41–47 of 47 posts
Most people who solved a major problem wanted to meet a need of a market, and that need is hard to see unless you're familiar with the market.
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The customers are broke because the quotes are in dollars, and the TSH is less valuable than USD. Which again another startup problem waiting to be solved. The lack of credit card, is another problem that I have. Which is another startup problem waiting to be solved. People pay if there is value in what you are offering.
How is the value of the Tanzanian shilling relative to the dollar a problem to solve with a startup?
Buying things with local quotations might be good for the scenario.
Have a kid. Everything is broken.
* Innovative ideas are rarely, if ever, eureka moments. They usually evolve after spending a huge amount of time thinking about a specific problem.
* Ideas do not form out of nothing. You are not creating new knowledge so much as finding new ways to connect knowledge that you already have. So the more you know, the more ideas you can have.
* The environment plays a huge role in helping you combine your existing knowledge in novel ways. There are a number of tweaks you can make to your environment that make it easier to come up with great ideas, including keeping an idea journal (write down not only ideas, but problems you encounter on a daily basis), regularly letting your mind wander and relax (fixation can prevent creativity), adding constraints to the problem (constraints breed creativity), playing the "Wayne Gretzky Game" (live in the future and build what's missing), and seeking out pain (where there is pain, there is opportunity).
[1] http://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2016/02/14/startup-ideas-and...
"Scratch your own itch" I've built two apps (MDB Viewer and Postico) because the tool I needed for my work didn't exist. It turns out, other people often have similar problems!
I was curious about your tools since it's really uncommon nowadays for one-man ventures to build desktop software. I'm assuming your Postico projecto is the postegres viewer. Not looking for exact numbers, but how is it selling? Are you able to make a living out of it, or it's mostly beer money?
I'm not really a one-man venture anymore; I've recently hired a part time employee (I'd like to hire someone full time, but it's harder than I expected to find people)
There are lots of other one-man ventures making desktop apps. From the top of my head I can think of MarsEdit, Base from Menial, SQLPro manager, Acorn (image editor), Dash (documentation browser).... all Mac apps made by a single developer.
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Just curious, what do you find cool / fun?
Unprecedented applications mostly enabled by new / disruptive technology. Things that do scratch my itch (even though most of them don't resonate with others) Right now I'm working on Ethereum dApps as I have a strong feeling that the world will gravitate towards p2p / distributed tech and Ethereum is arguably one of the key technologies that will bring us there