
How to Decide What to Build - danicgross
https://dcgross.com/decide-what-to-work-on/
======
acconrad
One of the points the author makes is that you should track the problems you
have, and the ones that reoccur will be good signals to solve them.

Does anyone else feel pretty content with what they have?

Because this strategy I think Paul Graham has talked about in one of his
essays for ideas. And to be honest, I do genuinely feel like I don't have much
if anything to complain about, and so I can't really think of startup ideas.
To the point where I'm just consulting at the moment because I can't think of
any startup idea to work on.

I mean I have ideas of problems I want to solve - but they've all been met by
massive resistance because they're huge problems. Like for instance one idea I
had was I hate making food, but I don't want to eat out all of the time. Can
you crowdsource cooking from your neighbors? So I tried building that
platform. I instantly discovered there were huge safety regulations about
cooking, and that really baking (or anything that isn't extremely perishable)
is the only thing you can pretty much do out of your home and not get slapped
by the state for violating health codes. So I'm just sort of defeated...the
only problems I want to tackle just seem massive and I can't seem to find the
divide-and-conquer algorithm to help the world in a smaller (but still
meaningful) way.

~~~
pryelluw
I don't normally talk about this, but here is what you are missing:

Businesses that make (real) money revolve around one of two ideas:

\- They sell shovels

\- They are middlemen (middlepeople?)

They sell shovels.

This is stolen from the old saying that during the American gold rush the
people who made the money were the ones selling shovels. Or facilitating
others to go and do what they wanted (in this case, chase a wild dream).

Uber, the example you used, sells shovels. It lets people make money from
their car. Real money. Not peanuts. Your idea to sell food to neighbors didn't
have the potential to make much money. You weren't selling shovels, you were
selling work (cooking is hard work).

Now, let's take your current business (which you list in your profile). You
sell shovels because you help companies get what they what in terms of
engineering management (lots of money to be made there). Better engineering
processes usually trickles down into the finances. In a way, you are selling
money.

They are middlemen.

A middleman is someone who simply takes a cut for facilitating something. They
import beer from somewhere else and by doing that they jack up the price a
little bit and resell it to you. This is a very straightforward mechanic.

Amazon is one of the best middlemen out there right now. It even changed the
game by reducing the friction in selling online. Their whole "fulfilled by
Amazon" approach is a classic middlemen tactic.

Middlemen sell the idea that they make getting what you want easier.

How to apply this to software

Selling shovels: Build a product that makes people money. Ecommerce is still
growing. Do something there.

Be a middleman: Find something to facilitate. Look for inefficiencies. How?
Listen to complaints. People love to complain to someone who listens. Make
some contacts on social media and listen to people. They will show you the
way.

One last thing: don't be stupid. Big ideas are tied to a big ego. You are not
Musk, Jobs, or Gates. Who cares?! Look for small ideas that you can execute
well. And then execute, not for passion or ego, but as a grind. Like a regular
job. Because that's what it is. Good luck.

~~~
skariel123
if I build a gam then what is it as shovel? people will not makemoney out of
it. I'm also not a middleman because there's just me and the end customer, I
vuilt it from scratch. So who am I?!

~~~
pryelluw
No, you are a manufacturer. You are producing a product from raw materials
with the goal of turning a profit. The issue with this model, when applied to
digital products, is that the tolerance for execution is diminutive. A good
idea for a game with great art and music can easily turn into a failure if
some of the game mechanics are off (See no man's land). Video games are one of
the hardest products to produce.

It's important to keep in mind that selling shovels and being a middleman are
not the only options. There are certainly others. Its just that my exoeriences
and studies have pointed to those two being the most profitable in the current
cultural setting.

~~~
dalore
And for games, becoming a middleman like Steam is where the profit is. They
have less risk since they are just facilitating connecting game
"manufacturers" to consumers. They aren't heavily invested in one game. If
it's a flop there are others.

~~~
earenndil
I wouldn't say "where the profit is." There is steam...what else is there?
Microsoft/Sony/Google/Apple marketplaces? Those don't really count because
they control the platform and essentially kill all the alternatives. Gog,
humble bundle, and itch.io are a tiny fraction of steam.

------
ternaryoperator
Edsger Dykstra wrote one of his many famous notes on project selection[1]. In
his case, it was choosing projects for scientific research, but his guidelines
are definitely worth a look:

"Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your
time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the
boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering
how that boundary should be moved forward."

"We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. If we
can find a topic satisfying both desires, we are lucky; if the two targets are
in conflict with each other, let the requirement of scientific soundness
prevail."

"Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the
near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that
problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you."

[1]
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD637.html)

------
evancharles
Customers are also a great source of project ideas. You can pick a customer,
like "small business owner" or "wealth advisor," and interview them.

My favorite question that leads to ideas is "tell me everything you did from
when you started your day until now," and dig into all the annoying/painful
things they mention.

