It's great when your idea is a good one. But...

Since I came to London, more than a year ago, I’ve been travelling a lot back to Spain. I used to schedule trips in advance, and once I discovered I had two different reserves for the same trip (fortunately I was able to change one of them). Soon I realized I needed some tool to manage the trips.

I did a quick search and I couldn’t find anything.

Then my wife and daughters finally came here. And I had even more trips to schedule. We needed to plan well in advance, because trips where more than three times more expensive (when travelling with children I cannot afford to wait queues hoping to get a good seat nor fly to a distant airport to save some pounds). Also, people in Spain started to come and visit us, and we also needed to plan that.

So I had my own itch to scratch, which is the better way to commit to something.

But my own requirements could be expanded to accommodate similar requirements from businesses. And businesses pay. I had a business plan. Not for the next social network, but for a small web application. I also wanted to practice Rails.

So I started to build it. In my own free time. I built a quick and dirty prototype. And I started to build something more serious.

Today I discovered that there is indeed something similar. A quick sign up told me most of the things I envisioned (including emailing confirmations to ease the pain in managing trip status) are already there.

And it is made by one of the big grands in expense and travel management.

Three lessons learned:

• Do a proper research.
• Commit. Commit. Commit.
• It’s great when your idea is a good one. You’re no longer a freak who prefers the cloud to a notebook.

And yes. I have other ideas. But ideas are just a multiplier. The question is if I’ll be able to commit.