You are right in that not everyone that comes to the site will be representative of your audience but "outsiders" can have their own insight into something that you may not have considered.
All the mechanisms we will be putting in place (comments, voting, project questions etc.) are designed to help you decide if your project is worth pursuing: They will not be 100% effective but they will be much more effective that creating your project in total isolation with no feedback from anyone.
These mechanisms will evolve over time, for example, we may find that straight up comments may be useless but a scoring system, where other commenters can vote some up or down, could provide far more value...
First of all, thanks for taking the time to provide feedback: Exactly what WTF was built for.
I agree that there is a gradient and I can tell you that if someone wants you to sign an NDA then WTF won't really help them but for everyone else, getting feedback as early in the lifecycle as possible is worth a lot: It could save you a lot of time and money.
We designed WTF for ourselves in a way. We wanted somewhere we could test out an idea before committing too much time and resource to it. Somewhere we could show-off our idea, get feedback, change it accordingly and then re-show it and so on.
WTF is a guide; It will not be 100% accurate but it might just stop you from wasting months of your life on something you thought people wanted.
The other side of that coin is that you may find that your "Facebook Killer" application isn't a total flop: There may be something you could salvage from it, maybe a particular set of features, and that is what WTF is designed to help with.
WTF can provide instant feedback on anything from an idea to a full product and anything in-between.
One problem with surveys/questionnaires is that they are hard to create without loading the questions. Not to mention, they take time to come up with the questions too.
WTF is designed to give you quick feedback to one question: "Is my idea/project/feature any good?". By describing your project and putting it on WTF you have already filled out the requirements for feedback so you don't need to come up with a list of questions or ensure you are asking the right ones.
In short, we make it easy to validate your ideas and projects, gain feedback, adjust as necessary and then create the product that people want.
The other side to that coin is that you may find out that your idea has no merit which could save you lots of time and money.
What WTF provides is the ability to come up with an idea and get a quick gauge as to whether it has merit (it works with projects at various stages from new ideas to coming up with new features for existing projects and anything in-between).
For example, you have likely heard of "Facebook killer" apps and "New way to organize your inbox"-type ideas in the past and the general reaction is "Oh ffs, not another <insert product here> clone" but most ideas still have some merit even if their initial briefs are rather ambitious and somewhat tenuous.
Your Facebook killer may be too ambitious but with a bit of focus you may be able to come up with a smaller, more niche product that benefits a particular demographic given feedback and some direction.
This is what WTF provides: Sure, it will not give you a definite "If you build it, they will come" answer but it might just be able to help you salvage something that doesn't look like it is going anywhere.
In addition to helping you shape a project, it may also prevent you from spending time and money on something that just will not work as a result of feedback so you will know fast if it has any potential before spending time and money on it.
AS to stealing your idea, this is rarely the case. The thing that sinks most projects is lack of focus and aiming in the wrong direction - something WTF is designed to help prevent.
Thanks very much for your insight... this is exactly what WTF was designed for.
It may well be that your product just wasn't needed or that your focus was wrong, for instance customers might have wanted feature y before feature x: It is not uncommon to find it difficult to work out what customers want in isolation.
(Shameless plug alert!)We encountered this several times in our own failed startups where we have built the best software the world has never seen and decided to create WillThisFly? to address these issues: It allows you to develop your product with feedback from day one, validate ideas and features, iterate and develop before committing time and resources to it or indeed, find out that it's a non-starter.
The main point of WillThisFly? is to test out an idea or project at any stage of its development before committing too many resources and finding that your awesome idea isn't so awesome after all.
If we had something like this when we first started out it would have made life so much easier and we wouldn’t have wasted months on projects that weren’t going anywhere but may still have been salvageable with the right feedback.
The iterations and feedback are key: This involves a simple, instant method (voting) and the more involved approach (comments). With both of these, a project owner will be able to find out if his project is worth pursuing and if it is, be able to iterate, change or pivot accordingly until he is happy he has a product that will work.
We will be adding a blog shortly that will outline strategies and features and more information about WTF?
At the moment we are using WillThisFly? to develop WillThisFly? and it's early days but it's coming along nicely and we are always open to suggestions :)
Man, I feel your pain. I have developed the most awesome products the world has never seen 4 times now. We had a "build it and they will come" attitude too :(
We decided to ask ourselves one question: How to we validate an idea before wasting months on an idea that only we seem to think is cool?
So we are creating WillThisFly? to ask that very question... it's a site that allows you to try out your ideas and projects, get feedback and refine them before committing resources to it.
All I can say is, it has happened to probably everyone at one stage in their startup career... don't give up, refine your ideas, create MVP's and keep trying...
I have just launched a site today that can help with that. It's called WillThisFly?.
It allows you to float your idea, get feedback and iterate until you have something of value that is worth pursuing... or not: It means you don't have to spend time and money finding out the hard way.
Will This Fly? is a place to gain feedback and validation on projects from other innovators, developers or entrepreneurs.
Post details of your project; let others vote on its viability to provide feedback; iterate and develop until it’s a winner.
A single project is on there now, Will This Fly? itself. Try it out, vote it good or bad and let us know what you think. We would appreciate any feedback.