~~~
danicgross
Yes! In many ways, all your _initial_ idea needs to be is a launch pad. Once
you get your foot in the door, you can always refine based on what users tell
you.

Per your point, it's important to _learn from their workflow_ , not _ask them
what they want_. When you ask someone what they want, they often perform
attribute substitution
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution))
and answer a different question.

~~~
got2surf
Great point. Also important that your customers may not even know what is
_possible_ , so they won't know to ask for it directly. Instead, if we ask
_why_ they want something, we can understand their intents - and translate
that into technology.

We've seen this a lot with text analytics - instead of trying to repeat what
humans do manually (reading/annotating), we try to understand the questions
that clients are interested in (the drivers behind their current workflow).

------
greggman
> validate your market

how do you do this? Smartphones existed as PDAs for 10-20yrs before iPhone. If
I had shown someone my Sony Clie and said "if I make this work with your
finger instead of a stylus, simplify the UI, and charge you $80+ a month for
service would you be interested?". except for a few geeks like myself the
answer would have been "no, that stuff is for geeks" for most people and yet
here we are 10 years later and everyone has a smartphone.

So I don't really see how to "validate your market". I've got a few ideas I'm
99% sure would be successful given the correct marketing and PR but because
they are new or at least new for a given country people tell me they don't get
it, not interested. They might be right but it might also just something they
need to correctly ibtroduced to.

Netflix comes up in my mind as an example. It seems obvious but if you'd asked
Mom and Dad if they wanted internet movies 10 yrs ago theyd have looked at you
like your crazy

~~~
dalbasal
Advice like "validate your market," strategies for chicken-egg problems, or
the first point (start from a beachhead).... These are not the same as "get a
good accountant" or "incorporate this way." They're not hurdles to pass with
good advice in specific detail.

These are problems that need clever & creative solutions, and the answers
usually aren't do exactly what you are doing now and also this thing. AirBnB
started around conferences, momentary and local spikes in demand that let them
solve chicken-eggs one user at a time, face to face. This gave them a
beachhead strategy, a hardcore users strategy, chicken-egg strategy, a way of
validating.

The iphone "boiled an ocean." A thousand man years spent in secret. A big
product launch, after which everything about that market changed. It's not an
impossibility, boiling a metaphorical ocean. But, it's risky and mostly out of
bounds to a startup. If a startup wanted to do this, they'd need to find a
different path.

There's a common Henry Ford quote (apocryphal, whatever) about the
pointlessness of asking people. They would have told him to make a faster
horse, supposedly. You can skip market validation in some cases, with historic
products like the iphone, model T, teleportation, cure for baldness or magic
sex dust.

A lot of startup advice is about leveraging the strengths of being new and
flexible. For an Amazon, Walmart or GM, they are locked in to most of what
they do. Startups can adapt everything around a smart strategy.

~~~
vinceguidry
This is good insight, and I upvoted you for it, but it doesn't really answer
his question. Validating your market is business speak for making sure that
you won't lose a ton of money at launch, assuming your execution isn't
horrible.

All you have to do is to collect some amount of interest through something
like a landing page. It won't guarantee runaway success, but it won't break
the bank either.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
It does exactly answer the question. It's just that the answer is not what
most people expect: an algorithm. Some problems have simple solutions, or
simple explanations. Other problems require deep consideration and almost
philosophical shifts in one's mind. There is no algorithm for this problem.
This requires creative process. Creative process is impossible to describe in
a couple of sentences in a way that will be enough to teach it to someone.

------
heinrichhartman
> One strategy is to think of annoyances you have in your life

In this way you will only end up with consumer products. I did this when I was
12 and ended up building a fully automated "egg cutting machine" which solved
my annoyance (and created a ton more) but had little market value. The B2B
market is huge. I am most interested in solving hard problems that large
organizations have with their internal processes. Unfortunately I don't work
for one, so the annoyances I want to solve are not my own.

~~~
fanzhang
The B2B market is huge, but still somewhat smaller than B2C. Look at the top
tech companies by market cap today. Each is one that I've used as a consumer:

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook.

If you think the measure of dollars in top market cap companies isn't
representative of companies a tier lower, this is likewise true for the
highest value YC companies: Dropbox, AirBnB.

As a founder or an investor, it's important not to forget about B2B, but
directionally, thinking B2C is correct.

