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How to Decide What to Build

dcgross.com

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Re: How to Decide What to Build

#21

Post by mgummelt »

evancharles wrote: post #7

Customers are also a great source of project ideas. You can pick a customer, like "small business owner" or "wealth advisor," and interview them. My favorite question that leads to ideas is "tell me everything you did from when you started your day until now," and dig into all the annoying/painful things they mention.

The Sources of Innovation by von Hippel [1] tries to answer this question of when innovation comes from users vs. manufacturers vs. suppliers. The book is nearly unreadable, but the topic is interesting.

[1] http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www-old/books/sources/SofI.pdf

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#22

Post by taneq »

tudelo wrote: post #4

“everything in the world was created by people no smarter than you”. Is there actually any validity to that? Assuming you is a human of average intelligence...

The more different "big, professional" companies I've worked at, the more I've come to the conclusion that no-one knows what they're doing and everyone's just making things up on the fly. So yeah, I'd pay it.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#23

Post by jcadam »

goatherders wrote: post #12
edgartaor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, what would be the worse case scenario?

Just because you learn something doesn't mean the time isnt wasted. If you try to make a business of it and it doesn't work...more wasted time. Wasted relationships. Wasted money. Wasted confidence. I'm all for the silver lining of having learned something. That's good for sure. But there are almost always costs when building anything from model cars to software applications.

> Wasted confidence.

This is probably the biggest factor (money is the least). I've had numerous failed projects. I have a current project/business (it's in my profile) which I believe to be in the process of failing. I don't know if I have another one in me.

Sure, I've learned a lot. From a purely technical standpoint, each new project has been superior to the one before - and in the case of my latest, I've at least produced something that I find useful. But, the ego can only take so much abuse.

Not sure I trust myself with ideas anymore. I need someone to tell me what to build :)

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#24

Post by got2surf »

danicgross wrote: post #13
evancharles wrote: post #7

Customers are also a great source of project ideas. You can pick a customer, like "small business owner" or "wealth advisor," and interview them. My favorite question that leads to ideas is "tell me everything you did from when you started your day until now," and dig into all the annoying/painful things they mention.

Yes! In many ways, all your initial idea needs to be is a launch pad. Once you get your foot in the door, you can always refine based on what users tell you. Per your point, it's important to learn from their workflow , not ask them what they want . When you ask someone what they want, they often perform attribute substitution ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution ) and answer a different question.

Great point. Also important that your customers may not even know what is possible, so they won't know to ask for it directly. Instead, if we ask why they want something, we can understand their intents - and translate that into technology.

We've seen this a lot with text analytics - instead of trying to repeat what humans do manually (reading/annotating), we try to understand the questions that clients are interested in (the drivers behind their current workflow).

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#25

Post by lhuser123 »

pascalxus wrote: post #20
guntars wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s certainly false though the sentiment might still be valid, basically that the lack of smarts isn’t something that’s holding up more inventions from coming into this world.

Yes, this is the case. Smartness is not the limiting factor. The biggest limiting factor is number of opportunities.

> The biggest limiting factor is number of opportunities.

Could you elaborate. Do you mean more opportunities to fail and learn ?

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#26

Post by goatherders »

jcadam wrote: post #23
goatherders wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you learn something doesn't mean the time isnt wasted. If you try to make a business of it and it doesn't work...more wasted time. Wasted relationships. Wasted money. Wasted confidence. I'm all for the silver lining of having learned something. That's good for sure. But there are almost always costs when building anything from model cars to software applications.

> Wasted confidence. This is probably the biggest factor (money is the least). I've had numerous failed projects. I have a current project/business (it's in my profile) which I believe to be in the process of failing. I don't know if I have another one in me. Sure, I've learned a lot. From a purely technical standpoint, each new project has been superior to the one before - and in the case of my latest, I've at least…

After my first startup went down in a burst of flames I spent years angry at everyone and everything like a big black tumor carried inside my heart. It sounds dramatic but that doesn't make it untrue. I learned a lot but I lost a lot more.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#27

Post by hndamien »

goatherders wrote: post #26
jcadam wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasted confidence. This is probably the biggest factor (money is the least). I've had numerous failed projects. I have a current project/business (it's in my profile) which I believe to be in the process of failing. I don't know if I have another one in me. Sure, I've learned a lot. From a purely technical standpoint, each new project has been superior to the one before - and in the case of my latest, I've at least…

After my first startup went down in a burst of flames I spent years angry at everyone and everything like a big black tumor carried inside my heart. It sounds dramatic but that doesn't make it untrue. I learned a lot but I lost a lot more.

I currently have one of these tumours.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#28

Post by acconrad »

One of the points the author makes is that you should track the problems you have, and the ones that reoccur will be good signals to solve them.

Does anyone else feel pretty content with what they have?

Because this strategy I think Paul Graham has talked about in one of his essays for ideas. And to be honest, I do genuinely feel like I don't have much if anything to complain about, and so I can't really think of startup ideas. To the point where I'm just consulting at the moment because I can't think of any startup idea to work on.

I mean I have ideas of problems I want to solve - but they've all been met by massive resistance because they're huge problems. Like for instance one idea I had was I hate making food, but I don't want to eat out all of the time. Can you crowdsource cooking from your neighbors? So I tried building that platform. I instantly discovered there were huge safety regulations about cooking, and that really baking (or anything that isn't extremely perishable) is the only thing you can pretty much do out of your home and not get slapped by the state for violating health codes. So I'm just sort of defeated...the only problems I want to tackle just seem massive and I can't seem to find the divide-and-conquer algorithm to help the world in a smaller (but still meaningful) way.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#29

Post by keithnz »

I've always had lots of ideas, just none I've wanted to follow through on, now I'm in the early stages of an idea I think will be useful ( at least it will be for me ). It's an idea that was simplified out of another idea that's just too large for me to tackle at the moment. In fact it's an idea that's been part of a variety of other ideas. It's also part of a number of other peoples products, and is probably one of the trickier bits of their products, but it's not a product in itself.

So, at the moment, my market size is at least 1, because I want it.

Odd thing is, given I have free range on everything, I'm suffering tech choice anxiety, which is slowing me down a bit.

Re: How to Decide What to Build

#30

Post by ajdlinux »

acconrad wrote: post #28

One of the points the author makes is that you should track the problems you have, and the ones that reoccur will be good signals to solve them. Does anyone else feel pretty content with what they have? Because this strategy I think Paul Graham has talked about in one of his essays for ideas. And to be honest, I do genuinely feel like I don't have much if anything to complain about, and so I can't really think of sta…

Yep, you're definitely not alone here.

I also find that sometimes I can think of problems that aren't really a single problem but a whole category of problems, and I have no idea which particular piece I'd like to break off, or any idea for a solution.

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