience doing this for about 1.5 years is that if your personal project solves meaningful problems that you have personally there are great odds other people will find it equally useful provided it does something different or better than existing solutions. That is all that's required to make an open source hobby project at least marginally successful, but you are correct in that it will absolutely not gauge value of a potential commercial project.
Paying users are very different than casual users. This marketability is nonetheless predictable though. Projects that solve a business problem of greater expense than what they cost in monetary charges pay for themselves, which is more than sufficient to determine product-market fit provided salesmanship and merchandising.
raw_anon_11112 days ago
There is much more than just creating a product that saves more money than it costs or even marketing.
You’ve got to get over the “no one got fired for buying IBM” problem. I’ve been on the decision making side enough times to know that it’s hard to get a business to trust an unknown vendor.
There was a “Show HN” here recently where someone was creating a SaaS product to manage 1 on 1s between managers and reports. I got a lot of push back when I said there was no way in hell any company would or should trust their proprietary company information to a one man SaaS.
The author hadn’t even heard about other well known SaaS products that had that feature as part of their product (Lattice).
You don’t start a project with the goal of monetization without looking at the competitive landscape and market positioning.
He was completely blind to the idea that no company of any size wants to manage logins either. Every SaaS company integrates with SSO. Just talking to one person who knew anything about business sales would know this.
I wouldn’t even think about doing a Show HN without at least talking about those issues.
ideavoop2 days ago
That’s honestly a great perspective
IntelliAvatar20 hours ago
For me, one signal has been whether the problems remain interesting even when progress is slow.
When working on complex systems (like anything involving long-running automation or agents), most of the real work happens in areas that don’t show up in demos: defining “done”, handling partial failures, and keeping behavior predictable.
If those problems are still worth thinking about after repeated failures, I take that as a sign the work itself is worth continuing.
ideavoop6 hours ago
That resonates a lot.
I’ve noticed the same thing: if the shape of the problem is still interesting after the novelty wears off and progress stalls, that’s usually the real signal. The visible demo work is easy; the hard part is exactly what you said—defining “done,” handling edge cases, and making systems behave consistently under stress. If those invisible constraints keep pulling you back, it’s usually because there’s something fundamentally worth building there.
gcheonga day ago
Unless you have a paying customer willing to pay you with just a promise of something to be delivered (see kickstarter et al, Steve Blanks's customer discovery, etc.), you don't. If it solves a problem you have and in a better way for you than other solutions then you personally get immediate value from it. From there, it's possible others may have the same problem and will be willing to pay for it. It's not guaranteed but the number of people getting value from the software will be at least n = 1.
ideavoopa day ago
I pretty much have the same perspective, until unless it doesn’t solve my issue, I don’t really want to work on it
mikewarot2 days ago
You can't know the future value of a project. You will always learn things along the way, and it's important to consider the value of those lessons in your consideration.
I've wasted far too much time in analysis paralysis, and not spent enough time trying things. Hopefully you can find a better balance.
ideavoopa day ago
Ahh I see your point
[deleted]2 days agocollapsed
AnimalMuppet2 days ago
As others have said, you don't know.
But start with you: Are you building it because you want to build it, or because you want it? Are you in love with it as a project, or as a product? Is it something you want to use?
Then, when you have it as a just-barely-usable thing, give it to a few people who have the same need. Get their feedback. Does it actually help them? If so, then you may have something.
ideavoopa day ago
I want to build it because I want it. In love with a building my own company, and I’ll actually use it. It’s something I want to work on, trying to get more and more users because it’s community driven.
ideavoopa day ago
So yeah, I do think it solves a great issue at hand. It solves mine atleast. But it’s community driven, it’s not possible to make it effective with 3-4 users, need at least 30-40 people.