(This is in contrast to, say, thinking of only game companies if you're a
gamer; most tech company values are indeed not in games.)

------
Roybot
A lot of us make the mistake of waiting for the “right” idea until we decide
to pursue something. Huge mistake.

Joe Gebbia put it nicely by making an analogy to the “gym of
entrepreneurship.” Building a startup is one of those things that you need to
work to get better at over time. Not many founders have many regrets but when
they do express regrets it’s usually them wishing they had started earlier.
Here’s Joes quote from his interview with Tim Ferris.

“People think we woke up and Airbnb was just created out of thin air. That
couldn’t be further from the truth. I hope if there’s any takeaway from the
stories that we’ve talked about today, it’s that there’s a long lineage of
trying things, bumping into walls, getting rejected, failing, reframing that
failure into learning, and trying to continue forward.

And so, by the time Airbnb came around, it was like I’d been in the gym of
entrepreneurship for many years. So, it’s like you don’t wake up and just run
a marathon all of a sudden. Nobody does that. You train for it. So, by the
time it’s ready for race day, your body is conditioned for it. Your muscles
and your system – everything is ready for you to go run 26+ miles.

I think entrepreneurship is the exact same way. I think it’s a misconception
when people look at the magazine covers and they read the stories of a
successful company and they think, “Wow, the people who started that, they
built it and everybody came.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. I think
“Field of Dreams” is probably the worst movie to ever happen to
entrepreneurship. It created this idea, like, “Oh, wow, if you build it, they
will come.” I can tell you, if you build it, they don’t come.

It takes this incredible perseverance and sometimes irrational belief in
yourself to bring something to life in the face of lot of adversity and a lot
of people saying it can’t happen. So, I hope if there’s any takeaway from the
stories that I shared today, it’s that the simple act of spotting an
opportunity, coming up with original solution and then taking that third,
hardest step of putting something into the world, of trying something, putting
your idea into practice – it doesn’t have to be the big idea.

It’s just about being in the gym and doing a rep, the gym of entrepreneurship,
doing curls or something. It’s just getting in the habit of those three
things. You spot an opportunity, you come up with an original solution, and
you put your idea into the world. And the more you can do that, the better you
are at spotting the next opportunity. Airbnb just happened to be a part of the
lineage of all the things I’ve told you that happened before it.”

~~~
fuball63
There was an article on here a little back about how stories like "Netflix
founder got a fee for returning a movie late and got the idea to start
netflix" are entirely misleading.

Everyone has problems, and everyone has ideas how to fix them, especially in
the consumer products space. Everything outside of the idea itself, like
marketing, execution, finance, and customer support are all things that take
practice, or reps as you say, to gain experience which hopefully leads to
instinct.

I think we like these tales because they exaggerate the importance of an idea.

------
TipVFL
I used to make ultra-low budget short films, and I feel like there's a lot of
crossover between planning those projects and planning a product.

One lesson I learned: make a list of your assets and consider them when
deciding on a project. Your assets include the things you own, the skills you
have, and the resources of your network. By creating a project around these
you can maximize your production value, and make a project that no one else
could have made on your budget.

I recently realized that my love of rap, and my connections to the local
community of rappers and hip hop producers, is a huge and unique asset in the
software industry. I'm currently working on a product for rappers, that also
serves as a platform for producers to make money and advertise themselves. My
network has made it really easy to solicit feedback from both my target
audience and my target content providers, and create mutually beneficial zero-
cost licensing agreements.

So far, the response has been huge, lots of passionate support and interesting
suggestions.

------
kzisme
Many times when people ask what to build or work on (much like the author) are
told to focus on things they need - Scratch your own itch! Lately I haven't
really found many things to focus on working on due to this. I highly doubt I
can think of many things in my life that would be close to a "stand up comedy
routine".

I mostly just want to figure out something I can work on in my spare time to
learn outside of work. It doesn't have to be a business (although I wouldn't
be upset if it eventually turned into that), but even having a userbase would
be a fun experience.

------
refrigerator
> Focus on the repeat offenders. The ideas that you keep coming back to.

I totally buy this. Linked to it, I think the it's good to be able to
entertain obviously bad ideas for a short while. You think of an idea because
of some set of underlying prompts, so even if the idea as a whole doesn't have
legs, there are often insights lurking somewhere in it that you'll end up
coming back to.

~~~
drcode
I'm worried though this statement is heavily colored by "survivorship bias"\-
Certainly ultra-successful people are often obsessed with their ideas, but it
does not logically follow that being obsessed with an idea is a good metric to
base decisions on. Just look at all the people obsessed with writing the great
American novel and/or next hit song.

