As Mike mentioned, we have come up with hundreds of ideas for web applications. Some are good and some are so terrible it is embarrassing to even go back and read them (those are mostly my ideas). But what makes a good idea worth the time to create it? For Mike and I, it was down to a few criteria:

• We both used an expense tracking software we were not 100% satisfied with
• The time required to create something tangible seemed achievable 
• There were many popular examples to follow if we got stuck
• None of the popular examples are functional for us Canadians

Mike also happened to be taking a class on software usability. This project fit in quite well, so it allowed us to justify spending a bit more time on it than we could have otherwise. All together, we had a very convincing case to move SmallChange from the idea stage to reality.