Just to drop my 2 cents, answering your questions (I've started two startups, one failed, one succeeded). 1) It found me. Someone asked me how to solve a speci

Just to drop my 2 cents, answering your questions (I've started two startups, one failed, one succeeded). 1) It found me. Someone asked me how to solve a specific problem and I realized I could build a product; Edited: My personal strategy for dealing with competition: Ignore, don't go to their website, never, don't read about them, it will not help you. 2) If you can pick one, always choose services instead of products. Products usually comes with liabilities and the market is prone to saturation. 3) Try to build something more simple that people you already know would pay a little money to use. I never suggest books, specially 'self-help' but you need to read Rework by 37signals guys. Best of luck.