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I thought this was implicit: you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools

I thought this was implicit: you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools than, for instance, something to make the lives of truckers a little easier. If you work as a regular engineer, you must come across dozens of daily problems any of which are not properly solved by your current tools. Even simple things like following up consistently, or checking to see if someone responded to an email to a third party etc Addendum: In response to many comments, I should add that this method is not supposed to guarantee you a good idea, but is a source for ideas to filter, refine, develop or abandon.

cvhashim 5y ago
Here’s a midly annoying problem I’m currently facing with Slack. Getting annoyed of jumping between DM’s and channels where I end up losing track of a channel I may have needed open or was going through. I feel like having tabs in slack would fix this? Not sure if it makes sense for the app to have this feature but something I’ve been thinking about.
- boredumb 5y ago
  I have the same problem and honestly just a 'recently used channel' history would solve it easily.
- Ozzie_osman 5y ago
  Slack has a history button. It's not perfect but it does the basics of what you describe https://www.howtogeek.com/668154/how-to-quickly-access-your-recent-conversations-on-slack-for-desktop-and-web/ https://www.howtogeek.com/668154/how-to-quickly-access-your-...
- philsnow 5y ago
  I cling to using Chrome's support for shortcuts-as-apps: go to whateverteam.slack.com, hamburger menu -> "More tools" -> "Create shortcut..." -> "[X] open as window". At least on Mac, it creates a .app in "$HOME/Applications/Chrome Apps" that works like any other app: it shows up in the cmd-tab switcher, you can open it with spotlight, etc. The best part (and the part relevant to your comment) is that this just opens a Chrome window and you can open (cmd-N) as many windows into the same slack team as you want, and it behaves like you expect a Mac app to behave: cmd-tab goes between teams and cmd-backtick goes between windows of a single team. I gather that there are some Mac apps or extensions or something that let you gather windows of _any_ app into tabs, so you could likely use one of those here to get tabs instead of windows. Supposedly Chrome is getting rid of support for Chrome Apps, I think that's what these things are called (?). If so, I'm going to be impacted when it finally goes away.
- _jal 5y ago
  I encourage people to move to email. I know people hate it, but I'm serious. Threading suddenly works in a non-stupid way, search suddenly works, and you can manage your own windows.
  - nadagast 5y ago
    We're working on task management + email, I kept your comment [1] from awhile ago. I don't see any way to contact you in your profile, are you interested in trying an alpha? Email me at garrett at twobird.com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693582
artemonster 5y ago
"you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis". Nope, not necessarily. Depends on where you work. If you are a cog in a big company, slaving away your 9-5, then no. You would NEVER get an idea that some finance folk would love to get an excel addin where you can click together in a simple GUI a data fetch from API, or whatever.
- grogenaut 5y ago
  not if you never go talk to anyonw but your direct team. when i was at a 500 person consulting team i would wander over and chat woth sales, finance, and hr. sales needed updated resumes and better writing and presentation skills. i pushes the engineers ro all do lunch and learns. finance i plumbed some extra metrics for. hr i got some data into excel for, amd figured out how to get our door badge system to accept building badges which saved money and let people carry one badge. all within 4 years of school. at a game studio of 300 i would wander amd chat with the various non-coder teams and just watch their workflows. for the tech artists a big blocker was gui access to enums in shaders (custom engine). i just set several of them up to compile the engine and taught tyem how to link enums to the editor gui, saved them many weeks of wait time. saw the lighting bake loop would take 1 year to run fully and a local test loop was 8 hours. asked my boss for time and rigged up a cluster of 64 ps4 dev kits and brought that down to 45 minutes, going from less than one local iteration a day to 9, and less than one a year to 3 a week for full bakes (cluster would bake when it wasnt helping am artist). at super large mega corp i do similar, constantly meeting people for coffee and understanding more than just my cog. Eventually I got good enough at it and a reputation for improving things that I just get pushed/pulled at problem/opportunities areas, but you have to work up to it. while none of this is doing a startup, if youre not curious, youll never see the myriad of things that could be improved with software, nor will many non tech folks, or really anyone who doesnt think "outside the box" as the olds say. challenge for devs is understanding where that tech is worth it and how to sell it, and not become that angry dev who is just yelling at everyone and politics for not taking every one of their half baked ideas as words from on high.