The Idea That Infects You
If working on it feels like homework, it's the wrong idea — pursue the one you can't put down
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
McLeod's answer to the founder's perennial question of which idea from the shelf to pursue. He distinguishes ideas that are intellectually interesting — genuinely good, but working on them feels like forced homework and never gains traction — from the one that hits you in the heart, that feels less like a choice than a compulsion. The precondition is doing the work of staying open: actively generating and attempting ideas so that you're in position when the right one arrives. Critically, the signal is entirely internal: external validation is a terrible filter, because the idea that infected him was rejected by a business plan competition, a class paper, his friends and a run of VCs. He pairs it with the market-saturation counter-argument: a market where almost nobody you know uses the product isn't saturated, it's broken.
Origin
At Harvard Business School, McLeod was working on several ideas for a business plan competition and none of them hit. When his student body president mentioned they'd scrapped a 'last chance dance' crush-matching event as too complicated, McLeod realised he could build it on Facebook's newly-opened canvas API in a weekend — and the friends-of-friends idea that grew from it wouldn't let him go.
Core principles
- 01Intellectual interest and heart-level conviction feel completely different from the inside.
- 02Feeling like homework is diagnostic, not a discipline problem.
- 03You have to be open and actively working on ideas for the right one to land.
- 04External validation is a poor filter for genuinely new categories.
- 05A market nobody you know uses isn't saturated — it has an unfixed problem.
How to run it
- 1
Work on several ideas to stay open
Actively generate and attempt multiple ideas — the openness is what puts you in position when the right one arrives.
- 2
Use the homework test
Notice which ideas you have to force yourself to work on. That resistance is the signal, not a character flaw.
Pro tip McLeod had ideas that were intellectually interesting and still went nowhere because they didn't hit him in the heart.
Watch out Don't confuse 'hard' with 'homework'; the right idea is hard and still compulsive.
- 3
Look for the one that almost isn't a choice
Commit when an idea feels like it has to come out of you regardless — where you can't stop working on it.
- 4
Interrogate the saturation objection
When told a market is owned, check whether the people around you actually use the incumbent products — and if not, name the specific reason they don't.
Pro tip McLeod's thesis was precise: young people would use a dating service that was stigma-free, fun, easy and lightweight.
Watch out The objection will come from credible people; VCs told him match.com owned the market and he'd never beat them.
- 5
Discount the naysayers, keep the thesis
Accept that near-universal negative feedback is a normal condition for a genuinely new category, and hold the specific thesis rather than generic optimism.
Watch out This step is only survivable if you actually have a specific thesis; blind persistence without one is just stubbornness.
In the wild
The idea didn't place in the business plan competition and was called horrible there, in a class paper, by friends, and later by VCs during fundraising.
→ McLeod describes receiving very little positive feedback on Hinge from anyone, and building it anyway.
In 2011 people who used match.com were widely thought of as 'lonely weirdos'; the iPhone was new, the App Store was young, and people simply didn't meet strangers online to date.
→ The stigma McLeod identified as the real unfixed problem is now so gone that Bartlett had to think back to his childhood to remember it existed.
Common mistakes
Pursuing the intellectually strongest idea
McLeod's other ideas were good on paper and got no traction because he had to force himself to work on them.
Accepting 'the market is saturated' at face value
Saturation was the standard VC objection, but almost nobody McLeod's age used dating services — the market wasn't full, the product was unusable.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders with a shelf of plausible ideas trying to work out which one deserves years of their life.
Not ideal for
Operators evaluating acquisitions or portfolio bets, where personal compulsion is not a relevant selection criterion.
From the transcript
“it just didn't hit me in my heart”
“it was like it like infected me”
“it always just felt like homework”
“how could you say a market is saturated? Like I don't I almost know no one who uses dating services”
From the episode
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Justin McLeod