Validate ideas by asking why they would fail
This Reddit post says many people ask the wrong question before building a business, app, or product. The writer says “Do people like this idea?” is weak because kind comments do not prove demand. They suggest asking what would have killed the idea if it failed six months later. That question points to issues like who pays, what people already use, trust, effort, costs, operations, and repeat use.
Key points
- Positive feedback does not mean people will pay.
- The post suggests writing the failure story before building the full version.
- Key questions include who pays and what people already use instead.
- Trust, effort, hidden costs, and operations can break an idea.
- A good-sounding idea can still waste months if weak assumptions appear late.
Quick term guide
- business
- An activity where you provide value to others in exchange for money.
- Issues
- Work items where people and agents discuss tasks or problems.
- effort
- A setting for how deeply the AI should work on an answer.
- budget
- The maximum amount of tokens or money an AI is allowed to spend on a single task.
- validation
- Checking whether real people understand, want, or would use an idea before spending more time on it.
- system
- Here, system means a repeatable way to use AI, such as steps, rules, or checks.
- native
- Built using the operating system's own built-in tools, so the app feels at home on that platform and runs efficiently
- feedback
- A response that tells a user what they did well or should fix.