Is my Idea Technically Feasible?

This is one of the most common questions I handle in my mentoring sessions with early-stage start-up founders (and potential founders). Almost always, the answer is ‘Yes,’ but that isn’t really the question you need to be asking yourself.

Tech makes most things possible nowadays and in a year of mentoring, I’ve only come across one idea where the answer was ‘maybe not’. So generally the answer is yes, you could build that.

The real question is, “Do you need to build it?” And more often, the answer here is “Not yet”. Why? Well, software development takes lots of time and money, there are ways to make it cheaper, but really, you don’t want to start building unless you’ve got a reasonable idea it’s going to deliver the outcome you want.

You can test out your technical business idea in many ways without spending money on software development. Here are a few ideas from the companies I’ve worked with:

• WhatsApp for businesses to deliver training and answer user questions.

• Hand-drawn diagrams to see how users will interact with an app and see how valuable they find it.

• Paid for content on a website to see if users would be willing to pay for information on a given topic

• Email lists and surveys to see if you can reach your users and if they see the problems in the same way you do

• Create a landing page advertising your idea that allows people to sign up to a waiting list and some low-cost Google Ads (or similar) to direct people to the page.

• Talking to a wide variety of users and seeing how they rank the problem you’re trying to solve against other issues they have.

These approaches gave valuable insights that allowed the founders to refine their offering or even pivot to a new idea before they’d spent much money. This means that when they did come to build, they had a much better idea of who their users were and what the exact problem they were solving was.

You can test out your tech idea in many different ways before you get to the build stage. Figuring out the best approach for your business and idea is one of the areas I cover in my mentoring sessions. I specialise in mentoring non-technical founders with tech ideas - I’m here to help you figure out how to launch your concept cost-effectively for your time and budget. I know that tech is sometimes confusing and complicated, and I love helping founders navigate the space.

If you’re a UK-based start-up, you may be able to access mentors like me for free through the Barclays Eagle Labs program, or if your start-up is based in Scotland, TechScalers is another organisation offering free mentoring for start-ups meeting specific criteria. Alternatively, I provide paid-for mentorship via my consulting firm.