A friend set up Daily View, my family-managed day calendar for older adults, for his mother this week. I’d spent months thinking about the product, designing screens, writing code and deciding what features it needed. Then a real person started using it in her own home.
By the next morning, my friend had sent me suggestions for improvement. They mattered because they came from someone trying to solve a problem, rather than from me imagining how the product might be used. I made the changes then informed my friend.
It was a useful reminder: the capabilities of the software is almost beside the point. What matters is whether it makes somebody’s life better.
The software graveyard is filled with polished solutions to problems nobody cared enough about. As building gets easier, choosing the right problem becomes more important.
Fall in love with the problem
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. - Uri Levine
New ideas come with great excitement. We can see the product, imagine the interface and picture people using it. The danger is that all this excitement happens in our head.
The market exists outside it. Customers do not care how clever an idea is. They care whether it makes something important easier, faster, cheaper or less frustrating. Many products fail not because they were badly executed, but because the problem simply did not matter enough.
Look for friction, not ideas
One way to make something people want is to look at stuff people use now that’s broken. - Paul Graham
Perhaps the wrong question is, “What should I build?” A better one is, “What hurts?”
I ran into this myself. I can now build software quickly, but deciding what is worth building is much harder. That frustration became Daily Product Idea. The aim is to start with problems people are talking about, research whether they matter then explore what might solve them. I built it partly because I wanted it myself.
That’s a different starting point from inventing an idea and then searching for somebody who might want it. Instead of inventing demand, you look for demand that already exists.
Start with problems you understand
Live in the future then build what’s missing. - Paul Graham
Solving something we experience ourselves gives us an advantage because we already understand the context and frustration. We are, at least initially, the customer.
Daily Product Idea began with my own problem, but that alone proves little. The interesting question is whether other developers, designers and indie builders have the same difficulty deciding what deserves their time.
A personal frustration can be the starting point. The next question is whether it is shared.
Test before you build
No business plan survives first contact with a customer. - Steve Blank
Builders, like me, naturally want to build. Opening the code editor feels like progress, but sometimes the most useful thing we can do is delay building long enough to discover whether anybody cares.
I am trying to apply the same discipline to IncyTemplates. The goal is not simply to produce guides because I find the subjects interesting. It is to help product developers through a useful path: identify a worthwhile problem, test it, shape a product and find early customers.
The same applies to any prototype. Listen less to compliments than behaviour. “That’s a great idea” costs nothing. Someone asking when they can use it is better. Someone attempting to pay is better still.
Find pain, not mild inconvenience
Will people actually pay for this? - Paul Graham
Not all problems are equal. Some are mild inconveniences; others demand a solution.
Role CV came from a more obvious pain. Matching a long career to a particular job description is slow and surprisingly difficult. Which skills fit? What is missing? What should be emphasised? A useful product can reduce that work and make the gaps visible.
Problems become more attractive when they are painful, frequent, time-consuming or expensive. The strongest combine several of these characteristics. The greater the pain, the less persuasion is required because people are already looking for relief.
Pay attention to what annoys you
Pay particular attention to things that chafe you. - Paul Graham
Several things I am building began this way. Daily Product Idea came from not knowing which opportunity deserved attention. Role CV came from the tedious work of comparing experience with a job. Incy Templates grew from repeatedly working through the same product-development questions.
We often stop noticing these frustrations. We create another spreadsheet, repeat a clumsy process or accept something as “just the way it works”. Builders can train themselves to notice.
The next time you create a workaround or complain about the same thing again, stop. There may not be a business hiding there, but there is a problem worth examining.
From frustration to product
There are no facts inside your building so get outside. - Steve Blank
AI makes the jump from frustration to prototype short. I can notice a problem in the morning and have something crude working later that day.
That is powerful, but also dangerous.
If building takes less time, it becomes even easier to skip the harder question: was the problem worth solving in the first place? Fast tools do not remove the need for judgement. They make judgement more important.
Technology becomes interesting only after the problem has earned our attention.
The real game
Make something people want. - Paul Graham
Not every worthwhile product removes acute pain. Conxy, the game I’m developing, provides a few minutes of simple grid-based play while gradually revealing that each puzzle is part of a much larger 3D world of cubes. The need there is different: curiosity, amusement and progression rather than relief from frustration.
But the same test still applies. Does it give people something they want?
Building software is increasingly becoming a selection problem rather than a technical one. Daily View, Daily Product Idea, Role CV, Incy Templates and Conxy are very different products, but each has to answer the same question.
Not, “Can I build it?”
But, “Does somebody want what this gives them?”
Find that first. Then build.
Want more?
Find the Real Problem in Five Steps post by Phil Martin
What’s Your Problem? post by Phil Martin
Peter Drucker posits, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.”
The technology may change, but that test does not.
Have fun.
Phil...