[HN Gopher] What Should You Build?
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What Should You Build?
Author : jamiegreen
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-06-10 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (exponentially.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (exponentially.substack.com)
| tikkun wrote:
| Related:
|
| Paul Graham: "Almost all founders learn brutal lessons during the
| first year, but some learn them much more quickly. Obviously
| those founders are more likely to succeed. So it could be a
| useful heuristic to ask, say 6 to 12 months in, "Have we learned
| our brutal lesson yet?"" "The most common lesson is that
| customers don't want what you're making. The next most common is
| that it isn't possible to make it, or at least to make it
| profitably."
|
| Can you make it? Will people want that? Will it make money?
| tomxor wrote:
| > The most common lesson is that customers don't want what
| you're making.
|
| It might be tempting to think this will always be obvious,
| which is dangerous because other scenarios can appear to be
| very similar on the surface. e.g the classic, your customers
| are asking for "a faster horse".
|
| You don't have to be making something as world changing as a
| car, but if you are trying to get people to switch from a niche
| horse to a niche car, it simply takes time for people to adjust
| to your solutions different perspective, to realise that many
| of the things they are asking for are not fundamental to the
| problem but artificial, ancillary parts of the old solution.
|
| You can end up second guessing yourself a lot while waiting for
| the turning point that validates your idea - speaking from
| experience. To make things more complicated I think there are
| also going to be scenarios where you are making a car which is
| only marginally better than a horse, and the fundamental change
| to approach is just not worth it to people - differentiating
| all these subtly different things from customers simply not
| wanting it is not easy, I think people just need to think very
| deeply about their products and customers to reach the right
| answers.
| esafak wrote:
| It is an unnerving situation for founders, because the product
| might sell if you just added a critical feature, focused on a
| specific segment, changed the pricing model, etc. You could be
| one step away from success. Or you might not. It takes luck,
| pluck, and faith.
| tikkun wrote:
| That part is easier if you're building for yourself.
|
| Related PG tweet: "When young founders build something that
| they don't want themselves but that they believe some group
| of other people want, 90% of the time they're building
| something no one wants."
|
| And also related: https://mitchellh.com/writing/building-
| large-technical-proje...
| tararara wrote:
| What makes this important lesson harder is that the image of a
| founder has become an identity for so many young and talented
| people. Getting past that and wiping it out to start again, is
| really hard.
| segh wrote:
| Two related questions to ask yourself as an early founder:
|
| 1. If my company were to fail, why would it have happened? 2.
| What would have to be true in order for the company to succeed?
|
| (From Rob Fitzpatrick's "The Mom Test")
| smcleod wrote:
| How about building something that's good for the planet?
|
| Or something that significantly reduces people's living costs?
|
| Or something to increase equality and equity?
|
| There is far too much priority placed on making profits in tech
| and not nearly enough doing what's actually good for people.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Those aren't ideas for software. They're not even platitudes.
| It's just vague discontented murmuring. More ideas, less
| pretending to be superior.
| guiriduro wrote:
| Software absolutely can be good for the planet, e.g. if it
| disintermediates wasteful supply chains by finding
| alternatives, or optimises planning for a lower carbon
| footprint, or surfaces better measurement and tracking data.
| Or any of a hundred other use cases we haven't even thought
| of yet.
| Veen wrote:
| What are you doing that contributes to those ends (aside from
| sermonizing on forums)? I had a quick look at the website
| linked in your bio, and it seems you're a working stiff toiling
| for a for-profit company, building shit for other for-profit
| companies, just like the rest of us.
| smcleod wrote:
| I'm definitely no angel - I just think the normalisation of
| chasing profits and the culture it's created is broken.
|
| Years back I took a (big) pay cut to work with a non-profit.
| We brought affordable internet to low income and refugee
| status apartment buildings, developed tools to help those
| that are homeless or at risk of becoming, wrote at-cost
| software for the non-profit and community health sector. I
| was there for 7 years as their head of platform engineering
| and automation. A very rewarding experience.
| spacephysics wrote:
| The reality is people put them and their family first.
| Those that have they luxury to pursue such endeavors,
| should if they want to. Others, after a 9-5 and spending
| time with their loved ones, want to just decompress. And
| that's okay.
|
| Others, with the little time they have left, want to work
| towards not working for someone. _That_ should be what's
| encouraged. Because _that_ is more likely to produce jobs,
| give freedom to those that profit, and has a higher chance
| of something good happening (versus working for a
| corporation until retirement - which is perfectly fine, but
| a path none the less)
|
| I also have a gripe with individual citizens being
| responsible and taking the burden of climate change. Why
| should the working class, whose taxes have gone up, wages
| stagnated, be continually punished with higher costs due to
| proposed carbon taxes, or initiatives that drive the price
| of staples up purely due to climate change. That just
| foments resentment and contributes to the opposite of such
| activists goals.
