The worst response to a great idea

http://shop.bluffworks.com/blogs/news/12924385-the-worst-response-to-a-great-idea

by chrisbennet • 12 years ago

30 24 12 years ago

shop.bluffworks.com

retube• 12 years ago

These would be perfect for me. Anyone know if they live up to the marketing claims?

orkoden• 12 years ago

Ideas are worthless, execution is all that counts.

k__• 12 years ago

Well, at least they have to be good ideas.

Some friends of mine had the money and the technology, but no one wanted their product.

dragontamer• 12 years ago

Marketing is part of execution.

tiger10guy• 12 years ago

Answers to real world questions almost always lie somewhere between 0 and 1. Your question is no exception.

tonylemesmer• 12 years ago

He needs to ask the right questions. As the author correctly works out, the respondents are operating with only a small amount of information available and therefore being necessarily pessimistic in the outcome. Realistically the people he asks for their opinion could probably only give information that a customer could respond with. Therefore don't ask questions like "I want to make wrinkle free pants what do you think?" and expect anything other than direct comparisons to other products. The respondent doesn't know your margins or even where you're selling them or anything else about the business.

circlefavshape• 12 years ago

"I want to make a new kind of wrinkle-free pants that are cool instead of stodgy and are so wrinkle free they can be worn for multiple days in a row without care"

Is "jeans" not a subset of "pants" in US English?

DanBC• 12 years ago

Jeans are not wrinkle free.

His trousers are smarter than jeans - for work places where jeans would not be suitable.

twic• 12 years ago

I wear a variety of kinds of trousers - jeans, chinos, cords, these weird linen things - and i don't think i've ever noticed wrinkling as a problem.

Maybe it's the way i wash and dry them. Or maybe it's just because i'm sufficiently fat that my body stretches the wrinkles out of everything i wear.

Freaken• 12 years ago

"This website abuses rawgit, you should complain to the owner".

Consider it done.

nemesisj• 12 years ago

Weird. I visited the website and got a message saying "This website abuses rawgit.com. You should complain to its owner."

chris_wot• 12 years ago

What the hell is that?

gadders2• 12 years ago

I think the owner needs to update his URLs to use the Raw Git CDN. From their FAQ:

Can I use a rawgit.com URL on a production website? No. Please use cdn.rawgit.com for anything that might result in heavy traffic. Only use rawgit.com URLs for low-traffic testing and sharing temporary examples or demos during development. When people misuse rawgit.com, it costs me money. Please don't be a jerk.

What will happen if I send large amounts of traffic to a rawgit.com URL? Bad things.

First, requests will be throttled and your site will load very slowly. If the traffic continues even after automatic throttling is triggered, rawgit.com will start serving evil.js and evil.css instead of requested JS and CSS files. Visitors to your site may see an annoying alert warning against using rawgit.com in production, and your JS and CSS may start doing very strange things.

This is designed to get your attention and encourage you to stop being a jerk. Only use cdn.rawgit.com in production; never rawgit.com.

gadders2• 12 years ago

And it looks like the Hacker News effect may have put Bluff Works on the top referrers naughty list:

http://rawgit.com/stats#referrers

fphhotchips• 12 years ago

Better yet, I think the fact that it's using the wrong rawgit url is stopping the store page from working, since every time I try to purchase, this message comes up.

wydok• 12 years ago

Fixed now.

moron4hire• 12 years ago

My mother was [1] a serial entrepreneur. She is also a serial hobbyist, which is to say that she procrastinates unknown work (like finishing projects) with known work (like starting projects). Unfortunately, a trait she passed on to me, but I seem to be getting out of it. It's a lot of hard work. And career coaching.

It caused/causes some stress between my parents, but they are still constantly brainstorming on business ideas. It was a pretty common refrain in our household, "awww, look at that, they put a Steak-and-Shake exactly where we were thinking of one." Whatever my mother lacked in execution and my father in will, there was still a healthy appreciation for the entrepreneurial spirit.

So these days, they are both extremely supportive of my endeavors. And I've found myself a group of friends who are the same. Having a supportive social circle is incredibly important.

If you have folks in your life that you know are scared, little rodents, content to show up to a J.O.B. every day and do what they are told, unable to imagine how anyone else could ever want anything differently, then just don't talk to them. By this point, people are used to the "boring job" story [2], so if they ask what you do for a living (which itself is kind of a bullshit question) just tell them "I'm in computers" or "I'm in sales". If they press, "oh, you wouldn't find it interesting". Because even though it is interesting, they won't find it so.

And then go home and work your ass off.

[1] "was" in the sense that she mostly seems to have finally found success in consulting for non-profit fundraising, not in the sense that she is no more.

[2] http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

squigs25• 12 years ago

Most people out there are going to be nay sayers. A truly good idea is good because it's a secret. PayPal's secret when it was founded was that people might want a secure way of making payments over the internet. Facebook's secret was that people want an easy way of staying connected to everyone they've ever met.

Ideas are inherently not obvious. Judging the value of an idea is even less obvious.

At the end of the day, you need to take small bets. Don't wager your life savings. Listen to the criticism and have the confidence to filter out what you think is irrelevant.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win."

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

-Howard H. Aiken

pessimizer• 12 years ago

I don't know that manufacturing and distributing trousers is as much a great idea as it is an industry that has made money for hundreds of years. It's well proven that money can be made making clothes, the question is whether you have the business skill and domain knowledge to do it yourself.

Trying to bring back sock garters could be a great idea. I would call them 'sockspenders.'

soggypopsicle• 12 years ago

This theory could be accurate in this case or since this is a niche product he may have not asked people that had this need.

Since I'm not his target market I wouldn't have liked the idea but I'm sure people who already like Dockers would have responded more favorably to what I see as just a better version.

stillsut• 12 years ago

Try a different pitch, e.g.

"10 year hoodie" https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jakehimself/the-10-year...

It's not about what product specs you can claim - like wear for 3 days without wrinkles, but about explaining to consumer Joe why he needs that.

How about roll-out-of-bed-and-into-the-office pants?

Im_Talking• 12 years ago

Exactly. And you need to see it exactly how it is. The entrepreneur is doing things that normal people can only dream of. 99% of the population wants order. But order never leads to progress. Be the person that changes the status quo.

chrismcb• 12 years ago

I don't get the title, but I'm glad the author is trying to understand the criticism. "Aren't those dockers?" means you have to compete, and convince people your brand is better. some people think their idea is new and innovative when it might not be. "Better have 59 more ideas" is more of an attempt at humor, but he is also right. Starting a new business isn't easy. "why would anyone buy that?" I think history has proven that people would buy wrinkle free clothes. The only piece of advice I can offer, is build your brand. Having quality clothes will help build it, but in the end the only real thing that is going to differentiate you and, well say docker, is your brand.

The worst response to a great idea

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