
Ask HN: "How to make something people want?" - apsurd
I've been banging my head against the wall trying to refine my target market. I have "ideas" of who they are, but without a network and/or platform to ask these people, it's all theory. Catch 22.<p>Are there websites that ask people what they want, in a useful, data gathering way?<p>My thoughts:<p>Imagine a site like yelp.com
Users rate and comment on businesses based on category.<p>Our website would have two primary actions.<p>1. Producers list current or conceptual ideas/products/services.<p>2. Users/consumers give their opinion to help shape and refine the listing. "This is what I would want" type comments are encouraged, over simply saying "this sucks". In other words, consumers help producers make their concept not suck.<p>Use Case:<p>I would post a listing as a producer in the "internet services" section, listing my project as "powerful in browser website creation and management system". I might define my intended audience, then let users tell me what features I should add and how it might be useful <i>to them</i>.<p>Perhaps it would be like uservoice, without actually needing to build the product first.
Also user voice requires that you have <i>users</i>. =D<p>Any similar sites? Any input on the concept?
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patio11
Can I give a suggestion? Get off the Internet.

I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that the type of person who, when
they have a problem, thinks: "You know, I bet there is some social networking
service out there where I can post about this problem in a real pretty AJAX-y
looking form and then Twitter about it to my friends" already has plenty of
people solving their problems.

(They also make terrible customers, because one of their problems is that
people keep asking them to pay for things, despite those things not being
iPods.)

Instead of using the Web 2.0 darling, get out there and talk to Real People
who have Real Problems. They work too hard. They don't see their kids enough.
They don't make enough money. They are very willing to pay for solutions to
any of the above three, but they might not even realize that solutions are
possible! (99.9% of people who purchase my software never knew there was
software available to do what it does until they got to my site, if you read
their search queries.)

[Edit: Incidentally, don't ask Real People what they want. Ask them what their
problems are. A lot of my customers see their problem as "I like playing bingo
but it takes several hours to make cards by hand." You know what the preferred
solution was for years? "I should spent a lot of money laminating the cards
that I made by hand, so that I can use them again next year." It never
occurred to most of them to ask for something that would make bingo cards in a
few minutes for less than the price of laminating a set.]

~~~
apsurd
Thanks, Patrick, I needed that.

Just read this post as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=750375>

Just to be clear, the concept outlined is not the concept I am pursuing, its
<http://plusjade.com> . I just get distracted/discouraged now and then because
"I am creating a website engine that makes websites". Who the hell needs that,
how is it different from the other 2000 engines out there, and who is paying
money for them? Of course I'm not dumb enough to NOT think about these things,
its just...

yeah, I should talk to real people. Get it done.

Thanks!

~~~
terpua
Checked out your site. Have you tried going after a niche in the DIY website
creation biz to differentiate your offering?

A thought...why not go after restaurants? Have a way to upload menu easily, a
location with map info, maybe even online reservations. Fully outsourced,
customizable and charge monthly.

When you do go outside, drop by restos and show them your screenshots (done in
PS) and get real feedback. You can probably hit 10 restos in a day.

Note: this is just top of my head -- not sure if anyone is even doing this.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks for the feedback. I think you are spot on. I've tried to force myself
to think in terms of b2b because business are willing to pay for stuff that
works. I'll put together some market tests and go out and ask people. thanks
again.

~~~
qaexl
Agile Programming process makes sure projects gets done. There are dozens of
other project management methods, yet there are only a rare few processes that
lets you discover _what_ customers want, and how to get it to them.

Steve Blank developed a step-by-step, formal methodology to developing
customers. Eric Reis's "Lean Startup" incorporates those ideas as well as
others. Check out their blogs and get Blank's book. Why reinvent the wheel?

------
lionhearted
> Any input on the concept?

For a first foray into business, I'd recommend against building something that
requires network effects.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect>

For every Facebook or Yelp, there's hundreds of network-effects-based sites
that never gain any steam, and they don't see anything from it. Also, what
you're talking about is notoriously hard to get money out of.

For a first business, sell something to people. Take Hacker News' own Patrick
McKenzie* (patio11) - he sells Bingo Card Creating Software. His blog is here:
<http://www.kalzumeus.com/>

He sells things to people. If he tries something, he knows right away if it's
working - he gets bingo card sales. If no one bought his bingo cards, he would
know it's not working and he'd have closed his site. You learn a lot about
business by selling things to people, and it's got the most clear and
insightful feedback.

~~~
10ren
It's like that old joke, that the first telephone was the hardest sell ( _who
ya gonna call?_ )

Joshua Schachter (delicious founder) said something about network effects that
really struck me: make something that has network effects, but which is _also_
useful and valuable even if no-one else is using it.

There's a related view that's applicable to my startup: make something that
useful and valuable on its own, that can have _additional_ network effects if
others are using it.

BTW: I've searched for where Joshua said that, but I've not been able to find
it (there were three points). Anyone know which interview I mean?

~~~
shoesfullofdust
[http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/17/joshua-schachter-
lesson...](http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/17/joshua-schachter-lessons-
learned-in-scaling-and-building-social-systems) Also this:
[http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&...](http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&TRID=432)

~~~
10ren
Thanks for the links, though the one I'm thinking of had them as three bullets
points. Actually, it sounds like I may be thinking of a slide presentation,
not an interview.

