We have developed, desired and contributed to lot of software products. When people talk about the next big thing in Indian IT, they talk about product development. But I figured we are not too good at spotting the right product ideas.
Evan Williams, founder of Blogger, Odeo and Twitter, wrote an excellent guide on evaluating whether your product idea has potential to succeed.
Here are the key questions you need to ask. (Read Evan’s full post, to understand these!)
- How difficult will it be to launch a worthwhile version 1.0? (Tractability)
- Is it clear why people should use it? (Obviousness)
- How much value can you ultimately deliver? (Deepness)
- How many people may ultimately use it? (Wideness)
- How will people learn about your product? (Discoverability)
- How hard will it be to extract the money? (Monetizability)
- Do you really want it to exist in the world? (Personally Compelling)
On a side note, my Mobile Web Development book starts with Evan Williams! The first page talks about Twitter, and how Evan chose mobile for his next big thing 😉