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  I think you need to look more closely. There are often problems all around, but they've been "solved." Thing is, very often the solutions suck and are wide open for improvement. An example from my day to day in a large corporation: we have to enter time weekly: how much time did you spend on project X, Y or in training/meetings/etc. Sure there is software that does this, but it's terrible There are many issues with it that should be trivially solvable. Now, I will admit that time tracking software is a huge field with lots of strong competition, so this may not be a field you'd want to enter, but it's an example of the problems you would come across during an average workday that are ripe for better solutions.
axegon_ 5y ago
Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Which is something people often overlook and end up making products which no one really needs. Here's an example - I broke the remote for my AC earlier this year but I managed to salvage the codes and program a wifi-enabled ESP32 to communicate with the AC over wifi remotely, I made a crazy stupid UI for my phone so I can control it remotely(though I spend 90% of my time at home). Sounds like a brilliant product, doesn't it? Is there a market for it? I haven't bothered to check but my bet is that there might be 3000 people worldwide that would consider getting one, out of which maybe 50 would end up buying it. So no, this probably won't break the front page of Amazon to put it lightly.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  >> Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Resptfully disagree. There are a lot of non-trivial problems that do not have good solutions. If you look for niche manifestations of hard problems, you can both find something with appropriate scope AND a good value proposition. You also don't need to solve problems, just make them better/easier.
  - axegon_ 5y ago
    I genuinely can't remember the last time(or if there ever was such an event) I saw something new and thought "Hey this solves/helps with X, I gotta have it". Software is easy when this is all you do so when I have a problem I can solve with code, I go on and do it. Manufacturing, you are either a large corporation(apple, samsung, etc.) or you are a black swan. Most simply fail.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  That's actually a good idea. Was the original remote app enabled? If not, now you have a potential product for those people who would rather use an app than the manual remote. Are spare remotes hard to get or expensive? There's another market that might want to buy from you, especially if the AC unit that is old or obsolete. Spare parts/retrofits with new features is big business. There's a good chance that if you dug into this particular problem you'd find that it could be profitable. Not quit-you-day-job profitable, but at least enough to bring in a few extra $k per month.
lewisjoe 5y ago
pg has an excellent essay on how to fine niches or startup ideas in general. My thumbrule: 1. Pick a market that already has money-making companies. If you can beat them by price & quality, even after considering the first-mover advantage - go for it. 2. [From pg's essay] Just experiene more in life, with different people facing different kinds of problems from different sectors. That's a sure shot way to eventually run into a market with less competition.
- GGfpc 5y ago
  Can you link the essay? Or even expand on what is pg?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    pg == one of the founders of YC. http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
  - pramodbiligiri 5y ago
    A few relevant essays of pg (Paul Graham): - http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html - http://paulgraham.com/marginal.html http://paulgraham.com/marginal.html - http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
nocommandline 5y ago
1) >>> you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. <<< Agree with this. As they say - necessity is the mother of invention. A lot of the episodes I listened to on the Podcast - How I built this with Guy Raz - were about people getting frustrated with a problem they faced on a daily basis and deciding to fix it (usually starting quite small). 2) >>> This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools than, for instance, something to make the lives of truckers a little easier. <<< This makes sense if you're a developer or work in software. Eg, I'm a Product person who built tools on the side to scratch my itch. My platform was Google App Engine (GAE). When the GAE GUI was deprecated, I realized that I really found a GUI much more convenient and so built - https://nocommandline.com https://nocommandline.com and in the process fixed stuff I didn't like about the old GUI. I think the trick here is to set right expectation i.e. recognize that not every idea is going to be a Unicorn or a big business. It could remain 'just a side project' or turn out to be something that just brings you extra income (pay your rent, weekly gas bill, etc).

