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Your approach flies in the face of the "scratch your own itch" piece of advice and I think it's time to move that advice to the trash can. There are lots of no
by bluetwo 9y ago
Your approach flies in the face of the "scratch your own itch" piece of advice and I think it's time to move that advice to the trash can.
There are lots of non-technical domains that could benefit from the application of technology and if we only going around fixing problems we run into, we are going to miss out on some great ideas.
Might I suggest that rather than thinking about this as "I want to build a company that ___" and then trying to fill in the blank, it would be better to think about what inefficiencies exist in the world that could be improved or eliminated by the creation of a fresh solution. This is really what startups are doing. Without a core inefficiency, there is no need to build a startup.
- ThomPete 9y agoI agree. I actually started an Ask: HN thread a while back asking. "What problems in your industry could be a potential startup?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 what I learned from it ended up in this essay: https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-47ee63bb3511 https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-4... One of the most interesting things is how hard it is for "us" to focus on the problem and not immediately jump to the solution. Today I always ask for problems rather than ideas it's much more useful and allow many more people to participate.