Building a product on pure intuition

Making a product involves a lot of research. The research helps to make decisions, build something different, and gives an idea about the market in general, for product creation. I have done some research before building my side projects. Most of the time, it’s about existing product availability and their features. This has really helped me to focus more on validating an idea. Scenarios like this would motivate one to proceed with a dream and make it work. In my case, this helped me create Hellokea and Mailboxfiler. Though they’re not used by many, it gave me a clear-cut path for connecting the dots.

This time, I am thinking of making Quillcaster solely through a gut approach - intuition. It sounds too abstract, I know. The reasons for starting Quillcaster without any market research or feature analysis are rooted in authenticity. I know how this product should evolve. I can imagine the user interface even without a line of code. I believe certain functions/features would make interactions nicer. What I’m scared of is losing originality. Looking at different tools in a similar genre might influence my thinking about how it’s been built. And when that happens, I’m afraid my imagination might vanish.

I think it’s about influence. Focusing on too many things when designing a system could alter your ideas to align more with others. Though it’s still important to understand what’s out there when you build something, for me, too many ideas could literally change the way I think and could stop me from moving forward.

Why?

There’s no doubt that the market is flooded with numerous growth tools and social media publishing products. Building a similar one is generally not the wisest way to proceed. However, there are a few reasons for me to start one:

1. Browser extension as the first-class citizen: I want Quillcaster to be an extension rather than a web application. Of course, the backend and revenue model are managed by APIs. But managing everything related to this should be inside your browser and should be triggered by a hotkey whenever needed.
2. TypeScript & React: I haven’t built anything using these technologies. I’m too comfortable with Python & Django, which makes me reluctant to try other technologies. Experiencing Node.js and JavaScript would make me crave Python again.
3. Intuition: Starting a project purely on hunch and mental images. Trying to skip the research and avoiding taking a peek at other products.

I’m still not convinced whether to proceed and make it work. Working directly on the extension and seeing a simple user interface could make me committed.