

Ask HN: How to find an idea for a product / genuine need? - smartial_arts

Dear HN,<p>I have quit my job recently with an idea of spending some time on need finding and further customer and product development.<p>My initial plan is to catch up with as many various small to medium business owners and try to figure out what sort of problems they may be having. Admittedly, this is just one way of finding a need / idea for a product.<p>How would you approach this task, or may be have already approached it in the past?<p>Thank you!
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tgflynn
I left a corporate job a couple of years ago to pursue technology development
in areas that I think will be making a huge impact across all industries in
the near future, notably computer vision and artificial intelligence.

One of my biggest problems is that though I have many ideas about how to
implement advanced technologies I haven't had much luck finding intersections
between the following requirements :

1) Problems of a scale that don't require a large team to achieve meaningful
results (ie. no competing with IBM at natural language query or building
humanoid robots).

2) Problems for which people with money are willing to pay for solutions.

Generally speaking I have few social connections and most of the ones I do
have haven't proved very helpful in meeting my goals.

I too believed (and to an extent still do) that there can be good
opportunities in meeting the needs of smaller businesses. However to date my
only attempt at this sort of thing yielded no results. You can read about my
idea here : <http://cogniception.com/products/rmds.html>. I sent out a dozen
or so emails to restaurants in my vicinity but didn't receive a single
response.

I think that one of the problems is that there is a tremendous gulf in
knowledge between someone like me who has worked with these types of
technologies and understands what they can accomplish and small business
people who's concept of what computers can do doesn't extend much beyond Word
and Excel.

If you're interested maybe we could work together. At the very least you seem
to have a greater interest than I in the social aspects of business. I'm
definitely open to business ventures with anyone who would be able and willing
to help with business development, both at the stage of identifying good
matches between business needs and my technology (ie, pre-product development)
and with actual sales once products have been developed.

~~~
atomical
"I sent out a dozen or so emails to restaurants in my vicinity but didn't
receive a single response."

You need to call them.

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scottc
Well, first off, you're already on the right track. So many "entrepreneurs"
start off with some idea and try to make problems "fit" this idea. You've
started by trying to first identify problems.

Disclaimer: I'm pretty new to this too.

I obtain ideas by talking to friends/family about areas they're expert in.
Sometimes I'll bounce ideas off of people in my network. Sometimes I'll check
out stuff from <http://ideaswatch.com> too.

Then I'll try to minimally validate the idea and run through my "filter". It's
a list of questions and validation methods I've obtained from the web.

Example: A couple weeks ago I talked to a friend about improving comic book
store inventory systems. So I went to the local comic shop, and spent some
time talking to the owner about his story - how he opened the store.

I mentioned I am a web developer and like solving problems. I asked if we
could meetup the next day and discuss some of his day-to-day problems in the
shop.

Well we did meetup and it turns out he doesn't really have problems in regard
to inventory management (but does in other areas).

This is just my approach but I'd love to hear what does and doesn't work for
you in the future.

~~~
smartial_arts
Wow, I must say this is brilliant - the sort of answer I am looking for!

Would you be able to share what your "filter" is? I.e. what sort of questions
do you ask when evaluating new product idea?

Thanks!

~~~
scottc
I'll be posting a video about this tomorrow/Tuesday so hopefully you can wait
till then. Definitely start by googling "lean startup machine validation
board". Watch those videos.

~~~
smartial_arts
Dude, totally awesome video, thanks! Loved the idea of using Graigslist for
assumption validation too.

~~~
scottc
Hey so I posted a video that talks about validating ideas. There is a link to
a big list of questions I've compiled.

~~~
smartial_arts
Only found that link in your profile :) Thanks!

PS I wish HN notified users of replies...

