

Ask HN: I know how to build, but not what to build. I can haz help? - zafriedman

Title is pretty self explanatory, but the catch is that the following are NOT acceptable answers:<p>Anything related to the Lean Startup
Anything related to Customer Development
Anything related to any other form of fanboy, wantrepreneur bullshit<p>Disclaimer: I'm not saying that these above references are bad (except maybe the last one), nor am I implying that the third is descriptive of the first two, I just think they are overused. Trying to tease out some new ideas here.
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mindcrime
Are you trying to build a business, or do you just want a hobby project? If
you want a hobby, I can give you all sorts of ideas. If you want to build a
business, I have serious questions about your mindset if you think "lean
startup" principles or customer development are "fanboy, wantrepreneur
bullshit."

That said, there have been several similar questions in the past week or two,
with some good answers. See:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4119534>

and

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4106655>

among others.

~~~
zafriedman
Thanks for the response. A few things:

The disclaimer was meant to say that I'm not labeling those as such, just that
they seem overused to me. I'm also not looking for a startup idea.

Can I ask what specifically you have used successfully and with what results
have come of applying the Lean Startup methodology? It also scares me
regarding the community of entrepreneurs out there when someone questions the
mindset of someone taking a contrarian view to the Lean Startup. Putting shit
out in the consumer space especially can be an instant death, and that's fact
not opinion. If I was working for a B2B startup I would be much more likely to
agree with you.

~~~
mindcrime
_Can I ask what specifically you have used successfully and with what results
have come of applying the Lean Startup methodology?_

It's early to say, as we're still in the first phase of Customer Development
at the moment. But we've been following the methodology fairly closely to "by
the book" and feel pretty good about what we've learned as we've gone. As
we're starting to ask customers to prioritize the problems we're discussing in
the Problem Presentation phase, we're expecting that will help us start to
prioritize feature development. Also, some of the stuff from the problem
hypothesis brief will probably transfer fairly directly into marketing
collateral.

 _It also scares me regarding the community of entrepreneurs out there when
someone questions the mindset of someone taking a contrarian view to the Lean
Startup._

Sure, that makes sense. I'm a contrarian by nature myself, and I always
advocate questioning orthodoxy. That said, I'm a big fan of the Customer
Development methodology so far.

 _Putting shit out in the consumer space especially can be an instant death,
and that's fact not opinion. If I was working for a B2B startup I would be
much more likely to agree with you._

Yeah, we're doing B2B, so my take may be a bit different than somebody who's
doing a consumer app.

------
Arun2009
Freelance on sites like elance. Seriously.

As a developer, you never know what kind of applications people need or are
looking to create, but you get ideas from the projects that are posted. Most
projects I'm interested in are clones with a "twist". For example, there was a
request to clone zocdoc, but with a twist. There was project for rental items
management software that I worked on. Another that combined invoicing and job
scheduling for people such as plumbers and landscapers. Currently I'm working
on a clone of elance but for a different industry. I would have known NONE of
this if I weren't freelancing.

