Besides the common responses like pick an idea you actually want to work on and will enjoy doing and where you have the skills to do the work needed...
I recommend doing some research into how large companies vet new product ideas and borrowing some concepts from that. I realize MBA-type practices taught in business schools get a bad rap from many folks and frankly a lot of the bad reputation of MBAs is deserved. But there are tools and procedures for how bigger companies decide whether to start a new product line and these are worth learning about. For example, how does Apple decide to launch the iPad or how did they decide to launch the Apple Watch? And how does Apple decide to cancel/not launch the dozens of other internal product ideas they have that don't see the light of day?... Testing the idea, it's market potential and digging into the overall pros and cons and risks of an idea, all have known steps and processes that can work at a startup-level idea too. Nothing is 100% for sure a good idea or bad idea - Plus you don't have to listen to the results of your product vetting, you can launch an idea with low support for it or decide not to launch an idea that has tons of potential, either way I think it's worth taking the time to understand these factors.
Sounds like you're already doing some research and are off to a good start.
There's a couple book recommendations in other comments that mention some famous great books about investing. "The Intelligent Investor" for example is the classic to read on the subject. Just a heads up, many of these books about investing are about actively investing yourself, in particular picking stocks yourself, which has almost nothing to do with investing via broad passive index funds. I'm not saying don't read those books, please do research. However I just wanted to write a heads up: many people who read these books with a goal to learn more investing in general and who prefer to stick with broad passive index funds for their own money, well somehow almost everyone I see who reads these books ends up starting to try to actively pick stocks afterwards anyway. So I fully agree do a lot of research, learn about investing as much as you can and read any/all books that might interest you. Just wanted to give the warning before you do read these books...that as good as those books are on investing, they are also like gateway drugs that often make people want to try their hand at picking stocks and timing the market after they read them. Ultimately it's your money and up to you.
Another option, in addition to reading online and reading books, is to look into hiring a registered professional investment advisor help give you more in-depth information and answers that are specific to your situation.
Some investment advisors work off a percentage of your assets and they invest your money on your behalf but there are also many many other registered investment advisors who just work for an hourly fee when you go to meet them and they don't even offer any investing services at all. They offer information and knowledge about investing, the meeting is 1 on 1, and they charge by the hour or by how long the session takes.
One reason I recommend looking into a fee-based advisor like this is to answer your questions but also provide answers that are specific to you; based on things like your age, your goals, any other assets you have (like a home), factoring in if you have a 401(k) or something like it through your employment, etc...Of course a professional can answer your questions about various funds too, but there is a host of other issues to consider when picking passive index funds. For example tax-advantaged investing is going to be unique to you. You want to avoid overpaying taxes on investment gains, many people get this wrong without professional assistance and could have saved a lot of money had they set things up right earlier. Likewise, what State you live in or if you own a home might affect which types of passive index funds make sense for you. Just another thing maybe worth researching as you go through your due diligence. Best of luck.
I see in the comments there are still some workarounds to this paywall. Good to know. Cheers.
Just a reminder another workaround to the paywall is to you know actually subscribe to the newspaper. That is an option they offer. Obviously not possible for everyone. But if you have the money and want to read and support journalism... WSJ is really far from perfect but it's not the worst newspaper one could be subscribed to.
Also I think their discounted corporate plans program is huge, so depending where you work you may get a discount or it could be free, never hurts to ask.
Also, maybe YC could negotiate some sort of group WSJ discount for Hacker News users above a certain karma count? Just an idea...
I don't think it's smart to pay to read stuff from a group that also gets money from advertisers. You're either the product or the customer, when in doubt you'll be the product.
Real subscription journalism doesn't do advertising.
Sorry, I'm French, so I can only cite you 2 French ones: Le Canard Enchainé (100 yo, no website) and Mediapart (pure web).
We are talking serious news: the first one discovered that a minister had sent 1500 Jews in a train during WWII, the second one has discovered the minister charged of tax collection had an undeclared bank account in Switzerland.
Competition happens. Sometimes it shows up early. Before being able to give a good answer to your questions, to be honest I think you are asking the wrong questions in this situation.
How have you been building something for months and only recently discovered an identical competitor with millions in funding and 10k in paying customers?
Surely you did research before starting and after starting have been keeping an eye on developments in the industry? Or no? Without understanding how you operate, it is hard to understand whether to recommend a double down or pivot. Thanks.
