I’ve been talking through that moment after I’ve had an idea I think is great. In that moment I ask myself the question “Why hasn’t this been done before?” In my opening post I gave a list of four possibilities and over the last several days I’ve talked through them. But from the beginning I forgot about the most likely possibility in my experience – that my idea has been done before and I just didn’t know about it.
This one is a let down. I’ve gotten my hopes up about this amazing thing that I could do just to find out that someone else has beaten me to it. That part makes sense though – there are millions of apps out there solving hundreds of thousands of problems so it isn’t strange that my idea isn’t unique. But what do I do with it now?
Most likely nothing. You probably won’t add a lot of value by adding your take on a solution. You may look around and notice that all the other solutions aren’t very good and think you can do better and you probably can. But the problem is that the reason all the other solutions aren’t good is probably that there is little to no money in this area. No money means no motivation to improve your app which means crappy apps.
Can you add something that will give you different results? Or are you so fired up about this idea that you can’t not do it? Then by all means go for it! But you’re going to have to be smart about it and even if you are the odds are against you.