Testing “brilliant” ideas

Picture this:

I am approached by “John” who has been recommended to talk to me about his new venture – but it turns out he wants me to sign an NDA before he can discuss it. 

I refuse to sign unless he can give me an outline on what he is proposing, so we agree to meet at a cafe for coffee and a chat.

When he arrives he explains his idea – but it turns out he hasn’t done much research.

He has a folder with him – which turns out to be empty.

He is convinced he is on a winner and doesn’t want advice, just money and I have to pay for the coffee because in his excitement he has forgotten his wallet.

This has happened to me more than once (more fool me). The problem is that everyone has some great product ideas as well as some completely rubbish ones. But they can’t differentiate, they think all their ideas are good.

Since I try to get smarter as I get older I now demand a high level overview to be sent to me in the mail before I will commit to investing any time at all.

I recently noticed a new service on the landscape that specifically deals with people’s product ideas.

It’s called Quirky. What Quirky does is get you to submit your idea to its community.

The crowd then decides whether your idea has legs and if so they get their paid team to evaluate the product, doing research, design, branding and engineering, and if everything looks a go they manufacture and market your product.

If your idea doesn’t make it, it only costs you $10 to submit and you get a whole lot of feedback.

If your idea makes it you get paid, the crowd gets paid and of course Quirky gets paid.

It’s as close as I have seen to getting real life product validation without the need to invest.

It could save a lot of time sitting in coffee shops listening to people claim that their idea is brilliant.

Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club and Flinders Pacific. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Vietnam and is the sole Australian representative of the City of London for Foreign Direct Investment. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.