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> Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. While I agree that some people will be blindly supportive or mean (or will lie as another comment pointed out), it sounds to me that you might be asking the wrong people or you might be allowing ego to taint your perception of their responses. In my experience, there are plenty of thoughtful, analytical people out there who can help you explore aspects of your idea you might not have considered. Those people, however, will likely only give you their honest assessment if you already have a relationship with them. For me, having a small network of thoughtful individuals that I trust (friends, family, etc) is essential. In addition, you have to be able to separate your ego from the idea so that you can view criticism of it in an objective way, rather than as simply “mean” (which it might be, but might also contain grains of truth). This is, of course, no substitute for feedback from actual customers/users, though I would argue that, in the early stages of exploring an idea, it is equally necessary. |
A little bit later, I relayed these situations to someone who was giving advice on where to take the product / business, and he pointed out that these low-effort supportive comments and "please add feature X" suggestions are ways in which people brush you off in a non-confrontational way. He pointed me to a pretty good book called The Mom Test, which goes through the reasons why this is the case, and also how and what type of questions you should ask. Highly recommended reading, it was eye-opening for me.