How do you make something original when starting out?

For years I fell into tutorial hell where I had made about 20 Todo Apps, over a hundred "hello world"'s, and my fair share of e-commerce sites filled with a myriad of garments no one would ever buy (compliments of the creepy instructor, of course).

After pussyfooting around in that arena for a while I decided I was finally going to try something original from beginning to end. The thing I was/am passionate about is movies. And not only movies but also the way they're received by critics. So I began to build this movie rating aggregator that would show the Rotten Tomatoes rating, the IMDb rating and also the Metacritic score right when you clicked the movie. At the time I had to go to three different sites to gather that information so I felt my idea solved a problem.

Unbeknownst to me, within a few mere months, I saw the exact same idea being touted around Reddit and the works. The name of the original was Cinesift and later renamed to FlickMetrix. I was crushed. Not only did they have my general functionality implemented but they were doing it much better. Features I hadn't thought of and an extraordinarily slick UI to top it off.

This is the pattern I am asking for everyone's help in breaking for up and comers. I browse Product Hunt and once a week or so I see another journal/todo/goals app get featured but don't we want more?

I do. And I'd love to hear any insight on this topic.

Thanks,

Andrew Truex

[Deleted User]

Comments

[Jesse Skinner]

Truly original ideas are hard to come by. It's easier to take some old ideas and find a new spin on them. Maybe it's an easier user interface, or a unique combination of features. Sometimes a simpler version with fewer features can be novel. Whatever you choose will ultimately be unique because it'll be your personal version of it. Good luck!