Original Post, filter ideas with github issue form.
I’ve been tinkering with different startup ideas and needed a good checklist to think through them. There are great templates for this already: The YC application, Amazon’s internal press release, and Sequoia’s Writing a Business Plan. I found myself mixing and tweaking these templates because they don’t exactly match my model of the world, so I wrote up my own list.
I use this list both to develop ideas and filter them. If you adopt it, be careful about using it as a filter. Remember that in the early stages, good ideas are very easy to kill.
create ideas.yaml in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE, check docs for more details
name: 💡 Feature request
description: I have a new idea
title: "<What's your idea>"
labels: [rough-ideas]
body:
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Describe what problem does this feature solve?
description: A clear and concise description of what you want to happen.
validations:
required: true
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Describe what does the proposed API/APP look like?
description: Describe how you propose to solve the problem and provide code samples of how the API would work once implemented. Note that you can use Markdown to format your code blocks.
validations:
required: true
# Check before start it. A much complex and detail [check list](https://www.defmacro.org/2019/03/26/startup-checklist.html), before your spend your time on your awesome ideas. Please read it clearly.
# Product
- type: input
attributes:
label: Who are the users?
description: Who cares?
validations:
required: true
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: The product story!
description: |
Write a tweet/post from a hypothetical customer explaining the product and how it eliminates their dissatisfaction.
validations:
required: true
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Metrics of goodness
description: |
What “metrics of goodness” do your target customers care about? Does your product dominate every available alternative on these metrics? (i.e. what can you do that no one else can do?)
See also
1. [The Rise of Worse is Better](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)
2. [Worse is worse](https://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=24807)
3. [Jeff Bezos explains Amazon.com](https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1192777681789739008)
validations:
required: true
- type: dropdown
attributes:
label: Is it awesome?
description: Elon Musk Advises CEOs - https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-advises-ceos-to-stop-wasting-time-on-powerpoint-meetings-11607470065
options:
- "Yes"
- "No"
validations:
required: true
# Growth
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Related class
description: |
Fill in the bottom-up market size equation NUM_USERS * ACV = MARKET_SIZE. Are your numbers credible? Find a good reference class if you are building something completely new.
See also
1. [Shut up and multiply](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply)
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Buggy product
description: Which subset of your target customers are so constrained by the status quo, they’ll welcome a buggy product
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Cold startup
description: |
List your first ten customers.
See also
1. [Do Things that Don’t Scale](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Where are your customers
description: |
Which playbook will you use to get customers after the first ten?
See also
1. [Five ways to build a $100 million business](http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-build-100-million-business.html)
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Fund
description: |
What would need to be true in 18 months for you to get essentially unlimited cheap capital? How will you achieve that?
See also
1. [Fast](https://patrickcollison.com/fast)
validations:
required: false
# Strategy
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Why now?
description: Why now? What’s true about the world that nobody else figured out yet?
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Milestone
description: What is the most ambitious achievable milestone for your company within a 25 year time horizon?
validations:
required: false
- type: dropdown
attributes:
label: Production health.
description: Is your product a credible advance toward this milestone?
options:
- "Yes"
- "No"
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Milestone and more milestones.
description: |
What’s the next credible advance toward this milestone? The one after that? The one after that?
See also
1. [Tesla master plan](https://twitter.com/spakhm/status/1179514116907495424)
2. [iPhone runs OSX](https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1111092932252041216)
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: Build a moat.
description: |
How will you build a moat?
See also
1. [How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy](https://hbr.org/1979/03/how-competitive-forces-shape-strategy)
validations:
required: false
# Meaning
- type: dropdown
attributes:
label: Solo or join.
description: If another company was working on this idea and not you, what would you think about it? Would you join them?
options:
- "Yes"
- "No"
validations:
required: false
- type: textarea
attributes:
label: If you failed.
description: |
Imagine yourself standing in front of your team, investors, family, and friends. You’ve failed, and they’re waiting for you to speak. What will you say? Are you willing to work on this problem given that failure is the default?
See also
1. [Your intervention won’t work](https://twitter.com/statsepi/status/1021334815822548992)
validations:
required: false