cvhashim 5y ago

Here’s a midly annoying problem I’m currently facing with Slack. Getting annoyed of jumping between DM’s and channels where I end up losing track of a channel I may have needed open or was going through. I feel like having tabs in slack would fix this? Not sure if it makes sense for the app to have this feature but something I’ve been thinking about.

boredumb 5y ago
I have the same problem and honestly just a 'recently used channel' history would solve it easily.
Ozzie_osman 5y ago
Slack has a history button. It's not perfect but it does the basics of what you describe https://www.howtogeek.com/668154/how-to-quickly-access-your-recent-conversations-on-slack-for-desktop-and-web/ https://www.howtogeek.com/668154/how-to-quickly-access-your-...
philsnow 5y ago
I cling to using Chrome's support for shortcuts-as-apps: go to whateverteam.slack.com, hamburger menu -> "More tools" -> "Create shortcut..." -> "[X] open as window". At least on Mac, it creates a .app in "$HOME/Applications/Chrome Apps" that works like any other app: it shows up in the cmd-tab switcher, you can open it with spotlight, etc. The best part (and the part relevant to your comment) is that this just opens a Chrome window and you can open (cmd-N) as many windows into the same slack team as you want, and it behaves like you expect a Mac app to behave: cmd-tab goes between teams and cmd-backtick goes between windows of a single team. I gather that there are some Mac apps or extensions or something that let you gather windows of _any_ app into tabs, so you could likely use one of those here to get tabs instead of windows. Supposedly Chrome is getting rid of support for Chrome Apps, I think that's what these things are called (?). If so, I'm going to be impacted when it finally goes away.
_jal 5y ago
I encourage people to move to email. I know people hate it, but I'm serious. Threading suddenly works in a non-stupid way, search suddenly works, and you can manage your own windows.
- nadagast 5y ago
  We're working on task management + email, I kept your comment [1] from awhile ago. I don't see any way to contact you in your profile, are you interested in trying an alpha? Email me at garrett at twobird.com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693582

artemonster 5y ago

"you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis". Nope, not necessarily. Depends on where you work. If you are a cog in a big company, slaving away your 9-5, then no. You would NEVER get an idea that some finance folk would love to get an excel addin where you can click together in a simple GUI a data fetch from API, or whatever.

grogenaut 5y ago
not if you never go talk to anyonw but your direct team. when i was at a 500 person consulting team i would wander over and chat woth sales, finance, and hr. sales needed updated resumes and better writing and presentation skills. i pushes the engineers ro all do lunch and learns. finance i plumbed some extra metrics for. hr i got some data into excel for, amd figured out how to get our door badge system to accept building badges which saved money and let people carry one badge. all within 4 years of school. at a game studio of 300 i would wander amd chat with the various non-coder teams and just watch their workflows. for the tech artists a big blocker was gui access to enums in shaders (custom engine). i just set several of them up to compile the engine and taught tyem how to link enums to the editor gui, saved them many weeks of wait time. saw the lighting bake loop would take 1 year to run fully and a local test loop was 8 hours. asked my boss for time and rigged up a cluster of 64 ps4 dev kits and brought that down to 45 minutes, going from less than one local iteration a day to 9, and less than one a year to 3 a week for full bakes (cluster would bake when it wasnt helping am artist). at super large mega corp i do similar, constantly meeting people for coffee and understanding more than just my cog. Eventually I got good enough at it and a reputation for improving things that I just get pushed/pulled at problem/opportunities areas, but you have to work up to it. while none of this is doing a startup, if youre not curious, youll never see the myriad of things that could be improved with software, nor will many non tech folks, or really anyone who doesnt think "outside the box" as the olds say. challenge for devs is understanding where that tech is worth it and how to sell it, and not become that angry dev who is just yelling at everyone and politics for not taking every one of their half baked ideas as words from on high.
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
I think you need to look more closely. There are often problems all around, but they've been "solved." Thing is, very often the solutions suck and are wide open for improvement. An example from my day to day in a large corporation: we have to enter time weekly: how much time did you spend on project X, Y or in training/meetings/etc. Sure there is software that does this, but it's terrible There are many issues with it that should be trivially solvable. Now, I will admit that time tracking software is a huge field with lots of strong competition, so this may not be a field you'd want to enter, but it's an example of the problems you would come across during an average workday that are ripe for better solutions.