I can try. Firstly, worth mentioning the quote is a bit facetious, witty, jocose...Jolly old Warren Buffett can often be a bit playful and sort of sarcastic when talking about investing in public but it seems few people pick up on it.
Also maybe worth mentioning the quote is based on a well known "2 Rules" phrase format. For example:
“There are 2 rules of life. Rule number 1 is ‘Never quit.’ And rule number 2 is ‘Don’t forget rule number 1.’” - Duke Ellington
and
"There are 2 rules for success. Rule 1: Never tell everything you know. Rule 2:.. ;)"
OK with that said, I wouldn't overthink the quote. Obviously you can't really guarantee you will "never lose money" and so it's not really a rule and even Buffett loses money sometimes.
If I had to guess what he means: I would say use the quote as fun/serious reminder to think about risk ahead of reward and remember concepts like margin of safety that help protect you from loses even if a stock doesn't go up like you expect and hope.
Actually it's not facetious at all. The point comes from his mentor Benjamin Graham, which relates to the difficulty in recouping investment capital following a loss (ie: making your money back after you break the rule).
eg: You have $100k in your investment account. You have a bad year and lose 50% of your money, leaving you with $50k. You now need to have a 100% return in the next year to just make your money back, even though you only had a 50% loss. Seth Klarman, another highly successful value investor like Buffett is also a proponent of this way of thinking.
I'm being totally serious here as I'd love to learn where my writing and communication is being unclear:
May I ask, did you read my full comment?
And do you know the definition of facetious?
I'm not trying to be rude, I just don't understand why you wrote what you wrote.
For example: when you mention "his mentor Ben Graham" did you think I had not heard of Ben Graham or that I didn't know he was Buffett's mentor so you added that too?
Granted it's possible I hadn't. Or maybe you wrote it as a courtesy in case other readers hadn't heard of him? I ask because you saw in my first comment I am quoting Buffett. Then in my reply to waqf I write about Buffett again, his mannerisms and his track record...So maybe I know at least a little bit about the guy. Maybe?
But then at the end of my comment I not only write the concept of "margin of safety", I put it in italics to emphasize it. How did you see that and still wrote what you wrote?
How can someone know the concept of Margin Of Safety and not know Graham? Margin of Safety comes from Ben Graham. "Margin of Safety" is the Title of Chapter 20 of his book The Intelligent Investor; where Graham explains what it is in detail. Plus he just talked about MoS all the time and called it the "central concept of investment". MoS is Ben Graham.
Also heads up. Margin of Safety is also the title of Seth Klarman's whole book. Have you heard about Seth Klarman or his book Margin of Safety? After reading your comment in full I am guessing you may have. If you haven't, it's worth looking up and has an interesting story attached (at one point the book was being stolen from libraries and going for thousands of dollars on eBay. Madness!). Also if you are into investing of any kind, not just value investing, I recommend reading the book. Very good.
Anyway sorry if this is weird or rude or has gotten too long. I'd really love to understand where I am not writing clear enough. Thanks.
Also as for "facetious". Seriously look up the word. If this is a real rule how do you follow "never lose money"? I'll wait.
In the meantime a rule is a prescribed guide for conduct or action. Someone can lose money from forces out of their control. It's like telling someone "Rule 1 of driving: Never get into a car accident". That's not a rule. You can't follow that rule. Someone could hit you even when you are driving perfectly. Rule broken. A real rule would say something like "always drive the speed limit" or "Never text and drive". Those are rules you can follow or break. I'll let you figure out the real rule here for Buffett (hint look in to Chapter 20 of Graham).
Lastly, your example about how if you lose 50% you now need to earn 100% on that to get back to where you where you started is something I see brought up often. It is sad and it is fucking stupid how it gets talked about. This is not some investment concept from one of the greatest investment thinkers in history nor his mentee. Ha, if only. What you are describing is just a basic math concept. Most people learn this in elementary school I believe. Kinda shocking sometimes how proud and confident people who are new to investing become of themselves when they realize they understand how percentages work and percentages work normal and as expected when talking about the monetary value of something changing too...
Does "X times 0.95 times 1.05" = X"? Of course not.
Replace X with your $100k portfolio, 0.95 is -5%, then 1.05 is +5%, does mathematics still work? Still not equal? Obviously.
