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"Build something people want" is not enough

• larrys 15y ago
  I would add that "building something that only tech savvy people want or would use" is not enough either to make a world changing idea.
  • gizmo 15y ago
    "Steve - it is Steve, right? You say this gadget of yours is for ordinary people. What on earth would ordinary people want with computers?" (Pirates of Silicon Valley)
  • anjc 15y ago
    Yeah. But on top of that, people often don't seem to know what they want, so the whole premise seems iffy in the first place. On top of that, i think focussing on 'why now' leads dilution of ideas, in the sense that too many people seem to jump onto an ailing bandwagon when it's a bit late, because well, now's the time.
  • tikhonj 15y ago
    That's hardly true--enabling professionals can easily be more world-changing than catering to people who are not "tech savvy". Plenty of technologies--take SQL, for example--are very world-changing but only ever used by tech-savvy people.
• johnrob 15y ago
  I think you need to replace "pick a problem" with "pick a good problem". The distinction between those two phrases is a big part of the start up game, IMO.
  • avichal 15y ago
    Agreed. I think thinking about "Why now?" is essential to picking a good problem
    • deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
• ggwicz 15y ago
  Why do you need to build a "world-changing" company in the first place?
  • avichal 15y ago
    Entrepreneurship is an art form and a means of self expression. Not everyone needs to be a paint, write, draw, sing...but painters gotta paint.
    • steventruong 15y ago
      I'm not sure this really answers the question he originally posed. Sure, painters gotta paint and entrepreneurs gotta build, but whether its world changing or not is irrelevant. Some people want to do world changing things, some don't, and some stumble into it on accident. Whether or not its world changing, a lot of the rules are pretty much the same.
    • anjc 15y ago
      I think that this 'world changing' stuff is diluting the power of peoples' mindsets. How could you convincingly believe that, let's say Foursquare, is world changing? And that's a successful enough example. Why not just that it's a 'money earning' idea, and have the potential for business growth be the motivating factor before you start worrying about solving real problems?
      • harryh 15y ago
        Foursquare will be world changing. Don't dismiss it because it looks small now. Keep in mind pg's thoughts on toys: Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest.
        • 15y ago
• mhartl 15y ago
  The idea behind the YC slogan "Make something people want" is not that doing so is sufficient, but that (a) it's necessary and (b) it's so difficult that worrying about anything else is premature optimization. That said, this article does have some useful advice on how to pick a "something" that maximizes your chances of success.
  • avichal 15y ago
    Thanks much :) (Obviously) I don't think asking why now is the right time for your idea is premature. I think it's orthogonal to the product building piece. I think a lot of YC companies could avoid a lot of pain if they asked this question early on, because it would lead them to talk to others who have worked in the space. Often they will quickly discover that the fundamental dynamics of an industry haven't changed yet and no matter how much time they spend building it's not worth their time yet. At the very least they should be able to point to why the other, previous attempts weren't quite right and why the time is now for this idea to take hold. But all too often companies just start building without understanding why the previous attempts have failed.
    • tomhoward 15y ago
      On the other hand, one shouldn't underestimate the power of not knowing something is impossible. If you talk to a lot of others who have worked in the space you may well end up with a long list of reasons why your idea is doomed. It may stop you from wasting time on an idea that can't succeed. Or, possibly more likely, it will muddy your thoughts and prevent you from observing the space with the fresh eyes that are needed to see what those before you have missed. But all too often companies just start building without understanding why the previous attempts have failed. Sometimes you need to just start building to begin to understand exactly why previous attempts have failed.
      • earbitscom 15y ago
        I'm a big proponent of naively trying to do what others tell me is impossible and it's served me perfectly well. That being said, if someone's startup was unsuccessful for a very clear reason that still exists today, the point is to understand that cause and your own plan for overcoming it, or don't start dedicating a bunch of resources only to get to the exact same point and realize it's not something that can be overcome. It would be like starting a poker website now and completely ignoring what just happened to Full Tilt. Online poker is illegal. Until that changes, probably not a good space to play in.
• flipside 15y ago
  Asking "why?" in general is a good place to start, because there's also: --Why isn't anyone else doing this? (Depending on your idea, they probably are. Hint: if it's idea A + B = C, they are.) --Why me? (If you can't answer this, then it shouldn't be you.) --Why this and not something else? (If you can't muster up some passion, save yourself the time.) In other words, "why?" is one of the toughest questions to answer, and keep answering because you can always ask "why?" again. But if you CAN answer it, you may just have something.
  • avichal 15y ago
    Spot on. I'm a big fan of the "Why me" as well
• kstenerud 15y ago
  People don't want products; they want solutions. If you're building a product for any other reason than solving a real customer's problem, you're making a mistake. A true visionary solves a problem that customers don't even realize they have yet (and is only called visionary if he succeeds).
  • byoung2 15y ago
    A true visionary solves a problem that customers don't even realize they have yet (and is only called visionary if he succeeds). This is true, but the timing and pricing have to be right as well. Look at the Apple Newtwon...it was too early and it failed. More than a decade later, the iPad is a runaway success.
    • brc 15y ago
      The Newton failed because it didn't solve the problem, not because it was too early. The problem was a usable mobile platform. Take an iPad back in time to the era of Newton and it would sell. That's because it solves the problem well.
  • brc 15y ago
    And a skilled marketer helps people see the problems they didn't even realise they had. Huge success is where a visionary solves a problem that customers either don't know they have, or can't imagine being solved, and then communicates the solution to everyone who does have, or could have, the problem.
