[codingdave]

You are talking about markets that already exist - if you can build a cheap rocket, clearly there is already a market, because people use expensive rockets. Cell phones existed before iPhones. Cars existed before Tesla.... you get the point. In those cases, yes, the startups of interest are changing what is possible. But for many startups, it is something so new that you really do not know if people would pay for it because people are not already paying for a similar product.

[georgewsinger]

> You are talking about markets that already exist

No I'm not. Suppose I told you my business idea was this: build a time machine. There's no time machine market right now. But do you think if I built one, people would be interested in it? Answer: hell to the yes. There is zero market risk in this idea.

The problem, of course, is that I have no feasible way of building a time machine. But thinking along these dimensions is better for entrepreneurs/VCs/the world. It forces you to work on things that actually matter/will move the needle. When they work, the VCs will appreciate it quite a bit and the world will appreciate it quite a bit. You also get to transfer your time from working on marketing problems/science experiments to working on engineering problems/real science experiments. I think this is probably a more fulfilling way to live as an entrepreneur than otherwise.

[dumbfoundded]

How I built my time machine MVP in 3 weeks.

First I developed a box. I used existing box designs as inspiration. No frills on the first go, just a normal cubic shape. I started with cardboard but plan to iterate further on the material selection. Currently the time machine only goes forward at 1x speed but that's the challenge of being first to market. I tested with users and they said the box is uncomfortable so I made a bigger box and put a cushion in there. Now, users report a more comfortable experience. You have to understand as a founder, any new technology is going to have some rough edges.

After this 3 week period, I learned a lot about time machine prototyping and the desired user experience. My next steps are to take this to VCs, funded by pensions of dock workers, and raise a $100M round to further development. I'm confident with this funding, we'll be able to disrupt the time machine market entirely.

[codetrotter]

How I built my time machine MVP in 10 seconds flat.

First I spent my whole life building the time machine.

After this life long period, when I finally finished it at a really really old age, I went back in time, to 10 seconds after I had decided to build a time machine, and I handed the time machine to my past self and then I died, but the past me lived on, with a time machine that from his point of view was built by him in 10 seconds flat. It was a great success and all rejoiced, including past me, future me and present me.

[kelvin0]

Actually this gives me an idea.

How about a series of weekly podcasts,videos or blog which does exactly that: take a 'real' situation (in this case meetbutter) and then simply go full throttle and pushing the reasoning to it's outer limits, until LOL occurs.

I would subscribe to that. Let me know if that becomes a thing.

I also love Monty Python, so this is just the type of humor I truly enjoy!

[codingdave]

OK, lets roll with your example. You want to build a time machine. Cool.

What limitations will you end up with? Once it is built, what will the user experience be? Can you change history? Can you travel to the past or only the future? Can you return? It is interactive or view-only?

Without actually spending the money to do the R&D and see what you can achieve, you have no idea what price people would be willing to pay for the experience, because you cannot tell us what the experience will be. So you have no idea whether the price point would be sufficient to recover the R&D costs. Sure, it gets you thinking of how to "move the needle". But... what needle? What problem are you trying to solve? Who has that problem? Can they afford the solution?

Your example falls into the exact trap that people try to avoid by creating a quick MVP - jumping to conclusions about ideas that the founders are 100% sure people will buy, and assuming that people will pay for it, without actually doing the work to prove it.

[Silhouette]

There is zero market risk in this idea.

Not necessarily. Interest alone does not create a market. You need potential customers who have the means to buy what you're offering under conditions that make it worth selling to them.

For example, I might be interested in a time machine, but if it's going to cost you a trillion dollars to make one and I'd need 5kg of unobtainium to power each jump, I do not represent a (viable) market.

Your premise in this discussion seems to be that the best startups (in some sense that isn't entirely clear yet) are the ones that are aiming to be game-changers. However, I expect that in practice that vast majority of successful startups are not doing something truly profound, but rather something much more mundane that either has not been done before or can be done significantly better in some way by the startup.

[texasbigdata]

The OPs constraint is better though.

Not "rockets" but "rockets at 1/100th of the price" which sort of takes into account your point.

[jlbnjmn]

> You also get to transfer your time from working on marketing problems/science experiments to working on engineering problems/real science experiments.

That right there is my goal. At the moment I'm solidly the first. Any tips for moving the needle?

[blackrock]

It’s possible that you can wait for the time traveler to arrive from the future with his time machine.

Then you can eliminate him, and take his time machine, and reverse engineer it to figure out how it works. Then you can travel further into the past, to meet your younger self, and give your younger self the theory and the blueprints to build such a time machine. Then, your younger self can patent it, and claim all legal intellectual property rights to it for the next 100 years.

And you can also tell your younger self to buy certain stocks in specific companies, that will enable your younger self with the financial capital to build such a time machine.

Thus, in the end, who invented the time machine? You did.