What Changed My Mind About Idea Filters

I used to ship before validating. The build was the fun part. Three abandoned repos later, I changed my mind.

What Did Not Change My Mind

The launches themselves. I rationalized each. The first because the timing was off. The second because Twitter was dead. The third because pricing was wrong.

What Did

I tried the filter before the fourth idea. Asked one non-technical advisor for a no. They gave me a no on the idea I would have built. The boring fourth-place idea passed instead. I built it. It worked in five weeks.

The Realization

The fun of building was masking the cost of building wrong. The filter is the cheap way to find out before the cost.

What I Do Differently Now

• Filter on paper before any commit.
• Non-technical reviewer required.
• Landing page before code.