    • roel_v 15y ago
      But still, the problem needs to exist, even if it takes work to make people realize they have it.
• nl 15y ago
  Most people take "Build something people want" to mean "Pick a problem to solve and solve it well." Most people are wrong. "Pick a problem to solve and solve it well" focuses on the "Build" part. The important part is "people want".
• Joakal 15y ago
  It can be an economic issue as well. Spaceship trips existed for 50 years. But it costs $10,000,000 per person. Not enough tourist potential to offset the costs. Now with many companies and countries entering, it's down to $200,000 per person. And probably going down more. Now, there's enough tourist potential to offset the costs and derive profit. Other examples; flying cars and jetpacks.
• neilk 15y ago
  Are you really asserting that it is possible to know in advance what conditions will make the business venture successful? Or even to know in retrospect which ones made them unsuccessful? I don't know about this. Even if you could say that (for example) a number of ships hit a particular iceberg, which has now melted, so what? The ocean is full of icebergs. I wonder if, on average, it might be even more advantageous to try something where everyone agrees there's an obvious barrier to success. What if conventional wisdom is wrong even some of the time, or if that barrier suddenly disappears for its own reasons? I'm pretty sure you can see this pattern in a lot of anomalously successful companies.
  • avichal 15y ago
    No - I state in the post that you can't know this looking forward. You can take educated guesses based on observed patterns though. Ships don't float around the ocean randomly. They have captains and crews. If they hit an iceberg, there's usually a good reason for it. In the startup world you can track down and talk with founders, CEOs, and investors and pick their brains to understand why something didn't work. It's very hard to know if something will succeed looking forward. It's easier to know why something succeed looking backwards. To the people who built the business, it's usually pretty obvious why something failed. The pattern you see in anomalously successful companies is absolutely one of violating conventional wisdom; By definition these companies are outliers because they are successful. But there's always a reason for it. Picking something that people have an aversion to is a great place to start. Figuring out what has changed about the ecosystem or opportunity that may enable it to succeed today where it had previously failed is the critical question to answer.
  • earbitscom 15y ago
    It's not to say that you can predict everything that could go wrong, but if that one iceberg is still there and it blocks the only route to port (like, what you want to do is still illegal), probably not too smart to jump in a canoe headed that direction. If you look at the icebergs that were in the way before and they're gone now, it doesn't guarantee success or mean there aren't other obstacles, but at least you know that the previous reasons for failure aren't still insurmountable.
• shn 15y ago
  I do not think anybody said that build something people want would be enough. Only, it's really essential for the success. How something is done has almost been always irrelevant for the consumer of a service or a product, but a) if it is something that serve them b) economic enough c) easy enough.
• aidenn0 15y ago
  This misses the case where the plausible solution space is much larger than could be explored by the smart people that have attempted to solve it in the past. Also, a lot of times the enabling new technology or new customer behavior doesn't obviously solve the problem. So there may be new technology and/or behavior that make the problem solvable, but it's not obvious until you try to solve it. There is new technology and customer behaviors that make a whole slew of seemingly unrelated problems solvable now, and if I knew the mapping there, I wouldn't be posting here, I'd be running a company that solves the problems.
• jroseattle 15y ago
  I see the "why now" aspect as adding a level of consideration as to opportunity cost -- why should I spend my time on building "something people want" vs. anything else? It's much more relevant in terms of the solution/product being developed. The ideal scenario is one where the answer to the "why now" question makes pulling the trigger on building the "something" worthwhile, and avichal makes note of some of those, such as Foursquare. That said, "why now" is not as important as building something people want. It simply contributes to the conditions about whether or not it's a worthwhile endeavor.
• andrewflnr 15y ago
  If someone thinks "make something people want" means "pick a problem and solve it well", then it seems to me they are out of their minds. If people don't want it yet, it doesn't matter how well you make it; they don't want it. I find it very hard to believe that that interpretation is really so widespread. Maybe I'm naive. This post has a lot of good ideas. "Why now?" is a good question. But if you have a problem with people's mistaken interpretation of a phrase, say that in your blog post about it, instead of critiquing/rejecting the phrase itself.
  • jcr 15y ago
    If you read his definition as, "Pick a problem that others are willing to pay for a solution, and solve it well," the whole post becomes very good, rather than just having a few good parts. Maybe you're not reading enough into his definition, or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, I prefer to read over the rough spot and extrapolate where need be, so I appreciated the article (thanks avichal). There are only two types of people in this world; those that can extrapolate from incomplete information.
    • avichal 15y ago
      I actually had almost exactly this in the original version of the article. I changed it because there are lots of products/solutions that don't require people to pay for them but where the same framework still applies -- Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn are three examples.
      • jcr 15y ago
        I think you had it right the first time, and changing it detracted from your real point, "Why now?" You intentional blurred the normally clear distinction between something sold (product/service), and a buyer. In the case of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and similar, the users of the service are the product being sold, and the buyers are (typically) advertisers. The users are given something useful and beneficial (search results, creepily stalking other people, pointless "business" connections, publicly broadcasting the precise color of your last bowl movement, etc.) to attract them, but there must be someone else, a buyer/customer, willing to pay for it all or you don't have a business. In the above sense, collecting users by offering free services is really no different than manufacturing physical products; in both cases your expending capital to create a "product" with the intent of selling it for more than what it cost you to create.
• richcollins 15y ago
  Actually it is enough. If the timing is wrong people won't want it. If your marketing sucks, people won't want it ... etc