See a problem. Figure out how many people it is a problem for. Figure out why no one else has solved that problem. Figure out if you know how to solve the problem. Figure out how much folks would be willing to pay for a solution to the problem. If you asses you are able to be fairly compensated (over long periods of time) for solving the problem after all your costs of solving it are reconciled: Commit to spending vast amounts of your resource to exploring and productizing the solution to said problem. This isn't the advice the author gives. However, here is another post written by the same author: https://rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-shutdown/