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Comment by fy20 | Hacker News Reader

> It dawned on me then that - brilliant though he is (and he really is: one of the best all round devs I know) - he couldn't see the benefit because he 1) was too good at what he did that he didn't see that most people aren't like him, and 2) he simply wasn't the audience.

Does anyone have any tips on how to avoid this or books to read, as I feel like I have this problem. I've been trying for nearly a decade to start a profitable side project, but any ideas I come up with are too technical so end up being hard to sell and/or complicated to build. If someone told me of an idea like this I'd probably also dismiss it :-)

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Find someone (I’m one!) who is sits between nerdery and business requirements. I spend 90% of my time being a sort of nerd-translation layer between dev / design people and clients. I’m sometimes frustrated by being a generalist (especially when I see the insane talent here on HN!) but it does serve a good purpose!

Also: try and unpick some of the successful business ideas (the real big ones!) and work out at a really high level what they do. Dropbox - already mentioned here - as an example, did one thing: kept that folder in sync wherever you went. That’s easy to explain to a non nerd, it’s blindingly useful for anyone in any work or home environment.

I’ve also found that identifying sources of pain is a really good start. Ask your average office worker what they hate most of all and then figure out if you can reduce even some of that pain just a little bit.

Become a contractor doing this stuff for clients. I do bookkeeping currently, which is super easy for me, but in trying to train clients who want to do it themselves, and in general just working with all kinds of business owners, I see so much about what “normal” people struggle with.

When I first started doing it, I thought what I did was so easy, there’s already lots of software to help, soooo thought clients could just do it themselves if you showed them how. But I’ve learned so much of it is so hard for people with no background in it, and also so hard for people who don’t Google stuff.

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