You would think that just asking your potential users what they want is best, but then you have to worry about self-report errors. As has been noted. (Customer

You would think that just asking your potential users what they want is best, but then you have to worry about self-report errors. As has been noted. (Customers lie. To you and themselves. Accept it.) I'm fairly stupid and I don't possess a crystal ball...but since I also don't want to waste my time on things that don't pan out financially, I've spent quite a bit thinking about this question. I like to keep things simple, so I will generally only start or buy a company if it does one or more of the following (the more, the better): 1. Make the user money. 2. Save the user time. 3. Save the user money. 4. Get the user laid. 5. Save the user's life/improve their health. There are a few other rules. Numbers 2 and 4 should never exist only on their own. Number 5 is often one of the most difficult to execute because prevention is harder to sell than solutions. And all of the potential ideas have to be a superior enough solution that they outweigh the switching costs for the customer (including the switching cost from nothing, inertia is a bitch!) Number 2 is the most likely to suffer from the "unwanted solution" problem (for various reasons, an outlining of which I suppose would better address the original question.) Multiple streams of income and multiple customer bases are always good things, just to hedge your bets.