4 ms·

I half-agree. Clearly the people you describe often have problems for which they would appreciate solutions for which they would be willing to exchange money.

I half-agree. Clearly the people you describe often have problems for which they would appreciate solutions for which they would be willing to exchange money. On the other hand, news.yc users ALSO tend to have both money and problems, and the best tools are generally ones where the creator had the problems themselves. I guess my point is we could possibly have an interesting conversation about which market is most profitable, but you can't deny the people here are a market you might want to target.

nudge 17y ago
Yes, you're absolutely right. It's good if you have some experience of your market. But it is a bit of a problem when your market (say, HNers / web/tech types) are the obvious market for anyone in that market seeking to start a business. Hence the incredible variety of programming text editors, for example. My point is that the intersection of sets of problems had by HNers could be a set of problems that has already been explored, or is at least targeted, by huge numbers of people, simply because it is their first imagined market (i.e. themselves). And in quite a few cases you will be going up against incredibly talented people (or teams) willing to give away their work for free because they believe in free/open source software. Which is a great thing, obviously, but it makes it hard to compete. So yes, you are right. But sometimes it can be good to look outside.
- mstevens 17y ago
  I agree hugely. I mainly react to the way that people seem to suggest not that targeting tech types is perhaps unwise due to it being a fairly saturated market, but that it's almost morally wrong in some way. Personally my area of focus is on areas where I think my personal interests overlap with a significant potential userbase, and I'm slowly trying to convince myself I can do mySekritProject better than google, or at least, find a niche they're not going for.

nudge 17y ago

Yes, you're absolutely right. It's good if you have some experience of your market. But it is a bit of a problem when your market (say, HNers / web/tech types) are the obvious market for anyone in that market seeking to start a business. Hence the incredible variety of programming text editors, for example. My point is that the intersection of sets of problems had by HNers could be a set of problems that has already been explored, or is at least targeted, by huge numbers of people, simply because it is their first imagined market (i.e. themselves). And in quite a few cases you will be going up against incredibly talented people (or teams) willing to give away their work for free because they believe in free/open source software. Which is a great thing, obviously, but it makes it hard to compete. So yes, you are right. But sometimes it can be good to look outside.

mstevens 17y ago
I agree hugely. I mainly react to the way that people seem to suggest not that targeting tech types is perhaps unwise due to it being a fairly saturated market, but that it's almost morally wrong in some way. Personally my area of focus is on areas where I think my personal interests overlap with a significant potential userbase, and I'm slowly trying to convince myself I can do mySekritProject better than google, or at least, find a niche they're not going for.