Muhammad Usman

Crazy tech lover, endless learner
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Saw Something on Twitter and Thought It's a Wonderful Idea? But then ...

You saw a link preview on Twitter. You glimpse the URL and wonder, “Wow, what a great idea that is! Why don’t I get this type of idea?” Then you click only to find out— no, it’s not what you assumed.

Take Business for Developers as an example. When you saw this URL, you might have thought this is all about selling small businesses to developers. Maybe you guessed this site is a marketplace for businesses that other people want to sell. Perhaps the bloke behind this curates developer-friendly businesses. And you might yell, “Ah, someone snatched it! It’s just me who doesn’t get these types of ideas.” But upon opening, it’s only a business blog for developers, sigh! Nothing less than opening a box of Ben & Jerry’s– with eyes sparkling and mouth watering– only to find out the leftover food from last week.

Welcome to the club! Congrats, you have an idea now, though it doesn’t matter anyway. Someone else took action, and you didn’t. They didn’t sell the business to developers, but they only gave business tips to developers. It kicked off with a minimal version.

“Ideas are cheap. Implementation is hard.” Can you build an MVP, not an MVC (pun intended) version of your best idea? You can stack upon it later. Based on facts like; user feedback, your journey, AB testing, and what you see gives the best ROI.

Look at yourself. You are a sequence of evolution. You are not the same version today compared to when you were born. You grew over time — physically and emotionally. Look at your coding career. Reflect on how you started and where are you today. You started with the bare minimum, while now, you have ripened. From being a fledgling, you now have the wings to soar and reach high!

Can you take action with 20% of the idea that yields 80% of the value? And start with a just-barely-works limited edition, and see how it goes? Do not let your developer mind take over you. Wear the business hat rather and release something bare-bone. Afterwards, grab your coding hat and transform it into something better. Then someone will see the URL and think, “wow, why don’t I get these ideas”? “Wait, no, it’s not what I guessed.”

This post was originally published on Business for Developers, which is another blog of mine.