------
10ren
Two problems:

1\. Market: People don't know what they want til they see it.

2\. Development: You don't know what problems your idea has (nor their
solution) til you see it.

It's an entrancing dream to anticipate all this stuff, which is what corporate
_new market development_ and _new product development_ is all about. It's
hardly effective (that's not how that corporation began anyway) - plus they
are better at it than you.

Build your idea, hacker. Build it, and gaze upon reality!

~~~
Mz
"Market: People don't know what they want til they see it."

Ditto that. If people could figure out for themselves what would solve the
issue they had, then they wouldn't need a start-up to provide it.

"Development: You don't know what problems your idea has (nor their solution)
til you see it."

The military has some saying along the lines of "No battle plan survives the
first engagement." And Bill Gates has said "Your most unhappy customers are
your greatest source of learning."

For me, three years of talking to people online with little in the way of
results has convinced me that there is a huge information gap and this is what
I need to overcome. But no one could "tell" me that. I just had to figure out
why I am getting such poor reception (and so much hostility) for a solution to
a problem that everyone desperately wants fixed. The solution I offer doesn't
fit with their concept of what a solution should look like and they can't wrap
their brains around it. There are two types of people who are relatively more
receptive. Both groups are intrinsically less accepting of current dogma than
is typical.

------
siong1987
Instead of making something people want, make something that you want first.
Solve your own problem. 6B people in the world, I am sure someone will have
the exact same problem as yours.

If your product could not get mass usage, at least, you will always be the
user of your own product.

~~~
mattmanser
The biggest problem with this meme, that 37 signals seem to be a champion for,
is that the kind of problems that hackers have are also pretty easily solved
by the same kind of people. And so the hacker problem space is often over-run
by others and open source software. A recent case in point:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740789>

But take patio11's company, which solves a problem that none of us probably
thought existed, the bingo card creator. Suddenly you have a nice big audience
for a fairly simple program, but because it's the kind of problem that hacker
community never comes into contact with it's nice and profitable.

So I'd be careful on following this advice unless you're a truly amazing
hacker (e.g. afaik 37signal's guy wrote the rails part of ruby on rails). The
bar is much higher in the hacker problem space and has to be because in the
end, the 'I could write that in a weekend' syndrome often prevails :)

------
callmeed
Doesn't halfbakery.com do something along these lines?

The main problem I see with your idea is that consumers/users have no benefit
or incentive to continually use your site.

They are providing their time and input on something that doesn't exist.
People take time to provide input at Yelp because, in return, they can find a
good restaurant. People vot on Digg because, in return, they find
funny/interesting stories or videos.

You want lay-people to provide you with input but you're giving them nothing
in return ... except the _possibility_ that a business they would use could
exist in the future.

~~~
apsurd
Thanks for the link. I just conceptualized the idea an hour ago so I do share
your concern for the users. I just remembered that launchly.com was a pretty
close match. The concept is actually _very_ useful, but its clear launchly has
just launched and the userbase is not very big. Also the pricing seems
outrageous. But its a better implementation in that the sites have to already
exist. This answers your question somewhat because you can offer users who
provide feedback an upgrade to whatever the site it is they are reviewing. For
example free access for a year or whatever. Thanks for the reply.

------
thaumaturgy
I don't see this working out very well, unfortunately.

For one thing, although users can express needs and desires in very vague
terms, they can't usually be specific enough to actually help someone that's
trying to implement an idea.

I _think_ it was Guy Kawasaki that described this in "Rules for
Revolutionaries", but it might've been Gladwell in "Blink" -- I don't remember
now.

Anyway, you're usually better off making observations about behavior and then
attempting to solve the problems that you see there. In this case, you could
frequent web designer forums and the like, as well as the forums for competing
software, and see what the most common complaints and requests are.

~~~
apsurd
Yeah I could see the _actual_ user feedback being nowhere near what the
_intended_ feedback would be.

Great idea about frequenting your competitors forums! I actually religiously
do this, and it is indeed extremely helpful. The only problem I have with this
is I have no real idea if their target market is/should be my target market
and of course, is the market lucrative? In other words, I might be optimizing
a product that kicks ass relative to users of forum x, but are users of forum
x even the ones really dishing out the money? Guess no matter what solution,
you won't know until you just test the damned thing yourself. Thanks for the
comment!

~~~
thaumaturgy
I think you'd be better off building a test version of your idea and then
iterating from there.

You don't want to fall into the trap of talking about a thing and never
actually doing it. :-)

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qaexl
<http://steveblank.com/2009/02/23/theres-a-pattern-here/>

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/0976470705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249825301&sr=8-1)

------
ad
This is more general than what you want but if you haven't read pg's 'why
smart people have bad ideas' it's well worth it.
<http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

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wlievens
The main issue with that is the people who you target may not be the people
who spend time on the internet looking for websites where they can rate your
ideas.

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tophat02
Make something YOU want. Hope you're "most people."

