Make no mistake, when you are a serial entrepreneur trying to find the next billion dollar idea to be purchased by a large corporation, there’s a lot of knowledge in this blog post from Brett Berson of First Round Capital. You must be the true essence of agile to take an idea and slowly craft it into seed money.
For the rest of us, please feel free to take this article with a grain of salt.
Granted, I do not spend extended periods of time trying to find the next big thing. I am committed to providing value to the customers of Dealertrack Interactive and deliver well written guidelines of that value to my development teams.
That means getting feedback.
Some of the feedback comes from Google. Other aspects are from the business end of our company, as well as customers. In the end, the best feedback comes from a combination of all three.
I do not mean to degrade the value of this work. While the next big thing could be on the tip of my tongue, I have made quite a career of taking the ideas and thoughts of others and crafting them into a reality. Good product managers can also find hidden gems within their field with research and lots of time interviewing every single stakeholder.
Cherish the feedback you have the opportunity to receive. While not every idea has the same value, it is all on the road we travel. Sometimes, it takes a little work to reach the end.
Chris Murman 