There’s a lot of valuable feedback that takes place in Google Docs, in the form of comments. The problem was the feedback felt very ephemeral; after someone resolved the comment, it would effectively disappear. A few years ago, I wondered if it might be interesting to make a plugin for Google Docs that helped people search for comments. I talked to my friend about it, who felt inspired, and whipped up a prototype over a few days.

I also posted about this on the internet, and while some people were mildly interested, they weren’t too keen on the idea. Moreover, in my conversations with people, when I asked if their company might pay for something like this, nobody seemed optimistic.

I’d also seen other friends build extensions for some of the software companies, only to have the big company build the feature themselves and integrate it into the app. For example, in this case, it wasn’t unlikely that if our plugin gained momentum, someone at Google would take notice and build a search feature into comments. It would make our plugin much less useful.

So, since this project didn’t show much momentum, I discussed it with my friend, thanked him for his time, and apologized that it didn’t work out. We both passed on the idea.

Sometime after that—in 2024, it seems—Google really did roll out search for comments. I was very happy about that, both because I wanted the feature, and my friend and I saved a lot of time.

Around the same time, I learned a technique based on another friend’s suggestion: I started logging changes in a separate Google Doc, noting what the text was before, what it turned into after, and what I learned from the change. That was perhaps even more useful than the search feature was.

The opportunity was the same, and the solution took the shape of a technique. (It could, still, take the form of a product! This is also your idea now.)