I know people are trying to help others when talking about all this stuff. I am trying too. And Caveat emptor and all that. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. But it's a bit frustrating at times to watch and sucks when people lose their hard earned money when they try investing based on bad or misleading information they received; especially when good information that is written well is out there and free to read online or at a library. On the other hand I'm sure there are more than a few folks who are very happy when idiots try investing without doing their research first so they can take the other sides of their trades...Margin of Safety is so important and this is a real investment concept and it actually needs to be learned, but be warned it will take more than a minute to understand it. Passive ETF much less work.
You're all good - I've never actually seen such a long response to a short thread before! And indeed, I have read Klarman's book a number of times - he talks about avoiding capital loss and the difficulty in recovering from bad choices quite a lot in the book. Best of luck with your investing!
> "There are 2 rules for success. Rule 1: Never tell everything you know. Rule 2:.. ;)"
In regards to this quote, this is why hedge funds are so protective of their "secret sauce". At a fund I worked for, I saw an employee sued in federal court for intellectual property theft 4 hours before he was terminated. Criminal charges followed a few months later. (Don't email source of a quantitative trading system to your personal email, lest you want to be jailed & unemployed and untouchable by the rest of the industry).
Besides the obvious of "Don't lose money because that's bad", he's referring to how losses can quickly wipe returns.
If you're shooting for 10% per year and you lose 5%, you need to then get a gain of more than 5% to get even again, pushing you to take worse risks.
Hence, by simply focusing on a strategy of "Not losing money" you can come out ahead.
This was also the original Hedge strategy where you short some stuff and buy some stuff so you can get some of the gains without participating in all the losses. For instance, if you can capture 70% of market ups while only taking 70% of the downs, you'll beat the market.
Literally, plot daily gains vs daily losses of S&P. If you only take 70% of the losses but get 70% of the gains (so multiply each win/loss % element in the series by 0.7, and apply the new sequence to a portfolio balance), you'll end up doing better than the market.
How about this, below is the link to the data (S&P 500 daily returns), whoever is right will donate money to an education-related charity at 70% of the dollar amount donated by whoever is wrong. So for example if you are correct, I will donate $100 and you donate $70, and vice versa.
Happy to chat about it more if you want. But just intuitively and quickly everyone should be able to see why one can't say an equal 70% up/down capture ratio will just beat the market...
1. let's agree the market can do whatever the hell it wants. Up, down, whatever.
2. Imagine a market is down -5% and then up 10%. According to your story and capture ratios, when this happens your portfolio is down only -3.5% and then up 7%. Right? 70% of the down and 70% of the up?
I think you will find in just this example the market beats your portfolio by more than 1% here. This is just a simple example and I am being generous. When you look at real data you will not only find a similar pattern, but your portfolio gets absolutely crushed by the market.
Maybe an even quicker intuitive answer: If a 70% up/down capture ratio portfolio will beat the market, why isn't this a huge thing and everyone sells/changes their regular full market S&P 500 ETFs to do that?
Your data only goes back 10 years. Mathematically, whether 70% up/down works out to beat the market depends on the period we're talking about.
> I think you will find in just this example the market beats your portfolio by more than 1% here. This is just a simple example and I am being generous. When you look at real data you will not only find a similar pattern, but your portfolio gets absolutely crushed by the market.
Here's a python script that generates random numbers to simulate the stock market. Each time you run it, you'll get a different result: http://pastebin.com/UNtDPjxd This is basically your "simple example" run many times side by side. Sometimes a hedged strategy works better; sometimes not.
The place I got this idea in the first place was a book I read in college about the history of hedging as a strategy. It noted one of the earlier demonstrations of why it's a good strategy was when a fund showed that participating in 70% of the gains/70% of the losses of the S&P beat the S&P. But which years? This matters. Unfortunately, I can't find the book anywhere. IIRC, I think we'd be talking about a stretch covering the 40s, 50s, 60s.
This is similar to how Milken pitched the junk bond -- it was originally based on a paper that showed a balanced portfolio of low rated bonds performs better than a balanced portfolio of high rated bonds (this is explained in Den Of Thieves). This was true back then because low credit ratings were so heavily discounted by market conditions (mainly, nobody wanted to buy them).
> why isn't this a huge thing and everyone sells/changes their regular full market S&P 500 ETFs to do that?
For the same reason that no one is pushing a diversified portfolio of junk bonds anymore; what worked in the past doesn't necessarily work in the future.
