How to pick your next app idea: the 10 → 3 → 1 funnel
- Borrowed from Apple: an Apple design practice – produce ten mockups, consider three, land on one – forces you past the first plausible answer, and works just as well for picking your next app.
- Five hunting grounds: collect ten ideas by scratching your own itch, mining 1-star reviews for pain points, piggybacking trends, building on APIs, and picking off weakly executed competitors.
- Consider before you judge: YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram all sound unhinged as raw pitches, so brainstorm each idea freely first – then hunt for its drawbacks, because an idea with 30 minor drawbacks is significantly trickier than one with 3.
- Problem, product, point, payoff: boil every idea into a four-sentence elevator pitch, because if you can’t, it’s just not going to work – if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
- Five elimination rounds: cut ten to three by scoring with the RICE model, then cutting for weak conviction, low impact, whether you’d use it yourself, and revenue potential – and give each finalist a one-week validation sprint.
- The Obsession Test: the best idea isn’t the one with the biggest market, it’s the one you’ll actually finish – so pick the one you’re personally obsessed with, then name it, frame it, and claim it.