A Simple Idea Filter That Saved Me Months of Wasted Work

One mistake I see founders make repeatedly is spending months validating execution while barely validating the idea itself.

The problem usually isn’t effort or discipline, it’s starting with something that feels interesting but has no real pressure behind it.

Execution can polish demand, but it can’t create it. A mental resource that helped me was flipping the evaluation process. Instead of asking whether an idea is exciting or technically impressive, I started asking a few boring but useful questions. Is someone already paying to escape this problem?

Do people complain about it repeatedly without being prompted? Are there ugly workarounds in place because existing solutions aren’t good enough?

If none of those are true, the idea usually isn’t worth months of work. To avoid repeating the same mistakes, I began keeping a simple, unpolished collection of problem patterns and idea notes for myself, eventually naming it startupideasdb:com (you can search on google) just so I could find it again.

It’s not a framework or a product, just a reference I use to sanity-check ideas before committing time. That shift didn’t make ideas easier, it made them fewer. But the tradeoff was focus and confidence. Time spent building felt more like an investment and less like a gamble.

Side projects stopped turning into abandoned repos and started becoming intentional bets. This isn’t advice or a silver bullet, just one way to eliminate weak ideas early using signals that already exist.

Curious what resources or mental filters others here use to decide what’s worth pursuing before committing serious time.