|
| Policies are too one sided. We should be pushing for
| reasonable policies, that acknowledge the enormous progress
| oil and gas has given the world, and understand changing it
| rapidly will cause more harm to people than good, and in
| all likelihood will delay projects. We should look at
| proven solutions, like nuclear technology. Invest in
| renewables, in research fusion research and the likes.
|
| But the vast majority of social platforms represents a very
| very small percentage of people, and those that actually
| tweet/post/etc represent an even smaller percentage.
|
| The hard truth is when things like gas and food increases,
| Americans notice that pain far more than what may happen 30
| years from now. They care about how their family will do in
| the next week, month, and few years.
|
| Punishing them to try and understand the problems via
| monetary taxes, or guilting them to participate in
| activists activities, or pushing education material that
| puts shame to what real education should stand for, won't
| work. It will backfire.
| poisonborz wrote:
| So the article comes up with the grand firework of a thought of
|
| > Make something that people want
|
| I still find this kinda complicated to follow in practice. Make
| something that you want. What you need, day to day at best. You
| longed it for long, searched all the possibilities and it just
| doesn't exist yet. It helps with motivation, and you know the
| basics to start from. Other people/the market can then help steer
| it in the right direction.
| jamiegreen wrote:
| Yeah I fully agree doing this is super hard in practice. If you
| want it, for sure that can be a great place to start!
|
| Also, although "make something people want" is pretty simple,
| still people forget it all the time (Including me btw). So it's
| as much a self reminder as anything!
| beezlewax wrote:
| The thing is people often don't know what they want. You can
| show them an innovative solution to a problem they were having
| and they might want that.
| vsareto wrote:
| I still don't know a good source for finding business problems to
| solve. You end up having to talk to people which is slow and
| won't give you a large list. Ideally I'd want a huge list to pick
| from.
| pierat wrote:
| Was thinking about this with my SO doing fiber arts today.
|
| Was thinking about a small 2d scanner/ccd camera in the profile
| of a SpO2 sensor. Connects with Bluetooth. Would take pictures of
| garments, fabric, yarn, etc for purposes of color matching in a
| store.
|
| The app would have color calibration with white LEDs. 2 main
| functions: "store" and "match". Store would allow storing color
| samples. Match would show the samples you have and %fit to the
| stored sample/samples.
|
| Could easily integrate with online stores for matching colors as
| well.
|
| But yeah, I don't have the capital to do this. Maybe someone else
| can run with it.
| fellowmartian wrote:
| Sounds like you can make it with an iPhone app and a 3d printed
| lens cover. Obtain all iPhone models, run calibration for each
| with known samples, and store the profiles.
|
| It'll work similarly to those heart rate measurement apps.
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| Have you seen https://colormuse.io/ ? I absolutely love mine.
| Seems to do what you're looking for.
| lattalayta wrote:
| https://www.nixsensor.com/ is another option in this space
| pierat wrote:
| Wow, go figure. Thats pretty much what I was envisioning.
|
| Except it's pretty pricy. I was also thinking a clip-based
| device, but I can see how an eyeglass would also be good.
|
| (I was thinking of a clip so you could have white balanced
| LEDs on the same and opposite sides of the ccd chip.)
|
| But yeah, thats definitely the thing. Thank you!
| bradknowles wrote:
| There are lots of spot colorimeter/spectrophotometer devices.
| A more famous one is the Pantone CapSure. Unfortunately,
| while that device is calibrated, it's only going to match to
| the nearest Pantone certified color, as opposed to capturing
| and storing the color that was actually sampled.
|
| Better spot colorimeter devices will have two different
| calibrated white LEDs and use both of them in sequence, to
| get a more accurate measurement of the true color of the
| object you're sampling.
|
| The big trick with these devices is the color library that
| they're matching against. Sometimes you really do want to
| match against the Pantone library, and I don't believe any
| devices other than the official Pantone CapSure can actually
| measure against that library. But most paint manufacturers,
| etc... have their own color library, and there are a lot of
| other color libraries out there. And many of those libraries
| are exclusively licensed to only one particular spot
| colorimeter device.
|
| So, sometimes you need to have multiple spot
| colorimeters/spectrophotometers in order to be able to use
| all the libraries you want.
|
| Yes, I have several, including the Pantone CapSure and the
| ColorMuse. No, none of them are perfect. They're all missing
| one or more libraries that I might want to use.
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