The day I killed the idea drawer

I had to delete it.

Not part of it.
Not fix it.
Not wait for it to get better.

I mean shut the whole thing down.

Let me back up.

When I first launched Needs To Exist, it wasn’t what it is now. Not even close.

There was no NTE Pro. No curated database. No newsletter. No Zero To One.
Back then, it was just one thing: an idea drawer.

A simple place where I and hopefully a few others could drop all those loose startup sparks floating around in voice memos, Notes apps, old group chats, Notion files, wherever.

You know the ones:

• “Airbnb for backyard camping”

• “App to track who owes you a drink”

• “Subscription for fridge restocks”

• “I don’t know what this is, but I can’t stop thinking about it…”

They weren’t polished. They didn’t need to be.
The idea was: just toss it in the drawer. Share it. Maybe it’ll help someone else.
And if we all share our drawer, suddenly we’ve got a library.

It grew faster than I expected.
Dozens of submissions a day. Then hundreds.
Some of them were brilliant.
But most of them were… chaos.

Duplicate ideas. Copied content. AI-generated nonsense. “Uber for ____” fifteen times.
We had spam, scams, and one guy who submitted 32 different ideas about socks.

And it hit me:

This wasn’t a shared drawer.
It was a junk drawer.

And just like that, I had to kill it.

I’ll be honest, I was close to killing the whole project.

Because the drawer was the idea.
That was the whole thing.

But after I shut it down, something weird happened.

People started asking me:

“Hey, where’d the idea drawer go?”
“Can I still send you ideas?”
“I actually liked reading what other people were thinking, any way to still do that?”

And so I pivoted.

But this time I did something different:
I curated.

Instead of taking every submission, I got selective.
I handpicked ideas that felt smart, strange, timely, or just plain good.
I added context, backstories, examples, little nudges to help people imagine what it could be.

And then I started sending them out as a daily email.
No spam. No junk. Just ideas worth thinking about.

That’s when it clicked.

This wasn’t just a drawer anymore.
It was a library of sparks.

People started replying to the emails.
Then saving them.
Then building off of them.
Then asking us:

“Can you help me take this from idea to something real?”

So we did.

We built NTE Pro, where people can browse 4,000+ curated ideas, save their own, and search by category or theme.
Then we launched NTE Zero To One, a service where people submit their idea and we map out how to build it.
MVP scope, pricing model, timeline, strategy.
Some people build it with us. Others take the roadmap and run.

Here’s the part I think about a lot:

If I had waited until the first version was perfect, I would’ve never launched it.
And if I hadn’t shut it down when it started breaking, I wouldn’t have figured out what it actually needed to become.

Most people don’t build because they’re waiting for it to be ready.
For it to be clean.
For someone to validate it.
For the perfect name.
For the right timing.
For January 1st.

But the drawer doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to open.

So if you’ve got something scribbled down, something weird, rough, half-baked, I hope you’ll keep it alive.
Write it down. Say it out loud. Show it to someone.
Or sign up for NTE Zero To One and let us help you build the roadmap.

Because your idea might suck.
But it might also be the best thing you’ve ever done.
You won’t know until you take it out of the drawer.

This still isn’t the final version of NTE and it probably never will be.

I’m now building NTE with a community that actually wants to create, so we’ll keep trying things together.

Tools like Titlebooster are just the beginning (even if not the best).

Maybe we’ll launch more utilities. Maybe we’ll build community-driven products. It won’t all work. But that’s the point. You keep moving, keep shipping, keep adjusting, and over time, something great takes shape.

— Rob

P.S. If you want to see what a curated drawer looks like, NTE Pro is the best version of what I tried to build the first time. Thousands of ideas. No socks.

P.P.S I just searched… and yep, there are still few sock ideas. Turns out, these are the actual good ones….

🧊 Cold Sock Therapy Kit – a modern take on holistic healing
🧲 Automated Sock Matching Tech – magnets to solve laundry day
👟 Stride Subscription – auto-replacing your running shoes based on mileage
🎣 Anglercore Outfit Box – a whole vibe, socks included
🧼 Luxury Essentials Marketplace – high-end versions of daily basics (like… really good socks)