Thanks. For a second I thought I was chatting with someone you who knew what they were talking out. I appreciate you confirming you were basing your answer of something you read 10 years ago in a book, a book you can no longer find. The rest of your comment shows you didn't even study the basics of finance and economics either.
Dave, Hacker News has some of the smartest commentary I found on a News site. Questions on here regularly have people answering them where that person has experience, worked in that field professionally and have studied those topics in school and have degrees in them.
I realize this is the internet, expectations are low. People troll. Even if you wanted to help, why not wait a minute before answering to see if someone more informed or more experienced, than a book read 10 years ago will have answer. It's more a courtesy to the person asking as they get a better answer, and it stops you from looking like an idiot. Win-win.
Just wanted to add that Dave's notion is not quite as absurd as you make it out to be.
As you might know, daily rebalancing leveraged ETFs (say, 2x or 3x) are basically a bad idea for long-term investments, because they are (simplistically) short vol. So, they might outperform the (non-leveraged) index/ETF if vol is low and total return over the period is high. But typically, with normal or high vol, or over long periods, they underperform non-leveraged.
By analogy, a less-than fully invested ETF/trading strategy that's basically "0.7x" leveraged will beat the (non-leveraged) index/ETF in certain trading regimes (where total return over a period is negative or modestly positive, while vol relatively high).
I interpret it as if you are only correct half of the time, you can make money by letting your winning positions run and cutting your losses. Many winning traders talk about limiting your losses and risk management as being key.
Anyway, it's a bit too harsh to downvote. He's just answering a question, and correctly says if you lose 5%, you need to make back more than 5% to get back to even.
> The 6 years he spent learning at another trading firm or the fact that on his own he probably had alot less risk oversight that allowed him to lever up more than he would have in side of an investment house.
Maybe neither? As good as this kid might be, hard to believe he did a 30x year! Even with more risk and there was some crazy volaility back then, a 30x year going from half a million pounds to 15 million in 12 months is very high.
Never know of course. He might have done it. theoretically possible with the exotics CDS in that year. But also hard to trust journalists aren't just twisting facts these days.
Another explanation for the rise: He already had several million while working at the firm, but they weren't in his name, not in a public filing anyway until went out on his own and took out the funds.
A 30x return is easy - rare, but easy. Repeating it, however, is damn near impossible.
Options trading, which he was good at, went haywire on that day. Anybody in a decent position with options made crazy returns. But their timing had to be good. If you bought a short-dated, just out of the money SPY put the day before, and sold it that afternoon, you made a killing as far as percentage return.
The number of people who had that or similar trade probably numbers in the thousands. But the reason you don't hear about them is it was either to hedge a larger position, or a small speculative position, and making $50,000 doesn't make headlines.
I agree with this. I made a 32x return on a front-month WAY out of the money options trade in March of 2008. I tried to pull it off again and lost all of it. Good tuition money.
I always wonder why to invest it all... at the very least, if I gained 10x or 32x, I'd save away the original amount or a small fraction of the total, and NOT gamble with that.
There is substantial research that suggests taking a moderate asset allocation combined with annual rebalancing will have a fairly predictable return over the long run (a decade or more).
If you're making trades frequently, you're probably (as shown by research) throwing that money away.
There are always things that go up, and others that go down, but a well constructed portfolio will do more of the former and less of the latter. Annual rebalancing then buys the cheaper asset (by definition, on a relative basis, the cheaper asset is bought and the expensive asset sold when rebalancing).
And yes, it is actually that simple. The problem is (as someone else on this thread had posted): fear and greed. If you can ignore that, you can do well.
Firstly: this is just overall a ridiculously incorrect comment.
Second: the 30x return discussed was back in 2008-2009. The flash crash you are talking about happened in 2010. Also the SPY moved down like -10% during the crash. Bro, come on.
I just want to jump in and comment that 30x gains in a year are not really that crazy with out of the money close to expiration options. I've had 2 different years in the past with better than 30x gains (and years where my options account went to 0).
If you had bought out of the money puts with a near term expiration for an index like SPY and it dropped 10%, you could be talking 80-1000 times return depending on how far out of the money and how close to expiration.
Disclaimer: I do not recommend out of the money options trading for anything other than pure gambling on money you couldn't care less about losing.
Ok Hacker News, I think I am done for the day after this.
