Ideas: How do they work?
For the past 8 months or so I’ve been building a spreadsheet full of web project ideas. The one thing they all have in common is that they fit needs of my own — problems that I have been meaning to solve or apps that I know I would use. For any of these I might only need a couple weekends to produce a working prototype, but to truly see an idea through might take months. Because of this fact, I realize that I’ve been holding off on getting my hands too dirty until I find one idea that shines well above the rest.
Since September, when I started the list (also when I moved to Seattle), the top item was an app for splitting expenses with my new apartment-mate, which I did end prototyping earlier this spring (the working name has been “ForkPay”). I stopped active development, however, since my good friends over at SplitTheRent.com produced a very similar app as part of their new startup. (Not to mention the existence of several other solutions already out there). What I’ve finished of the ForkPay concept is far from perfect, but I plan to clean it up and release the source code, in case other web-hackers are interested in adapting it for their own living situations.
But that leads me to my real point. Chances are, if I find a problem worth solving, someone else has solved it too. So it hardly matters whether or not my ideas are revolutionary. I’ve known all along that it is more important to just get stuff out there, regardless of quality or completeness — I guess it’s easier said than done.
So I’m challenging myself to start making things this summer. Stay tuned.
