So, solving a problem for a customer of “self” is certainly a way of going about things, but one that I worry myself carries immense risk if you ever wish to se

So, solving a problem for a customer of “self” is certainly a way of going about things, but one that I worry myself carries immense risk if you ever wish to sell the solution. I have found that it is important not to be afraid of doing market research, surveys, conducting interviews or observations of existing people in action with existing solutions. If you want to scratch your own itch, that’s cool. And it can work to produce a nice tight product, maybe could in this case. But if I wanted to sell my product, I’d try to figure out if there is enough statistical significance in the market response before building it. Even just putting out and marketing an RSVP landing page for the tool, to see how many people might want it - you might get a load of potential customers who sign up and can give you feedback. Since you’ve already decided to build this anyway, you aren’t concerned about competition - so what do you have to lose from seeing if other people want it? [1] [1] Note - I do know that sometimes you don’t want to deal with other people’s opinions while building a product, and the author’s approach certainly is one way to go about it. Also, I guess accounting is a pretty well-known niche so a lot of the knowledge is already out there, maybe you don’t need much new input. But I felt a hypothesis here that could be tested and would be reinforcing if proven true. EDIT: I see from the website the author is taking early access adopters, so maybe they are doing this. Actually I like the approach of doing this in the open and blogging about it, it was more the original blog post that triggered my reaction.