I think what is more important is to focus on ideas for which you have a
comparative advantage
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage))
which frequently, but certainly not always, will mean there's a certain amount
of obsession as a side-effect.

~~~
pascalxus
perhaps it's not the obsession of the idea that counts but rather the
obsession with the Problem you want to solve.

------
CryoLogic
I like the idea of just decide on something to build and than build it. Worst
case scenario you get a learning experience. And I like building things I
enjoy or products I really wish I had. So I get benefit in that way. With
software inputs outside of labor are low, so you won't lose out financially in
most cases.

~~~
goatherders
That is FAR from the worst case scenario.

~~~
edgartaor
In your opinion, what would be the worse case scenario?

~~~
goatherders
Just because you learn something doesn't mean the time isnt wasted. If you try
to make a business of it and it doesn't work...more wasted time. Wasted
relationships. Wasted money. Wasted confidence.

I'm all for the silver lining of having learned something. That's good for
sure. But there are almost always costs when building anything from model cars
to software applications.

~~~
jcadam
> Wasted confidence.

This is probably the biggest factor (money is the least). I've had numerous
failed projects. I have a current project/business (it's in my profile) which
I believe to be in the process of failing. I don't know if I have another one
in me.

Sure, I've learned a lot. From a purely technical standpoint, each new project
has been superior to the one before - and in the case of my latest, I've at
least produced something that _I_ find useful. But, the ego can only take so
much abuse.

Not sure I trust myself with ideas anymore. I need someone to tell me what to
build :)

~~~
goatherders
After my first startup went down in a burst of flames I spent years angry at
everyone and everything like a big black tumor carried inside my heart. It
sounds dramatic but that doesn't make it untrue. I learned a lot but I lost a
lot more.

~~~
hndamien
I currently have one of these tumours.

~~~
lnsru
Take some time off, do something totally different. After my biggest fail I
spent 3 days in water filled caves. New experience partially erased these bad
emotions. But they are not completely gone even after 10 years.

------
wolfgke
To quote from the text:

"Focus on the repeat offenders. The ideas that you keep coming back to. When I
think of a new idea, I get deeply infected with it. It takes over my mind.
It’s all I can think about. Over time, most of the ideas fade. But a choice
few keep on coming back. Pay attention to those. You know you’ve got something
good when you’re thinking about it in the shower.

Tell your friends what you’re doing. This accomplishes two goals. First,
you’ll refine your idea. Conversation is a very powerful way of sharpening
your own thoughts. Second, you’ll find yourself more motivated to finish your
project. Another common refrain I hear is “I’m not good at self-motivating
myself”. All this means is that you just don’t see the benefit of doing a
certain thing. You can hack that feedback loop by committing to others
(especially people you respect), who you won’t want to let down.

Make sure you enjoy thinking about it. Your primary edge as a founder will be
the number of hours you spent thinking about the specific problem. Over time,
you should accumulate more hours than almost anyone on earth. This will only
work if it doesn’t feel like a chore. If you genuinely are fascinated by the
problem."

The problem is: I love to think (and sometimes solve) deep mathematical
questions. I also love to talk about them all the time. The problem is: hardly
anybody except me seems to care about them. So it does not seem like a good
startup idea, even though it satisfies the critera.

~~~
BjoernKW
> The problem is: hardly anybody except me seems to care about them.

I'm not so sure. Being able to solve hard mathematical problems probably is a
niche problem but that doesn't mean you're the only one experiencing it.

Fortunately, it's not limited locally but can easily be tackled at a global
scale, i.e. by addressing potential customers around the world.

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people interested in pondering deep
mathematical questions and quite a few might be willing to pay a monthly fee
for having access to a community that helps them with doing so.

There are all sorts of online communities for all sorts of weird and
extraordinary stuff. Why not one dedicated to solving hard mathematical
problems?

------
mncharity
I'd like to see more discussion about different strategies for how to manage
and live with your "idea faucet".

When day after day, you frequently notice people's "pain points", and low-
hanging opportunities for reducing system dysfunction, you quickly accumulate
a backlog. Which makes it a triage problem. With the associated burdens of "I
think I see how I might make this better... and instead I'm going to walk
away".

As health professional, you get advice and support on dealing with your limits
with respect to people's often unhappy outcomes.

We don't seem to do that much.

There's some around a consultant's limits of professional responsibility.
There's hierarchical workplace subordination - "above my pay grade", "not my
call". And professional craftsmanship. There's a lot of entrepreneurial
mission focus - find one viable/important idea to pursue, and focus narrowly
on that. And the seemingly common "it's just a job, to support things like
family, that actually matter".

Around here, there's a lot of upbeat use of status quo as baseline. If my
product helps people, it's a win. If it doesn't, a null. Anyone else's
problems... they're not my market, not my problem.

Market opportunity root cause analysis sometimes turns up a happy "A just
hasn't talked to B yet". But sometimes turns up noisome tangles of "I'd be
fine with not having seen this" ugliness.

I've seen a great many posts on finding your first viable idea. But I've seen
very few posts on remaining ok with leaving the idea faucet running, once it
gets going.

------
ccostes
I like the advice to actively record your ideas (every little one). Thinking
about things in abstract, it can seem like all the good problems are solved,
but listed out on paper it is a lot easier to analyze and notice patterns.

------
tudelo
“everything in the world was created by people no smarter than you”.

Is there actually any validity to that? Assuming you is a human of average
intelligence...

