It’s great fun coming up with ideas for new businesses, apps, services etc.

Uber, but for [context] etc..

Many of these ideas are in reality, absolutely awful, and that’s ok as long as you don’t invest lots of time, effort and money trying to make them real.

A good habit to get into is to try and break your ideas as soon as possible by interrogating them with some simple questions like…

• What problem does it solve for people?
• What evidence do I have that this problem actually exists, is worth solving and that my idea will solve it?
• What the cheapest and fastest way that I could find out if my idea actually solves this problem and that people value this problem being solved?
• What are am trying to learn from doing this?
• How much of my time / effort / money am I willing to invest in pursuing this idea?
• Why will people use my idea vs what is already available? How sure am I that I am right?
• Why might my idea fail?
• What feels like the riskiest assumptions that I have made that underpin the success of the idea?
• In a perfect world how will my idea work from the perspective of the people who use it?
• What feel like the most important questions that I should ask my potential customers to explore the idea further?
• What’s the most logical next thing to do to help me decide to pursue this or not?

So the next time a new idea pops into your head, use these questions to help you to work out which to spend your hard earned money and rare free time on pursuing!