
"Build something people want" is not enough - avichal
http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/build-something-people-want-is-not-enough/
======
mhartl
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
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
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
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.

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kstenerud
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).

~~~
brc
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
But still, the problem needs to exist, even if it takes work to make people
realize they have it.

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neilk
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
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.

------
ggwicz
Why do you need to build a "world-changing" company in the first place?

~~~
avichal
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.

~~~
avichal
@steventruong It's not just about building. How you build and what you build
are dramatically different on the spectrum from small/lifestyle to
massive/global. There's a big difference between Google or Apple and
37Signals. The way a company gets financing, thinks about scaling a business,
thinks about selling a business, thinks about hiring, etc. These are all core
to how a business grows, how it scales, how to think about the value in the
business (cash vs equity). In technology businesses, those sorts of decisions
are usually made very early in a company's formation and baked into the DNA.
The types of founders that want to build a massive company are usually pretty
different from the types of founders that don't.

~~~
ggwicz
_Ususally_ the types of founders who want to build massive ginormous companies
(that's a technical term) are different: they a) fail and/or b) don't make
things; they're "idea guys" to steal a line from Signal vs. Noise.

~~~
avichal
That seems pretty inconsistent with how most companies and founders talk about
their business. Amazon started with Bezos wanting to build the biggest
e-commerce platform in the world. Apple wanted to put a computer on every
desk. Larry Page at Google when he was doing his first round of financing told
John Doerr that he thought search was a $10 billion revenue business. These
guys may not have realized what that would entail exactly but once they had
the earliest inkling of product-market fit they committed to it.

You don't get big by thinking small. World changing tech companies tend to
have a big vision from the beginning. Manufacturing, mining, or other
industries may be different. But you rarely see tech companies that touch 100
million lives without wanting to do that from the beginning.

------
andrewflnr
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
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
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
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.

~~~
avichal
Facebook, Twitter, etc. also have to build something that their users want to
use and this follows the same paradigm. Google could build something to make
every advertiser happy but if it pissed off all of their users it would kill
their business. They have to solve this problem on both sides -- they have to
build something users want to use and they have to build something advertisers
will pay for. Both halves of it have to answer the Why Now

------
flipside
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
Spot on. I'm a big fan of the "Why me" as well

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johnrob
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
Agreed. I think thinking about "Why now?" is essential to picking a good
problem

------
Joakal
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.

------
aidenn0
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
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.

------
larrys
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
"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)

------
shn
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.

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nl
_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".

------
richcollins
Actually it is enough. If the timing is wrong people won't want it. If your
marketing sucks, people won't want it ... etc

