
Ask HN: Why is there still guessing involved in “Make something people want”? - itsevrgrn
On the bottom of Y Combinator&#x27;s website, it says &quot;Make something people want.&quot; There are troves of data about the American consumer and information about people&#x27;s desires is so public and easy to obtain. Why is there no easy way to figure out what people want so you can just focus on building said thing?
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mindcrime
_" If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster
horse'"_ ~~ Henry Ford

OK, that's likely apocryphal, but the overall point is kinda valid. People
don't always know what they want - _because they don 't always know what is
possible_.

So the real question requires digging deeper... it's not enough to know "I
want a faster horse", you need to know that they really mean "I want to get
there faster, and be able to travel much further without having to stop and
feed/rest the horse, and I want to travel inside a heated/cooled conveyance,
and I want music while I'm in transit" and so on.

Now you might argue "Well, the customer _could_ have said all of that" and in
a pedantic sense you'd be right. But the typical customer wouldn't have had
the imagination to even _think_ that stuff because it would have seemed like
science fiction at the time.

I think that's the real key to entrepreneurship: combining deeper insights
about what people _really_ want/need (based on their words and/or observed
actions) with a deep understanding of what's possible at the bleeding edge of
technology, and using that combination to build something awesome.

Of course that's easier said than done. I mean, I have no idea how to do it
myself. But one can keep trying...

~~~
itsevrgrn
I think your comments have serious merit. That being said many people are
focused on building a faster horse that nobody even wants. Isn't it strange
that this is still a thing?

What I am saying is that the "deeper insights about what people really
want/need (based on their words and/or observed actions)" aren't really that
deep when you consider the amount of information available. Its surprising to
me that people like you and me rely on people's claims to develop a hypothesis
and test ideas. Shouldn't it be easy to get insights on a large portion of the
population?

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, I think you have a point. I'm not sure existing data is enough to
generate ideas about all potential new products though, since behavior is
shaped by what things/ideas/knowledge we have access to today. That is, what
data is going to tell you that somebody wants a product that they can't even
imagine yet?

So I'd think consumer behavior data / demographic data / etc. is a useful
guide, but I'm not sure it's sufficient in and of itself.

All of that said, Alan Kay said something interesting in a set of
lectures[1][2] he did a year or so ago. He brought up the idea of basing new
product ideas on "Human Univerals", or universal aspects of human nature that
really don't vary. A writer named Donald Brown wrote a book literally titled
_Human Univerals_ [3] which catalogs a number of these (a lot of them are
pretty obvious though: food, shelter, sex, etc.). Kay suggested reading this
book, pick one of the human univerals, and figure out a way to use technology
to address that.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0)

[3]: [https://www.amazon.com/Human-Universals-Donald-
Brown/dp/0070...](https://www.amazon.com/Human-Universals-Donald-
Brown/dp/007008209X)

------
wmf
Everything that people want that you can easily figure out already exits.
Startups have to create things that people don't even know they want.

~~~
itsevrgrn
I don't think that is necessarily true. You might be able to tell using
information from a data broker like Acxiom or search engine data that people
are not satisfied with the current options for buying LED strips, for example.

------
baccheion
Most aren't as good/perceptive as they claim. Also, it became clear many years
ago that founders usually need everything spelt out for them. Any product that
"hits" usually does so due to luck rather than skill. Also, "me too" is
consistently louder than vision.

While mountains of data may exist, most don't seek it out, and even if they
did, wouldn't know how to process/interpret what's shown.

That is, it's all wide open if you know where to look. While some major
offerings are satisfactory enough to make it harder to break in, many aren't
that great or there's room for competing products.

~~~
itsevrgrn
> That is, it's all wide open if you know where to look

I believe you are right. My whole point is that I am surprised that process is
not easier.