Just to be clear, we are talking about a 30x return in someone's entire net worth, in 12 months, from trading.
I didn't say you couldn't construct a perfect hypothetical trade that in hindsight would have earned someone a huge 30x or 100x return or whatever. Not sure how that's even relevant though (unless maybe you trade from home and buy those expensive mega-ultimate-dragon options trading online skype courses and still think such trades are even worth talking about).
I didn't even say a 30x return of his net worth was impossible, I said it's "hard to believe" and "very high'.
But apparently a 30x return "is easy" and this guy has done it twice...
OK. Well it's been fun. HAGW everyone
P.S. I appreciate chrisatumd's disclaimer, nice to see, and a good reminder that investing and trading is gambling and you can lose it all, whether you're an amateur or pro.
I agree with your second point. As to my wording on your first point, I should explain a bit more....
"Easy" means that it's not technically hard to do. For instance, anyone who's lucky enough can win 30 times their money in roulette. It's "easy", but rare - only 2-3% of people do it.
For contrast, "hard" to me would be something like trading gamma-delta option spreads.
Technically, just about any investor do the former (although they'd have to be lucky), while few can do the latter.
Final point - I consider being lucky consistently is damn near impossible (although statistically, I guess it happens to a few of the 8 billion people out there).
Not trying to upset you, just trying to help you see that the story is not crazy. I'm not sure if you've tried trading futures or options before.
I've never traded futures, but I've seen with the amount of leverage that options provide makes the story quite believable (easy was probably not what the prior commenter meant).
It's possible, but almost inevitably, the "strategy" employed backfires, and the trader loses everything. One that comes to mind is Brian Hunter[1], formerly of the now defunct Amaranth Advisors hedge fund. Hunter was viewed as a sort of wunderkind, but he had a natural gas position (I've heard the initial position was between $1B and $2B, but I don't know specifics) go south, and rather than sell off and accept the losses, he doubled down and sank the firm. Margin calls ensued (of up to $6B) that could not be met and assets ended up being sold off for pennies on the dollar. (I previously worked for a firm that bought a large chunk of Amaranth's assets).
Ya man I been in the industry a long time I remember Brian Hunter from even before Amaranth. Always interesting reading when his name pops up. Clearly, a brilliant trader on a different level than most guys, but ya that's not always enough on it's own. He should have gotten that DB bonus though, that story was fucked up.
I didn't even say a 30x return of his net worth was impossible, I said it's "hard to believe" and "very high'.
It's simple if you have the talent.
E.g. here's a person who deposited $1000 in cash into a trading account and wound up with $100,000 after just 10 months of trading. That's a 100x return.[1]
Think of how rich that person could have been had she decided to continue her trading!
Wall Street is also known for visiting and doing on-campus recruiting at only a very small list of target schools. Right or wrong every year we pick which schools to give this extra attention to and every year we debate if we are doing this right and if we should target schools at all.
Entirely anecdotal, maybe obvious to some, but here's what I have experienced (I'll focus on STEM students):
TL; DR I have had to visit and do on-campus recruiting. The top of top talented, skilled, smart student could be at any school. Every school has dumb as fuck kids too. But there is higher % chance the valedictorian at Stanford is smarter than the valedictorian at San Jose State. But who cares, when a cream of the crop student ends up at non-target school for whatever, they know how to work with those circumstances and get to where they want to go. I think if you know how to "disrupt" or "hack" or whatever stupid word we are using these days, it is easier to stand out as applicant from a no-name school. Good luck
1. The practical stuff: The "budget" of time and people and money to do recruiting and campus outreach is not unlimited. There are only so many hours in a day, you can't visit every school and meet every kid.
2. School visits are worth doing, for the students to learn about a company and for a company to get to know a few of the students better. Companies that do visit schools can attract more applicants and higher quality applicants.
3. The school someone went to tells you ZERO about how talented or skilled that individual is as an engineer or potential founder or employee. Zero. The best person for a job or to fund could have studied at Stanford or San Jose State or Joe Bummwarts University. There are plenty of kids at no-name schools that crush the skills of kids at top-ranked schools. (Also the whole "but the department's reputation is good" doesn't matter nor do grades tell you very much either - I don't even care if someone has a degree to be honest - but that's another story).
4. If a top company or VC or Grad school is looking for those best of the best young people; they often seem to be the type of student that can self-teach and have done so. They are frequently miles ahead of their classmates at their school and any school in terms of knowledge. They know things the schools don't even teach.