axegon_ 5y ago

Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Which is something people often overlook and end up making products which no one really needs. Here's an example - I broke the remote for my AC earlier this year but I managed to salvage the codes and program a wifi-enabled ESP32 to communicate with the AC over wifi remotely, I made a crazy stupid UI for my phone so I can control it remotely(though I spend 90% of my time at home). Sounds like a brilliant product, doesn't it? Is there a market for it? I haven't bothered to check but my bet is that there might be 3000 people worldwide that would consider getting one, out of which maybe 50 would end up buying it. So no, this probably won't break the front page of Amazon to put it lightly.

skeeter2020 5y ago
>> Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Resptfully disagree. There are a lot of non-trivial problems that do not have good solutions. If you look for niche manifestations of hard problems, you can both find something with appropriate scope AND a good value proposition. You also don't need to solve problems, just make them better/easier.
- axegon_ 5y ago
  I genuinely can't remember the last time(or if there ever was such an event) I saw something new and thought "Hey this solves/helps with X, I gotta have it". Software is easy when this is all you do so when I have a problem I can solve with code, I go on and do it. Manufacturing, you are either a large corporation(apple, samsung, etc.) or you are a black swan. Most simply fail.
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
That's actually a good idea. Was the original remote app enabled? If not, now you have a potential product for those people who would rather use an app than the manual remote. Are spare remotes hard to get or expensive? There's another market that might want to buy from you, especially if the AC unit that is old or obsolete. Spare parts/retrofits with new features is big business. There's a good chance that if you dug into this particular problem you'd find that it could be profitable. Not quit-you-day-job profitable, but at least enough to bring in a few extra $k per month.

lewisjoe 5y ago

pg has an excellent essay on how to fine niches or startup ideas in general. My thumbrule: 1. Pick a market that already has money-making companies. If you can beat them by price & quality, even after considering the first-mover advantage - go for it. 2. [From pg's essay] Just experiene more in life, with different people facing different kinds of problems from different sectors. That's a sure shot way to eventually run into a market with less competition.

GGfpc 5y ago
Can you link the essay? Or even expand on what is pg?
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  pg == one of the founders of YC. http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
- pramodbiligiri 5y ago
  A few relevant essays of pg (Paul Graham): - http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html - http://paulgraham.com/marginal.html http://paulgraham.com/marginal.html - http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

nocommandline 5y ago

1) >>> you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. <<< Agree with this. As they say - necessity is the mother of invention. A lot of the episodes I listened to on the Podcast - How I built this with Guy Raz - were about people getting frustrated with a problem they faced on a daily basis and deciding to fix it (usually starting quite small). 2) >>> This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools than, for instance, something to make the lives of truckers a little easier. <<< This makes sense if you're a developer or work in software. Eg, I'm a Product person who built tools on the side to scratch my itch. My platform was Google App Engine (GAE). When the GAE GUI was deprecated, I realized that I really found a GUI much more convenient and so built - https://nocommandline.com https://nocommandline.com and in the process fixed stuff I didn't like about the old GUI. I think the trick here is to set right expectation i.e. recognize that not every idea is going to be a Unicorn or a big business. It could remain 'just a side project' or turn out to be something that just brings you extra income (pay your rent, weekly gas bill, etc).