2 builders who never spoke to each other

Write the strongest case against your own idea

Friends and readers will not tell you the idea is bad, so do it yourself in a separate voice and publish it. The reverse also holds: a confident argument that something cannot work is cheap to make about any business, so weigh the objection rather than obeying it.

The method

1. 01

   Write the strongest possible case against your own idea, in a separate voice, because friends and readers will not tell you it is bad.

2. 02

   Publish the pitch and the teardown of your own idea as separate posts and then place a combined version on a larger publication.

3. 03

   Discount confident predictions that your idea cannot work, because any business can be argued to death on paper and the critic is usually right and useless at the same time.

4. 04

   Read enthusiasm from outsiders carefully, because the same product that looks like magic to people outside your industry can be the fiftieth near-identical thing to the insiders you are pitching.

5. 05

   Being told by everyone you ask that an idea is technically too hard, or that buyers will eventually build it themselves, is not evidence the idea is wrong.

What it returned

• $60m

  He lists the airtight case against Netflix in its DVD days, postage and wear, impatient viewers, piracy and Blockbuster copying it and undercutting. Blockbuster did copy it, went bankrupt, and Netflix cleared $60m of profit in a quarter, more than Blockbuster ever made.

• Zue publicly invited readers to demolish his place card idea, received almost no criticism, then wrote the teardown himself and recommends the exercise to other founders; he admits the teardown probably persuades him more than the pitch does.

• Zue shipped a pitch post and a teardown post for place cards in one week plus a merged version on Hacker Noon

• Zue's non-technical friends and family in Europe were excited by Scriv while AI-aware readers had seen around fifty similar products in a few months

Sources

• Ideas I was right about | Corey HainesCorey Haines · corey.co · Idea: No code demo builder SaaS · 2024-06-11
• Easy to criticize, hard to createJason Cohen · longform.asmartbear.com · Easy to criticize, hard to create · 2011-12-05
• How Samuel Hulick made over $37,000 with his self-published bookNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · Esoteric to practical: coming up with the idea for The Elements of User Onboarding · 2014-06-09
• The Place Card TeardownCory Zue · coryzue.com · The Place Card Teardown · 2017-04-30
• Introducing ScrivCory Zue · coryzue.com · The bear case for Scriv · 2023-08-03
• Week 6 RetrospectiveCory Zue · coryzue.com · Comments · 2017-05-01