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Eh, at the same time, I think the problem a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of "what the market wants", and therefore build something that nobody wants.

If you can find a perfect intersection, that's beautiful, but probably uncommon. Some of the most lucrative businesses are stuff like (anti)fraud/security/payments that is pretty darn drab.

I see two conflicting motivations here and everyone has to decide for a tradeoff between these two: Being happy and being rich(er).

Do what the Market wants means making a tradeoff in favor of earning more (and becoming rich(er)).

Doing what you want to do means making a tradeoff in favor of your happiness. You will perhaps earn less, but what you do is more in tune with your values.

A tradeoff is not always required and both of these motivations may become synergies, but in the authors case, I think this is what happened.

There's a reason those are lucrative businesses, regulation around them (correctly) prohibits new entrants. Probably not a great idea for a small team to try and enter those markets unless you genuinely have some secret sauce / niche.

I do agree 'what you are interested in' is often wrong, that's a good starting point for ideas but after that you need to see if there is an actual market there.

There's something to be said for building out your vision and testing whether others are interested. It was refreshing to see the grandparent post because the usual startup advice seems to be to abandon your vision entirely and build some average SaaS thing that's a composite of other successful things. (a) I don't think that actually works and (b) if people want to do that, why not just get a job, if you're effectively going to be just as constrained. It's much more fun to try and take a risk, if entrepreneurship is the space you want to play in.

> they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of "what the market wants"

One sure difference between these two things is that you absolutely know what you are interested in, but your opinions about what the market wants are going to be speculative until you have customers.

edit: i.e. judging what you think is beautiful vs. a Keynesian beauty contest.

I agree with pretty much this whole chain of comments, at least in spirit.

As someone who has turned his interests into his business, it really can be tough. I have always loved infrastructure, and I have always loved maintaining certain applications and workload types.

On the one hand, you do start to understand after awhile what the “MVP” looks like. On the other hand you can eventually fairly well predict what your top feature requests will be right out of the gate.

Integrating the two effectively while actually getting something out the door can be a real challenge. I have criticized many firms and offerings for not having “basic feature X,” but as someone who is building a product that’s effectively never complete, I’m sure someone could say that to me too, about at least a few things. Some come immediately to mind.

And I’m still sort of surprised at times by what my own customers do and do not want or ask for, or even care about. When my interests are aligned with theirs, the product/service can move forward really quickly. When they’re not, it can be a struggle to iterate effectively.

As a fellow someone who turned his interest into a business (that I'm still currently running) I agree it's a challenge but having a career as an employee is also challenging in a different way.

For example I found having to seem like a good employee to my boss by looking busy and not leaving before at least 6pm a sort of stress I don't have now that I don't have a boss - I don't have to pretend I'm working at least 40h/w if I manage to do what I need to in less and go pick up my kids from school in the early afternoon some days.

At the end of the day although I'm more stressed in some ways (and less in others), I've never been as happy as an employee as I have been running my own company. You can even learn to enjoy the new aspects of your work that have to do with running a business and adapting to the market.

Like you I also learned a lot about aspects that I never understood as an employee and I'm now a lot more careful before judging other people's actions without having all the context (sometimes it makes sense from the inside)!

For all i’ve seen over the many years in the industry i’m pretty sure founders who make only things they’re interested in are a pretty small club. The vast majority of all the crap and startups you’re seeing here are doing exactly what they believe is „what the market wants“ because that’s what they’re being taught all the time here. Heck, most of Show HN gives me rather „what the market wants“ vibes let alone YC applications.

With ChatGPT it is worse: it is a stream of bots based on what people hope the market wants

I disagree with that. If you make what you want, you at least have one user. If you make what you think other people want, you might end up with zero!

Nobody wanted an open-source Unix-like OS, a keyboardless touch screen with third-party apps, a mini hard drive with a display and headphone jack tacked on, maps that could be infinitely panned instead of clicking arrows, etc. But they ended up being some of the defining products of our time.

The worst case of working on your own thing is that you make something nobody else wants. The worst case of working on something you think other people want is that nobody wants it, and you get burned out.

Nobody wanted those products but they did want the problems solved that those products addressed.

IMO, focus on the problems - those often exist before the solutions have manifested.

The tricky part is to learn the exact problems and not some confused second-hand ideas about what/where they are. Sure there are people with good consulting instincts, but in general you can only solve problems that you’ve experienced firsthand.

Excellent point!

Nobody wanted a horseless carriage in the beginning either

> If you make what you want, you at least have one user

This is it.

This is how I approach in writing software.

99.9% of the stuff I write is going to have one user. But it's one more than zero, and in the 0.1% of the cases where it does have >1 users, well, I call that a success.

I think the calculus changes a bit when you're trying to build a business around a hobby. If the entire point is to see if your hobby is going to make a good business, then you will naturally start with "what you are interested in", and the goal of the exercise will be to see if that matches up with "what the market wants".

That feels like a reasonable approach to me, though -- as with anything -- you need to know to pull the plug as soon as you have some confidence that it's not going to work out, which might be harder to do for a hobby, since you presumably have some emotional attachment to it.

> Some of the most lucrative businesses are...

You don't really need to aim for "most lucrative". If you're trying to promote "hobby" to "business", I think you should just aim for "good enough to pay the bills and give me a comfortable lifestyle without working myself to the bone". Starting out with a goal like "I'm going to turn my hobby into a blockbuster business that gives me FU money in 10 years" is probably unrealistic, but that's ok. More modest goals are just fine.

I never really saw this. But I always noticed if a product follows a sharp vision of an individual/dev team, and not sales/research. Even if the product was no fit for me, it immediately felt to be more sympathetic, and even of better quality.

