Ask HN:Do you care for ideas or They are dirt cheap to care

6 points by machupai 14 years ago | 6 comments

I have been sharing few ideas in HN and got quite few responses for them. Thoughts behind sharing them was

1. Use HN as a medium to validate thoughts and ideas

HN is so unique that, every/wanna be entreprenuer is a member. These are people who think about creating something and has a mindset of their own. This makes HN ideal platform for ideating and validation. Ofcource PG and ex YC adds view points which can sometime be critically helpfull. I was thinking of developing the ideas into full blown business with the help of HN.

2. Inspire others to share their ideas.

Again, more ideas, helps to develop better ideas. It is like solving the microsoft interview puzzles. At first they will look difficult. Spend couple of days with few of them and you slowly start to think in the right direction. Your mind will get completely trained to think to get the solutions. Hence learning the ideas/thoughts from others will help to build new one. I stronly believe that, if someone can work on a skill, it will improve over a period of time.

3. Mearly to get a more stimulating discussion experience.

Unfortunately HN is the only of its kind in attracting the best minds. A discussion with such a culturly/demographically diversified, talented, people is something i long for.

4. I am not going to work on all the ideas I get. At the end i need one idea for myself. If somebody feels it is good, they will implement it. Rather than dieing, some of these ideas will see some light. This will give me the satisfaction of "Yeah I thought about it some time back" feeling. Also help the entreprenuer eco system more strong.

But unfortunately i never got any valid response or feedback. Leave about anything constructive, i didnt even got a comment which says, this thought sucks (or May be you guys were being nice to me). Or is it that, the number of posts in HN is soo high, it is difficult to get the attention. If so, HN is starting to fail as a place to get feedback and should provide a way to resolve this. Or is it that, you guys think sharing your thoughts/ideas are worth millions.

Help me understand this? Do you think We can use HN as a medium to validate ideas or do you think any idea is cheap ?

Note: - I do got few responses from Tutorspree team on my ideas related to their product though.

revorad 14 years ago |

I think people here, myself included, appreciate and engage a lot more with working products than ideas. Build a working prototype, however crappy it may be, and post it for feedback. You will get much better response than if you just posted the idea.

Making things also helps you improve your ideas. It really is very much like writing. You will not even have better ideas until you start building.

machupai 14 years ago | |

Yes. Building something has a ton of benifits. But to build a lot of ideas (say 1 idea a week) will take ton of time too. What I want to do is to use the collective brain power of hn'ers to improve my thinking process in short time. I am currently working on one of the ideas myself and trying to learn from others at other ideas. And please note that I had shared a prototype in one of the post. But didn't get any response.

decadentcactus 14 years ago |

On a tangent from point 4 - I've learned that it's ok to share my ideas, as the likelihood of them being stolen is still pretty low. I know I've read thousands of ideas over time and implemented exactly zero of them. I'm assuming most others are the same.

But I agree with revorad, it's much easier to get behind an idea that is (even crudely) actually built.

machupai 14 years ago |

On a different note, I feel that, If we share our ideas around the product they are working or interested, you will get some response. Again my post and suggestion on Tutorspree got me some response from both the founders. Another Post on Visa issue got quite few upvotes and comments. May be that is the only way to get the attention of HN'ers

toddoh 14 years ago |

well I found cofounder thru HN. Finding someone who interested in- could happen someday, but I think getting meaningful feedbacks about it and improving idea by building prototype is the right way I think. And if you already shared it but no response, then you should practice how to describe your idea looks interesting.

I read many HN posts to share ideas and trying to get response, but most of them are too long and too detailed. Of course some ideas require long descriptions, but most of them, No. I spent so many times to describe my project sounds cool and interesting. 2 sentences that just describe what will happen next with idea > 50 sentences with description of all features you're thinking.

machupai 14 years ago | |

Interesting proposition of presenting ideas in an interesting mannaer. Now We are talking. But it is kind of Art. For few it will look picaso but for the others it will be a piece of junk.