~~~
iancmceachern
I think this quote is less about the majority, or the absolute truth and more
about encouraging that one person who is to not get tripped up on the way
there. It may not be true for most, but it's true for a few, and those few
need encouragement and support to change the world.

~~~
tudelo
I think you are right that people do not need much encouragement. I still
don't think saying that most successful people are of average intelligence is
a "smart" thing to say unless it is true. I don't think it is true at all but
I was opening up the floor for a fact or two. In the end, whatever helps
someone make a net positive change is good so maybe i'm just being annoying :)

------
illwrks
The best bit of advice I saw (on HN no less) that helped frame this in my mind
was "every spreadsheet is an opportunity". This was in reference to processes
within a company, where employees use spreadsheets to manage data, etc.

------
baddash
I don't believe it's true that "you are whatever you tell yourself you are".
Obviously you don't change if you tell yourself you're this or that because it
takes more than that to change yourself. And also, this sounds like something
you'd read in The Secret: all it takes to make something happen is to believe
in it or think of it.

However, this is most likely not what Daniel really meant. In the same
paragraph, he refers to a person who literally doesn't believe that they have
the idea-generating ability. So then, what he really meant is related to
someone's belief in their possession of ability to do something or make
something happen. In other words, their belief in their power.

So, a better articulation would be: your belief in your power affects your
power. Which makes sense; if you don't actually believe you have power, you
won't try to use it, and you'll have effectively crippled your power.

This comment might seem trivial at this point, but I think the principle
behind it is important. Namely, the principle of precise and accurate
articulation of thought. The new articulation I presented is accurate,
empowering, and useful. A person can directly use it and it will have a
positive effect. The old articulation is confusing, inaccurate, and untrue,
which I don't intend to say as an insult or an attack, but rather intend to
say as an accurate description of how I understand it.

Now, you might think, "I understood what it meant given the context, and so
did you, so what is the point of accurately articulating it?" I believe it is
true that I understood it given context because I believe that's how I came to
form the new articulation. However, the effect of understanding an idea from
an inaccurate phrasing or wording is that the person doesn't have a proper
articulation to give form to the idea, and so it stays formless, in the
subconscious, and cannot be directly used, and the person isn't consciously
aware of it. The only effect it has is that it influences conscious thought
and requires annoying deconstruction of thought patterns to catch if it's a
bad idea ("Why do I think that?").

In contrast, proper articulation increases a person's consciousness, self-
awareness, power, and gives life and color to their minds as thoughts are
being fully expressed (expression leads to colorfulness, lushness, etc. etc.).
So your PSA for today is: strive for precise, accurate articulation in all of
your thoughts. :)

------
keithnz
I've always had lots of ideas, just none I've wanted to follow through on, now
I'm in the early stages of an idea I think will be useful ( at least it will
be for me ). It's an idea that was simplified out of another idea that's just
too large for me to tackle at the moment. In fact it's an idea that's been
part of a variety of other ideas. It's also part of a number of other peoples
products, and is probably one of the trickier bits of their products, but it's
not a product in itself.

So, at the moment, my market size is at least 1, because I want it.

Odd thing is, given I have free range on everything, I'm suffering tech choice
anxiety, which is slowing me down a bit.

~~~
andai
Use C#.

~~~
keithnz
I am using C# on both .net core and framework for the bulk of it.

~~~
suprfnk
Are you running into problems because of it? Or what's causing the anxiety?

------
jonbarker
I totally agree with this entire article, however the author may want to fix
this awkward sentence: "Travis Kalanick started Uber was a hack to split a few
private cars with his friends."

------
joshschoen
I'd love to have a peek at Daniel's idea list :)

------
jasonlotito
Find the duct tape.

