I had an idea several months ago that I wanted to put some energy into, and with the recent completion of my last project, I had the time to take dig into it. So starting early last week, I began some initial mockups to flesh out my idea and take a look at what I had. When I completed the first round of mockups on Friday I realized – wait a minute – I’ve seen this somewhere.
Sure enough a few minutes on google revealed that there were competitors in the space and that they were already far ahead of me in both branding and user-base. So it seems that my idea has died before it was even born. I suppose that’s the way it is.
It’s interesting to me that only when I had mocked up the idea did I see how similar it was to existing solutions. Only once the idea was no longer only in my head did I see what it was. Seeing it on the screen, rolling through pages as a simulated user, revealed what all my thinking did not.
Update 12/4:
Add to that that I found a company just recently that received $70M in investment to solve a related problem. How’s that for intimidating?