Evaluating Criteria for your Web 2.0 Business Idea

By Steve Poland • August 8, 2008

I’d like to start a discussion about evaluating your business ideas — and determining which one to run with and build a start-up out of.

What criteria do you feel are important? How can each of those criteria be evaluated?

Here’s an initial list of what I’m thinking:

Competition - who’s doing it, or similar, and what’s your competitive advantage?
1st User - how do you get user #1?
Cost
Time to market
Ease or Difficulty of executing on the idea with your resources (team, funds)
Virality - can it quickly grow
Revenue - when and from where
Content generation - will users be generating the content? will you?

What other factors do you think?

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Comments

7 Responses to “Evaluating Criteria for your Web 2.0 Business Idea”

Andrew Hyde on August 8th, 2008 1:27 pm (perm link)

Who is your customer? Just listen to them.
Mike Brennan on August 8th, 2008 3:07 pm (perm link)

Creation of value proposition….can you easily and effectively communicate to potential partners, investors, customers, etc…does it have meaning to them?
IdeaTagger on August 8th, 2008 6:57 pm (perm link)

1. Does your product or service solve a problem worth solving, better than anyone is currently doing?
2. Is it free and if not is someone else unlikely to be able to offer it for free? (I hate this one but it is increasingly important)
3. Are its benefits obvious or easily explained?
4. Can you easily identify and inexpensively reach your target customer to inform them about your product/service?

Ideally you should answer yes to all of these but not necessarily. Certain combinations of Yes and No for the above still work in my opinion, as I outline in a decision table over at my blog.
Matt Wilson on August 9th, 2008 3:28 pm (perm link)

You need a competitive advantage; in other words, something that gives you a chance to survive when all the me-too, knock-off products show up.

Every conversation I have had with potential investors has always revolved on this point. How will you prevent others from stealing your idea once you prove that it can make money?
Eric Marcoullier on August 11th, 2008 4:14 pm (perm link)

Seconding IdeaTagger’s statement. Does it solve a problem? If not, please go back to square one and start over.
Gianluca on September 3rd, 2008 1:24 pm (perm link)

1. Does your product need a “critical mass”?
2. Who will pay the bandwidth/housing/hosting bills? In other words, have your idea a rock solid business model?

N.B. I have a rock solid business model != I hope to be bought by a giant.

Cheers from italy,
G.
Freddy on September 5th, 2008 9:34 am (perm link)

1. Honesty and building a trust with your client and considering your client your partner in business.
2. Constant access - Client should always know they can contact you regarding any issue.
3. Updates and Updates - keep product fresh whether its fruit or web content.
4. Listen to what your client is saying so you can understand what he needs; then if you can provide it, provide it quick. If you cannot; then tell them you cannot and then tell them what you can do.