I think that (probably apocryphal) Ford quote is a bit of a red herring. Sure if you ask your customer for solutions, you'll get "faster horses". But or cours

I think that (probably apocryphal) Ford quote is a bit of a red herring. Sure if you ask your customer for solutions, you'll get "faster horses". But or course that that would be silly - you aren't talking to them for solutions. You are talking to (hopefully lots of) potential customers is to understand their problems really well. The road to startup success is littered with the bodies of companies that had a neat solution to problems nobody really cared about. Sometimes really neat technology. Still dead. If your business approach is a solution looking for the right problem, success is going to depend a lot on timing and luck; i.e. things you cannot control.