One of the things that's always confused me is why really smart people spend a lot of time on ideas that aren't really going anywhere.  I get the whole psychology of sunk costs, but at some point, the whole fish-or-cut-bait thing comes to mind.  But rather than try to change people by explaining to them that they're doing it wrong, wouldn't it be better if we just headed off the whole issue at the pass?

That's where AlphaList comes in.  It's a place where founders with an idea or a couple of mockups or a simple prototype can get good feedback from smart, informed alpha users before they spend too much time or too many resources on something that won't work. 

AlphaList is the world's first Customer Discovery app. 

The idea is that founders submit their problem and solution hypotheses, and alpha users who opt-in to receiving one e-mail a day give them informed feedback about their problem and potential solution.  If the alpha users say this looks promising, the founders have some feedback from outside their social circle to take the project to the next level - finding targeted potential users for interviews, designing, coding, whatever.  If the alpha users are more skeptical, hopefully founders will get a better sense that either their problem isn't a big one or that their solution may not be the right approach to that problem.  (Of course, even if alpha users frown on an idea, doesn't mean the company should give up - and nor will it!  Most founders are stubborn as mules.)

AlphaList already has a great base of alpha users giving feedback, with people like Kyle Bragger, Micah Baldwin (congrats on the raise, sir), and Dug Song already on board as alpha users.  (Feedback is aggregated and anonymous, unless the alpha user specifically opts in to making themselves available to communicate one-on-one with the founder(s) on a submission-by-submission basis.) 

Nobody should build something nobody wants.  AlphaList helps founders make better decisions so they don't.