
After 3 years of trial and error, help me find a real problem worth solving - swhs
Hey guys,<p>I&#x27;ve been building products for a few years, but I&#x27;ve made the mistake of jumping to coding too soon.<p>This time I want to do the right thing and find a real problem to solve and that&#x27;s where I need your help.<p>I am doing so called &quot;Idea extraction&quot; calls.<p>The call is simply about the things that you encounter in your business, aiming to find a problem big enough that you&#x27;d actually pay for.<p>If you have 30 minutes to talk, let me know: michal.hantl@gmail.com<p>Thanks!
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ThomPete
Before you do anything go and read this.

[http://000fff.org/the-problem-with-problems](http://000fff.org/the-problem-
with-problems)

I am hoping this will give you some ideas you might not have thought about
before about how to find those problems. Let me know if you want to talk about
it.

Your hunch about finding problems to solve i right on. Now the trick becomes
finding interesting problems.

The essay also references an ASK HN thread I did a while back. There are
plenty of problems out there, the trick is to get into proximity of those who
experience them.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007)

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GFischer
You're doing the right thing in calling people first before diving into code,
but I suggest you do so as part of a process - see Steve Blank's Customer
Development methodology:

[http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-
custome...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-customer-
development.html)

[http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-
development-...](http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-
methodology-presentation)

Also, what kind of products are you building? Developer tools? B2C? B2B?
Ideally you should build something at least tangentially related to your
domain expertise or tools expertise.

