Ask YC: What should people want that they don't? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: What should people want that they don't?

6 pointsxlnt14 comments

What important projects is "Build something people want" leaving out?

Transparent, secure, end-to-end encryption of communications. The PGP/GPG folks have been telling us "eat your vegetables" for 25+ years now, to little effect.

Long-term internet archives aka public record.

Free as in speech software as the default.

Data and format portability.

Why doesn't "build it and they will come" solve these issues?

They're not pain points. Solving them doesn't improve convenience.

I think that the line "build something people want" is not particularly useful. It's been said that "marketing is the art of making people want what you have". There are plenty of examples of things that people didn't want because they didn't exist, from Coca Cola to Twitter. I never imagined that I wanted an ipod shuffle until I tried one and now I don't leave home without it. Had it never been made, I still wouldn't know.

Its the lack of information. Most people are clueless about their surroundings...so pretty much anything where people are ignorant would fall under that category.

So pretty much anything privacy related.

When I present ideas about parenting people say "Are you a parent?"

That is private and irrelevant information, but they keep pestering me about it. Can you make a start up to solve this problem please? i want more privacy. thanks :)

That's a dangerous question to ask, because if you have to wonder what you want people to want, they probably don't really know either and won't see the value of your idea. It seems that best and most useful ideas tend to grow naturally and looking too hard for a problem to solve will probably end up solving a non-problem.

For a good example of this, see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html

Information: A way of checking and tracking the actual polling processes of published opinion polls, including exact questions asked and calculations of margin of error. A way of tracking your person diets intake of different ingredient types, (transfats, hfcs, etc.) and rank health impacts. Meshes of lobbyists, industries, politicians involved in each vote. I can think of many more places where people should want more information but don't.

> A way of tracking your person diets intake

(along that line) The data that companies have about you available to you in a machine readable format. (e.g. your grocery receipts)

People might not always know what they want. An example: my mother needs a simple, easy to use computers that does barely more than surfing in the internet, manage her photos and write some documents. But she thinks she needs a full-blown PC with Windows Vista just because her friends have one.

If you build something they should want it but don't, then you have 2 problems, building it and convincing them that they should want it.

Since the former is difficult and the latter is very difficult, I'd just stick to building something they know they want.

How do you know what that is? Ask them. People aren't bashful when their hair is on fire.

One problem is that what people want is not always what they say they want. I'm sure lots of people would say they want news shows without fluff, healthy fast food, a funny partner who enjoys leisurely walks on the beach, etc. On the other hand you have the "guilty pleasures" that people won't admit to. As a mild example, I dislike CNN but I still go to their site once in a while.

One more thing is that what people want (even when they tell the truth) is not necessarily what they will pay for, or at least pay enough to make it profitable. I want a flying car with a high mpg at the price of a regular car. I'd buy a Segway for $500.

The truth is that there are no formulas for creating a hit. It's a matter of persistence and iteration. Create something, see how people like it, make it better/cheaper depending on what they want, keep iterating. Stay focused and execute better than your competition. Of course, easier said than done.

Agree to all of it.

I'm just suggesting that it's easier to scratch the itch they claim to have than to scratch the itch you think they should be claiming to have.

Either way, you have a lot of work to do.

if the goal is to get rich, i absolutely agree with you.

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