When you just found a great idea for an app, the first step (after the initial excitement subsides) is to gather feedback from as many people as you can.
That’s what we just made really simple now on FairSoftware with our new feedback widget. Once you setup your idea and enter a description, the community can give you instant feedback on three key elements:
Here are some examples:
- Is there a market for bugcollect, a web site that collects logging and crash reporting information (early feedback from community seems to indicate so)?
- Can a Facebook game of power and political intrigue make money?
- Is an iPhone app that lets you create an emoticon from the built-in camera useful?
We figured that these three criteria are the most important to help improve your idea:
- You need to express your idea clearly, so people you’ll be pitching to (co-founders, business partners, potential customers), understand what you are trying to build
- Your product must be useful, otherwise no one will care. Are you solving a real need? Make sure you are not confusing a technology with a need.
- Even if you do great with the first two questions, you don’t have a business unless it can generate money. Some ideas are great and very useful, but you simply can’t build a business around them. They may be better suited for an open source approach, as a side project. Better to know before you invest too much energy.
Just visit any of the public projects to provide feedback. You’ll be doing a service to the startup community. New navigation buttons let you go from one idea to the next with one click.
And when you want to give more detailed feedback to the founders, there is a discussion thread attached to each project idea. Who knows, you may even join the project and become a co-founder if you think it’s a great idea.
FairSoftware is a community of entrepreneurs where you can find co-founders, form your first startup instantly and help each other by exchanging advice on how to start web and iPhone apps.
