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What should you build?

exponentially.substack.com

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Re: What should you build?

#11

Post by tikkun »

esafak wrote: post #9
tikkun wrote: post #3

Related: Paul Graham: "Almost all founders learn brutal lessons during the first year, but some learn them much more quickly. Obviously those founders are more likely to succeed. So it could be a useful heuristic to ask, say 6 to 12 months in, "Have we learned our brutal lesson yet?"" "The most common lesson is that customers don't want what you're making. The next most common is that it isn't possible to make it, or…

It is an unnerving situation for founders, because the product might sell if you just added a critical feature, focused on a specific segment, changed the pricing model, etc. You could be one step away from success. Or you might not. It takes luck, pluck, and faith.

That part is easier if you're building for yourself.

Related PG tweet: "When young founders build something that they don't want themselves but that they believe some group of other people want, 90% of the time they're building something no one wants."

And also related: https://mitchellh.com/writing/building-large-technical-proje...

Re: What should you build?

#12

Post by beezlewax »

poisonborz wrote: post #6

So the article comes up with the grand firework of a thought of > Make something that people want I still find this kinda complicated to follow in practice. Make something that you want. What you need, day to day at best. You longed it for long, searched all the possibilities and it just doesn't exist yet. It helps with motivation, and you know the basics to start from. Other people/the market can then help steer it…

The thing is people often don't know what they want. You can show them an innovative solution to a problem they were having and they might want that.

Re: What should you build?

#13

Post by lattalayta »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #5
pierat wrote: post #2

Was thinking about this with my SO doing fiber arts today. Was thinking about a small 2d scanner/ccd camera in the profile of a SpO2 sensor. Connects with Bluetooth. Would take pictures of garments, fabric, yarn, etc for purposes of color matching in a store. The app would have color calibration with white LEDs. 2 main functions: "store" and "match". Store would allow storing color samples. Match would show the sampl…

Have you seen https://colormuse.io/ ? I absolutely love mine. Seems to do what you’re looking for.

https://www.nixsensor.com/ is another option in this space

Re: What should you build?

#14

Post by smcleod »

How about building something that’s good for the planet?

Or something that significantly reduces people’s living costs?

Or something to increase equality and equity?

There is far too much priority placed on making profits in tech and not nearly enough doing what’s actually good for people.

Re: What should you build?

#15

Post by vsareto »

I still don’t know a good source for finding business problems to solve. You end up having to talk to people which is slow and won’t give you a large list. Ideally I’d want a huge list to pick from.

Re: What should you build?

#16

Post by segh »

tikkun wrote: post #3

Related: Paul Graham: "Almost all founders learn brutal lessons during the first year, but some learn them much more quickly. Obviously those founders are more likely to succeed. So it could be a useful heuristic to ask, say 6 to 12 months in, "Have we learned our brutal lesson yet?"" "The most common lesson is that customers don't want what you're making. The next most common is that it isn't possible to make it, or…

Two related questions to ask yourself as an early founder:

1. If my company were to fail, why would it have happened? 2. What would have to be true in order for the company to succeed?

(From Rob Fitzpatrick's "The Mom Test")

Re: What should you build?

#17

Post by bradknowles »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #5
pierat wrote: post #2

Was thinking about this with my SO doing fiber arts today. Was thinking about a small 2d scanner/ccd camera in the profile of a SpO2 sensor. Connects with Bluetooth. Would take pictures of garments, fabric, yarn, etc for purposes of color matching in a store. The app would have color calibration with white LEDs. 2 main functions: "store" and "match". Store would allow storing color samples. Match would show the sampl…

Have you seen https://colormuse.io/ ? I absolutely love mine. Seems to do what you’re looking for.

There are lots of spot colorimeter/spectrophotometer devices. A more famous one is the Pantone CapSure. Unfortunately, while that device is calibrated, it's only going to match to the nearest Pantone certified color, as opposed to capturing and storing the color that was actually sampled.

Better spot colorimeter devices will have two different calibrated white LEDs and use both of them in sequence, to get a more accurate measurement of the true color of the object you're sampling.

The big trick with these devices is the color library that they're matching against. Sometimes you really do want to match against the Pantone library, and I don't believe any devices other than the official Pantone CapSure can actually measure against that library. But most paint manufacturers, etc... have their own color library, and there are a lot of other color libraries out there. And many of those libraries are exclusively licensed to only one particular spot colorimeter device.

So, sometimes you need to have multiple spot colorimeters/spectrophotometers in order to be able to use all the libraries you want.

Yes, I have several, including the Pantone CapSure and the ColorMuse. No, none of them are perfect. They're all missing one or more libraries that I might want to use.

Re: What should you build?

#18

Post by Veen »

smcleod wrote: post #14

How about building something that’s good for the planet? Or something that significantly reduces people’s living costs? Or something to increase equality and equity? There is far too much priority placed on making profits in tech and not nearly enough doing what’s actually good for people.

What are you doing that contributes to those ends (aside from sermonizing on forums)? I had a quick look at the website linked in your bio, and it seems you're a working stiff toiling for a for-profit company, building shit for other for-profit companies, just like the rest of us.

Re: What should you build?

#19

Post by pessimizer »

smcleod wrote: post #14

How about building something that’s good for the planet? Or something that significantly reduces people’s living costs? Or something to increase equality and equity? There is far too much priority placed on making profits in tech and not nearly enough doing what’s actually good for people.

Those aren't ideas for software. They're not even platitudes. It's just vague discontented murmuring. More ideas, less pretending to be superior.

Re: What should you build?

#20

Post by smcleod »

Veen wrote: post #18
smcleod wrote: post #14

How about building something that’s good for the planet? Or something that significantly reduces people’s living costs? Or something to increase equality and equity? There is far too much priority placed on making profits in tech and not nearly enough doing what’s actually good for people.

What are you doing that contributes to those ends (aside from sermonizing on forums)? I had a quick look at the website linked in your bio, and it seems you're a working stiff toiling for a for-profit company, building shit for other for-profit companies, just like the rest of us.

I’m definitely no angel - I just think the normalisation of chasing profits and the culture it’s created is broken.

Years back I took a (big) pay cut to work with a non-profit. We brought affordable internet to low income and refugee status apartment buildings, developed tools to help those that are homeless or at risk of becoming, wrote at-cost software for the non-profit and community health sector. I was there for 7 years as their head of platform engineering and automation. A very rewarding experience.

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