We’ve entered the planning phases of a brand new app. It’s something we, of course, can’t tell you the specifics of for several reasons:

...We don’t know them ourselves.
...They’ll probably change a lot before we’re done.
...After exploring, we might decide not to finish the project due to several reasons.
...It’s a competitive advantage to be somewhat secretive when building niche apps.
...Keeping things a secret builds interest, and makes the whole thing more fun.

Still, keeping everything secretive goes against our nature. We love to share, and we love to help the community. As an experiment, we’re going to share some of the growing pains we’re experiencing as we plan, sweat and think about this new app.

We’ll be as forthcoming as we can about the process we’re going through, and maybe if you’re going through some of the same steps you’ll find this useful.

The first thing we want to talk about is the idea.

When an idea hits, sometimes it smacks you over the head, and sometimes it builds slowly. They can both be valuable, but this particular idea smacked me over the head. It was such a clearly defined niche that it practically leapt out at me.

I always think that’s a good sign. It’s one thing to learn to love, but it’s yet another
thing to fall in.

But, I want to say very firmly, and not braggingly, that I have lots of ideas. One of my jobs here at Paste is to think about our momentum, and where we might go next. I carve out lots of time in my week to just think about stuff. I’ll say this next part firmly and unabashedly, too: most of my ideas are total crap.

That’s what’s great about ideas. You can flirt with them, get to know them, see how they evolve. Several times a month I practically jump out of the shower, or wake from an ebbing sleep suddenly, or have to use the nerdy voice recorder app on my iPhone because I am assured that I have the next huge idea. I’m not especially proud of that fact- anyone could do it if it was their job to do so.

Ideas are practically valueless. Sure some are better than others, but what creates value is time and energy invested in an idea. And that is something that I’m sort of proud of. For every 100 ideas we have, we only work on one or two. There’s a loose, but thorough vetting process we go through.

Here are some of the things we think about.

Will people want this?
How many people?
Are these people identifiable in a certain niche?
Can we get at them inexpensively?
Is this the type of idea that builds its own momentum? If not, are the customers we’re able to get through normal means enough to make it profitable?
Will we be proud of it?
Are we passionate about it?
Do we think we can do a good job of it? Just because we can, and just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean we can make it great.
Are there competitors? Direct competitors? Can we do better? Does it matter if we do?

These thoughts happen before we even bother with technical stuff. Before we write copy, think of names, or push pixels. Before we waste a single minute on execution, we think about whether we should even bother.

Your time is incredibly finite, so it’s important to be critical of your ideas.

If we think the idea passes these tests generally, that’s great. But you imperatively have to check, research study- make sure. We call people in the industry. We research blogs, forums and anything we can get our hands on to check our facts and see if we’re right.

If, and it’s very rare that it happens, we’re still convinced that the idea is good at this point, we start to chase it. That very thing happened to us last week. It’s not too late- we might still dodge a bullet. All sorts of things could convince us that our time is better invested somewhere else. But for now, our teeth are sunk in and we’re trying to bite off exactly what we can chew.

Next time: Naming.