The Great App Idea

The napkin sketch...

Ideas for apps need to meet these criteria.

1. Must be easy enough to do by one person initially, but could be more difficult if it can easily attract others to help out.  This excludes those ideas which require a large allocation of resources.  Unless they are crowd sourced or done over a longer time period.

2.  Does no harm.  If it helps people even better...  This one is general but, think about the implications to society and legal consequences as well.

3.  It must be marketable and monetize, that means it has to be realistic enough to make money.   It can still be fun to do.  So games are not out, or anything else

4.  Must be something people want or will want to use.  This is obvious and sometimes not so obvious.  Must be well thought out because it has to become part of a daily routine of use.  They will want to tell others about it... etc.

5.  Hasn't been done already so many times that the competition will be fierce and will require significant effort to compete with other versions already out there, or soon to be out there.  If it's for a new device or platform, this maybe okay, but getting to market fast with a quality product becomes critically important.

6.  Should be a unique idea and not entirely easy to duplicate and brand as someone else's.  This one is your value add, your creative take on why this is going to be so great and why you can make it better than anyone else.  So much so that when they see it, they will say that's too bad it's already done... next idea!

7.  Something you want to be remembered for.

So there you have it, my magic list for a successful app idea.  If you can check off all the points listed, you probably have a great idea for an app, so don't just talk about, build it!