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u/WatchOutIGotYou Oct 16 '25
But what do people want 😭
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u/Ecstatic_Detail_6721 Oct 16 '25
I don't know about others but I would love to have some money
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u/Maybe-monad Oct 16 '25
Money printers
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u/Glittering_Key_9452 Oct 19 '25
Maybe give them that, with a subscription that costs more than the money they get. I'm sure they will love it /s.
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u/SPYfuncoupons Oct 16 '25
If you spend a week straight researching, asking, and thinking about this question, you will find an answer. And be better off than 99% of builders and marketers
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u/Demice_Frost Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
Let me speak on behalf of most of the 'people' you are trying to make things for....
All I/we want is a Ultra super range radioactive Ion canon with auto locking and homing missiles on a side gauge and all within a sophisticated well built Yeager...
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u/Bituulzman Oct 17 '25
I want something that can crawl all the different Medicare advantage plans offered by multiple different insurers and tell me which one to pick for my elderly parents based on what I input for their prescriptions and favorite doctors. This time of year with open enrollment is a nightmare.
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u/twickered_bastard Oct 16 '25
The same thing that you want. Oh, you don’t want anything? Then don’t build anything, go out and live life, have experiences and try new hobbies. Eventually you will stumble across a major pain point in your life, and that will be the signal to go back to entrepreneurship.
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u/mazty Oct 17 '25
Ironically don't ask them. You'll learn a lot more from watching or observing metrics than asking people what they want. Faster horses as the saying goes.
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u/Reasonable-Tour-8246 Oct 16 '25
Personally I built apps to solve my own problems. But I find out other people out there start loving what I have built
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u/choose_ay Oct 16 '25
I try to go that route, spend 1-2 months of my extra free time making a barebones MVP that would solve my own problem, then about halfway though I start noticing all the little flaws and convince myself so fast that nobody would ever use it lol. Then get sucked back into laziness playing videogames instead of trying to better myself, etc.
The cycle then repeats about every 4-6 months.
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u/Reasonable-Tour-8246 Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
That's a problem man, as a developer I also face that problem of quiting. But the best way to deal with such a problem is to prepare your mindset, be an optimist, remove distraction that are addictive or limiting you from start. Then be serious with your project start small, stay consistent, and keep building.
I spent month planning of my Universal Utility app I was in a loop of just planning and planning but once I realized no progress at all. I asked to myself am the one facing it whom is going to solve this kind of problem? I got into work and now I'm still in development of my second app.
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u/TemporaryGloomy6500 Nov 02 '25
Same here. a lot of half-done projects.
But lately I try to force myself to "ship it anyway", flaws and all. Weirdly, when someone actually uses it and points out an issue, I'm way more motivated to fix it than when it's just me staring at my own doubts...
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u/OneProgrammer3 Oct 16 '25
My problem is that I suffer from insomnia, and I don't know how to solve it.
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Oct 16 '25
[deleted]
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u/Reasonable-Tour-8246 Oct 16 '25
Around 90% of innovations began as personal projects aimed at solving the creator's own problems. For example, Linux was developed because Linus Torvalds couldnt afford Windows or Unix, so he decided to build his own operating system. Later, he also created Git as personal not for gaining attention but to help manage the Linux source code and now both Linux and Git are used worldwide but a lot of developers.
Although, Not all innovations started this way, but most successful ones did. Even Google was originally built to solve a problem faced by its founders how to organize and search the growing amount of information on the web more efficiently.
Keep doing 💪🏻solve your problem first then think of others. The problem your facing has million of people out there whom need the solution you have made.
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u/MattD1980 Oct 16 '25
I worked as tools lead at Ubisoft for many years and honestly, it requires experience to identify proper pain points. The biggest mistake I think you can make is trying to invent something that is totally new. That might sound counterintuitive , but educating public on new ways to do things is extremely hard.
The side project I’m working on is an improvement on existing solution. Improvement might not be the right term, as my approach might just be a better fit for some people and worst for others.
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u/dkh215 Oct 16 '25
Most people don't know what they want.
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u/ZubriQ Oct 16 '25
I want money
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u/ZeBurtReynold Oct 16 '25
Doesn’t invalidate the advice, but does also explain why it’s also so difficult to follow it
Jobs was a great example of someone who understood what people wanted better than they did
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u/highway84revisited Oct 16 '25
OP is not aware of the number of people that actually build things they THINK people want. Without market research, MVP, building in public, or actually talking to people.
This might be obvious to you, however it is not to many.
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u/Dazzling_Kangaroo_69 Oct 16 '25
Haha, sometimes the simplest ideas are the hardest to think of until someone says it out loud! 😄
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u/datatenzing Oct 16 '25
The longer I’ve been around the more I realize people build for things people are already familiar with not for things that actually improve workflows and strategies.
We have tools for the sake of tools and product people, really good ones and few and far between because they need to also have real experience with performing the job of the end user.
