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> by far the most common mistake startups make is to solve problems no one has. - Paul Graham [1] I think this proposal points at an interesting issue that I s
by next_xibalba 2y ago
> by far the most common mistake startups make is to solve problems no one has. - Paul Graham [1]
I think this proposal points at an interesting issue that I see crop up often on sites like HN. It goes (I think) like this: 1) "I care deeply about what I perceive to be a problem." 2) Extrapolates onto some large critical mass of people, 3) That critical mass of people does not actually agree with the problem statement in any way, 4) Build a solution, never gets meaningful traction, misdiagnoses the root cause of the failure.
I'm not saying this to dump on this idea. Rather, I think it is a meaningful bias that all humans are vulnerable too. But I do think that filter bubbles amplify whatever this bias is to a powerful degree. If you are surrounded by people who are obsessed with privacy, it seems like everyone is inflamed by the economic model of social networks. But, outside the small filter bubble, most other people don't care at all or actually think its a great model.
Having said all of that, maybe a way to test whether you are experiencing this bias is to interview or collect information from as close to a random sample of social media users as possible. The more random the better. If you find yourself talking to people in SF/Seattle or people in the tech industry, that's a sure sign you have a bad sample. When you talk to them, don't ask leading questions that will bias them. Try to understand what their unbiased views on the problems (if any) are with social networks. Maybe you ask them what their best friend thinks so as to try to sidestep preference falsification. If you discover a consistent problem, maybe you're onto something. But then, you're still up against a world saturated with social networks, and convincing people to pay for something they get for free will be very, very hard. I think, ultimately, the only way you'll discover whether the problems you may have found are really important or not is if you can convince anyone to pay you. I suspect it will be a Sisyphean endeavor.
[1] https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoI'm going to just add a question to this - if you assume that privacy is a concern that a large enough base of users have that your service can generate enough revenue to support it - why do you think that celebrities and the like are in the group of people who would care about privacy, the main selling point of your service. It seems to me that, by definition, it is the quality they care least about as they already do not have it anywhere else in their life. And you want them to be attracting more users by being "the celebrity" which is a person without privacy.
- yawnxyz 2y agoTiktok solves a problem no one has, and look at it go. Not a dig on PG or Tiktok. It's just such an outlier I don't really understand it, and to me it breaks the framework.
- next_xibalba 2y agoI disagree… sort of. TikTok found a better way to deliver video content. The problem was, video content and its associated social data, sucked. Most of us just didn’t realize it. But TikTok did. And they were right. It’s sort of like how you didn’t realize that horses sucked for transportation until you saw car. A flawed metaphor, but you get my point. I think a distinction here is that video, in the TikTok, is the product. Privacy is not. You aren’t entertained or informed by privacy. It’s like insurance. You only value it when something bad happens. And if your business model is less good entertainment/information, but with some insurance on the side, seems like a very tough pitch. Now, of course, that points out a flaw in my original post. Very hard to get people to articulate something of which they are unaware.
- sureglymop 2y agoThey also didn't come first. Vine was a very popular platform that seemingly shut down out of the blue (at the height of it's popularity). There was no real replacement for a long time after that. Tiktok first started out as Musically, allowing people to create mainly dance and lipsync videos. Only later they rebranded to Tiktok and pivoted to general purpose video content. The point is, even tiktok didn't just get right and had to pivot and maybe that is key. So to the op I would say: try your idea but just be very very spontaneous and flexible to change it quickly if it doesn't work.
- frunkopop 2y agoPretty sure listening to PG over your gut (or worse, your brain) is a more common startup mistake than that one.