5. Unfortunately where someone went to school still matters for several reasons. I'm sorry if this offends. There are many reasons your schools makes a difference. I won't go into things like PR pedigree and friendships and alumni networks. And just to be clear there are a shitload of dumb people at every school, tons and tons of dumb people at the top ranked-schools. Spot them a mile away. But: when you are looking for the one or two or three students who are miles ahead of other people their same age, the % chance that person is going to be at a top-ranked school is slightly higher. i.e. if you are looking for the smartest kid in the sandbox, the odds the valedictorian at Stanford is smarter than the valedictorian at San Jose State is higher on average, not guarantee, but enough to say it's more likely.
6. Lastly, I'll just say in my experience when legit talented students ends up at a non-target school for whatever reason (family, cost, bad luck, whatever) they are mature and they know why they are there and they know what it means and they know what they need to do to succeed at their goal under these circumstances - these are not the students you see complaining about school recruiting being unfair. It's the idiots and the average people who complain the loudest about this :( Those talented students at no-name school are aware of how the world works and that life's not fair. They know how much better they are than their peers and they know the school they went to will not matter. They also know they will have to take a couple different steps to get where they want to go vs. target-schools kids. (it's a known secret it's actually much easier for a no-name school students to stand out). They seem to know what to do: they just keep quiet about it, they network with the people who get it and they find the other doors. Sorry. Look around. Students from no-name non-target schools get top jobs right out of school and they get funded and they get into a top grad schools all the time, every year. If you don't understand how they did what they did, that's the point. Seriously, no offense some people are more skilled and talented than others. But if you are so smart and happened to have gone to a crap school, but want to get in somewhere difficult, then figure it out, many others have before you. If you feel you need someone to come visit your school to get something you are missing the point of how this works. Good luck YC SUMMA CLASS
"Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference -- everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.”
Could easily replace "Twitter" in this quote with a scary number of other public tech company names where investor indifference is going on.
I don't know all the reasons why we read this same fucking article every 3 months. I do think passivity in public markets and the rigged proxy voting schemes are letting bad things go on for too long. There is a fiduciary responsibility here. How long should a company and it's management get before you pull the plug and replace them. Maybe the next guy or girl will be worse than Jack. Who knows. But that doesn't mean he should have stayed this long.
Maybe we should learn from the President. 8 years max for CEOs. For better or worse. CEOs are people and other people can do the job. Get out. Stay on the board if you miss it.
I don't think you will find a standard answer. Depends on the company, the team, your experience level, how technical the PM role is, etc...
PM salary could be higher or lower but from I've seen, broadly speaking the roles earn about the same...Sometimes you will see developers base salary higher but then PMs can get larger bonuses.. but meh I would say on average they are going to be very close to the same when you look at total comp, ceteris paribus.
There might be a supply and demand issue in some markets. No offense but 'ensuring people are aligned and the focus is correct' is not very hard, at least not harder than grinding away developing. If there is a shortage of developers vs. the number of roles needing them but there's enough guys who can do the PM-babysitting type roles then in those markets developers earn more.
I know companies that would fall apart in a minute if the administrative assistants and secretaries weren't there on the ball. The company seriously depends on them being good and they get paid the least. Responsibility and impact is subjective.
Anything goes when it comes to higher levels of experience or legit superstar PMs or developers, they will be able to get paid the most. So if you are a talented and experienced developer but not able to be a standout PM, well that's that.
I recommend doing some research into how large companies vet new product ideas and borrowing some concepts from that. I realize MBA-type practices taught in business schools get a bad rap from many folks and frankly a lot of the bad reputation of MBAs is deserved. But there are tools and procedures for how bigger companies decide whether to start a new product line and these are worth learning about. For example, how does Apple decide to launch the iPad or how did they decide to launch the Apple Watch? And how does Apple decide to cancel/not launch the dozens of other internal product ideas they have that don't see the light of day?... Testing the idea, it's market potential and digging into the overall pros and cons and risks of an idea, all have known steps and processes that can work at a startup-level idea too. Nothing is 100% for sure a good idea or bad idea - Plus you don't have to listen to the results of your product vetting, you can launch an idea with low support for it or decide not to launch an idea that has tons of potential, either way I think it's worth taking the time to understand these factors.