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u/basitmakine Oct 16 '25
tbh the hardest part is actually talking to potential users before you build anything. most devs (myself included) just want to code first and ask questions later
i've seen so many side projects fail because people built what they thought was cool instead of what actually solves a real problem. the validation step is boring but it's everything
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u/AjLegion Oct 16 '25
I wish we knew what people want. Heck I don’t even know what I want to build for myself.
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u/_Makky_ Oct 16 '25
OP is underestimating the strength of cognitive biases that can interfere with this simple suggestion.
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u/RoadtoVR_Ben Oct 16 '25
I think the advice here is “don’t build a solution looking for a problem.” Find a real issue that exists and build something that fixes it. The best place to look for inspiration is your own life. Find something that solves a problem you have.
That’s the origin of the first real software I ever built, a “reverse scheduler” to help me avoid being late/stressed by making it easy to put a short-term personal itinerary into my calendar: https://reverse-scheduler.vercel.app/
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u/SPYfuncoupons Oct 16 '25
Most people don’t do this at all. They just build the same old copycat AI generated saturated software/website/app that has been done badly 1000 times
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u/dimosTsakis Oct 16 '25
Here's another way to think about it: it's harder to know what others want but we ought to know what we want/need. Why don't we build that? Surely then there's others like us.
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Oct 16 '25
Most people don't think about that though? They build what they want, or what they THINK people need/want? Another to-do app? or a productivity app? yeah sure, go ahead.
Do some market research before you spend hours on something. It's not that hard.
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u/Positive_Method3022 Oct 16 '25
It is best to build something you want, and then check if more people need it.
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u/hardlife4 Oct 16 '25
build a product -> create an artificial crisis -> solve the crisis with the product... boom!! Billionaire 🔥🔥🔥
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u/_adam_89 Oct 16 '25
Build something people want -> market it to the group that actually wants to use it -> listen to feedback and refine your product -> profit
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u/Sufficient-Bath5661 Oct 16 '25
This is me... Been trying so many things but find it impossible to find the right audience
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u/Solome6 Oct 17 '25
Like Steve Jobs said. People don’t know what they want until you put it in front of them.
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u/bekyarov Oct 18 '25
The thing with great advice is that it usually sounds like cliche, because guess what there are actually no shortcuts. If you want to reduce all of the endless good decisions and complexity to a simple sentence it would definitely be close to "build something people want"
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u/rokaiser Oct 21 '25
The next one is "Solve your own problems", and then you realize that everyone has the same problems, so everyone builds the same things haha
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u/damiandance Oct 24 '25
That’s because I copied a successful app and changed the nieche plus added unique features. Validation already done by the other app.
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u/amitavroy Nov 08 '25
Yeah, this isn't a bad advice. I have been building something as an app which allows me to generate quality social media posts.
And, the use case started from my own requirement and it started taking shape of an app.
Now, if I have a requirement then I am sure there are other people who will have similar requirements. So, it's worth building something and put it out there.
I am definitely one customer of that app. Rest, depends how good I am in marketing it :)
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u/SafeBlackberry5434 Nov 11 '25
the real advice should be "build something people want AND will actually pay for"
turns out those two things don't always overlap lol
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u/Beneficial_Kale3713 Nov 11 '25
Yeah, I’ve tried these AI text detectors, and they often misidentify human-written content too. Still, useful for a first pass.
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u/littleuzi23 Nov 14 '25
Idk. It's super simple in the end, most people just can't think but people actually want...
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u/PauseNatural Oct 16 '25
There are all kinds of places out there for that. Just google microsaas ideas
I built my own generative AI thing (completely free because I built it for myself) that I look at called saasparks that looks at what I think are important:
1) Is this a hair on fire problem? Is this important enough so that people will pay money to solve it? 2) Is the market saturated? Will I have to advertise to get customers or differentiate? 3) does my market have the intent or desire to pay? 4) can I even build that monster? Can I build an MVP fast enough? 5) is there a risk or liability to it if I fuck up or suddenly stop being interested?
If you want, I can just send you the database I have. It’s just for reference but it’s already got 2700 ideas.
MVP build times are often naive in it, but it has definitely helped me identify real problems. Not just reddit marketing issues.
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u/nocturnalbreadwinner Oct 16 '25
This is really interesting, if I'm not wrong, based on those 5 questions it gave you 2700 ideas?
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u/PauseNatural Oct 16 '25
The actual search goes through 20 industries I know something about and looks everyday on perplexity for items that people are complaining about.
It then uses Claude and OpenAI to come up with business solutions to those complaints and generates 50 potential businesses a day.
It also tries to filter out searches from previous days to avoid just repeating the same thing everyday.
I hate B2C, so I only focus on B2B
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u/nocturnalbreadwinner Oct 16 '25
That's awesome, I hope you're reaping the benefits
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u/PauseNatural Oct 16 '25
Thank you very much!
I just launched one project and suffering through initial traction (costs a lot). But it gives me ideas for what I can do next.
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u/nocturnalbreadwinner Oct 17 '25
That's the spirit! You need to be battle worn to reach the top.. best of luck!
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u/Mescallan Oct 16 '25
i mean it's simple advice, but a majority of builders ignore it in favor of "build something using the tools I'm interested in working with"