It works the other way too, incidentally: if you build something for which your friends are the target market, and they don't use it, except occasionally out of loyalty to you, it's a bad idea. At least so far.
Show this thread
If you're a young programmer and you can build something your friends consistently use because they actually want it rather than out of loyalty to you, that's ipso facto a good startup idea. No matter how trivial or frivolous it seems initially.
-
-
-
You can generalize "friends" to "people who know what the available options are." E.g. if you wrote something for car dealers and lots of car dealers started using it, that would count too. But your friends are the most convenient group of this type.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Start scaling it outside your friend circle.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
This Tweet is unavailable.
-
overleaf?
End of conversation
-
-
-
would love to hear if anyone has examples of any companies that started this way :)
-
Facemash is one
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
The word “young” is a dangerous snare, though: leads to ignoring the 70% of the marketplace who AREN’T young. (And to traps like the startups that sell services your mom used to do for you before she kicked you out of the basement—invariably labour-intensive, unprofitable.)
-
to be charitable, older programmers are a bit more likely to know when their idea is worth money
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.