First you have to make an important distinction, one that seems oddly difficult for many here on HN - you have to decide if you are earnestly committing time to

First you have to make an important distinction, one that seems oddly difficult for many here on HN - you have to decide if you are earnestly committing time to this project *to make money*. If that's the case, now your time has value and you have to actually figure out if an audience exists and furthermore if that audience (which may or may not exist) is actually willing to pay for your solution. I chose the word solution because solutions implicitly derive value, a new note-taking markup or photo sharing app does not. The second step is to field your solution and see if people are happy with the problem you've solved. Marketing is also a concept far too often underestimated or overlooked on HN. For instance, I wrote some software based on complaints from a very specific diy agriculture subreddit. Once I reached a bare minimum MVP I posted it on reddit, people were excited because a cool tech thing solved a problem they had. They shared with their non-internet friends and orders / emails started steadily flowing in. Unfortunately, the time/revenue ratio wasn't good enough and I basically broke even on the project. That said, think about the problem deeply before spending valuable time "validating" what might be a solution nobody actually needs.