They are lucrative because they are drab. No one wants to build the unsexy stuff such as enterprise tax systems. It’s also normally one that requires deep technical knowledge outside of tech

His mistake was more basic. A hobby is done for pleasure. The idea is that you can focus on any part of it without any pressure. Business on the other hand is the opposite. You need to focus on what the market wants and the business needs, not always what you want, and there is lots of pressure to get it right. Anything less will put you out of business.

Even as a career you have a similar problem. You have to do what your employers want and it needs to be done right the first time.

A hobby should not be turned into a business or career unless you can only focus on what you like.

I disagree with such blanket statements. I would phrase it as - know what you're getting into, starting a business will mostly have your running a business rather than doing the "individual contributor" work.

If you still want to do it while knowing that, go ahead- just keep your eyes open. And for those of us blessed to work in fields like software development the risks aren't even that high - most likely if your business fails you will have no problem getting a (likely higher paid than you had before) job afterwards.

> Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it.

If you want to make a business, you must make what the market wants. Making your own stuff and trying to make money from it is possible, but it's no longer a business.

I'm a professional software developer and a hobbyist software developer and while I could have sold some of my hobby software I explicitly choose not to. The reason is that selling something immediately creates responsibilities that, for my hobby, I just don't want to have. A business is something of it's own beast.

I dont really think you are disagreeing with each other. The first poster is saying find a niche where you can stand out. I'd agree with that - never fight a superior adversary on ther own turf. But it doesn't mean totally throwing market concerns to the wind.

If you want to make a business, you must make what the market wants. Making your own stuff and trying to make money from it is possible, but it's no longer a business.

Right, we get it - but it's not binary, and in turns out there's considerable room for nuance. In fact some of the happiest and most genuinely successful people I know got there from figuring out how to navigate this valley, and knowing when to trust their gut.

It also has a lot to do with taste -- specifically for stuff that is awesome and cool, but just a bit below the radar, as it were.

I wonder if there's a distinction between doing what you love as work and doing what you love as hobby. I love software development and I especially love software development as work. I actually prefer to solve other people's problems than my own.

Perhaps some of this discussion is just talking at cross-purposes because the fundamental thing that we're discussing is not the same.

But you don't know what the market wants. I would think that a primary goal of turning a hobby into a business is to answer the question, "is my hobby something the market wants?"

And sure, the answer might be a resounding "no", but you can change your focus once you figure that out. And that change in focus might make you hate it, which sucks.

You doing your hobby is never what the market wants. There might be a 10% intersection? Unless your hobby is business itself or you change what you want to what you actually need to do to make money.

I made an account after years of lurking to say. This is it.

I use to make and sell a very specific piece of hardware. The only reason I started a shop was to sell my surplus. It cost roughly the same for 1 as it did for 20. So I started selling them for $2 more than I paid and sold out. Then I did it again, and again. I sold about 100 units all together and never once did I hate my hobby during this time. At the same time, it never paid my bills. Nor did I ever think of quitting my job.

Is there a name for flipping a hobby into a full blown career? Does Flanderization fit?

I had to stop after the whole shipping shitshow during covid. Prices in my country have not recovered yet.

I hope you’re not lurking on some network switch with that nick ;)

You have to trust your own taste. If you do what you love you will know if it's good or not.

If you are very good at something besides singing (everyone can hear if someone is good at singing or not) there is no audition you can go to, you have to be your own judge.

The reality is that people will only read the top 10 books, or play the top 10 games, there's like a normal distribution curve where the most people gravitate towards the best sellers.

Embrace and welcome any good talent in your niche, they will grow the market for you, and even if you only get the scraps, you could still make some money just by being in the same niche as someone extremely talented, because if people really like the nr 1, they will also try 2, 3, 4 next best in that genre.

  > PASCAL: may I say something that I learned, without being too big?
  >
  > PASCAL: A guy goes out to eat in the evening...
  >
  > PASCAL: after a long day in the office, whatever.  Go ahead.
  >
  > PASCAL: He don't want on his plate...
  >
  > PASCAL: something that he has to look and think, "What the fuck is this"?
  >
  > PASCAL: What he want is steak.  This is a steak.
  >
  > PASCAL: I like steak, you know?
  >
  > PASCAL: Mmm, I'm happy!
  >
  > PASCAL: Do you see what I mean?
  >
  > PASCAL: But don't get me wrong.
  >
  > PASCAL: I think that your brother is good, goddamned chef.
  >
  > PASCAL: Maybe the best I ever see.
  >
  > SECONDO: He is the best.
  > PASCAL: Yes, but,
  >
  > PASCAL: this is what I have to say to you.
  >
  > PASCAL: Give to people what they want.
  >
  > PASCAL: Then later, you can give them what you want, eh?
  >

   - Big Night (1996)

It's a bit of a trope, but real success often comes giving customers not what they want, but what they need.

As another poster noted, just chasing market fashions is a crap existence, better left to soulless corps that can burn workers in pursuit of the dollar.

The good thing is that those same soulless corps will very seldom invest in something visionary, something that no one has done before. So the field is wide open to the pioneers.

(Caveat: while I believe this strongly for software, I'm not sure how it translates to fiction writing, the OP's domain).

This comment is a summary of everything I used to believe which I had to unlearn the hard way.

I had a similar experience as the author, I worked on passion projects (in software), some for many years. I had some success in terms of traction and also some success financially related to a different project (though that proved to be short-lived). Initially, I thought to myself "How lucky am I that I appreciate efficiency and modularity since that's exactly what the market needs." WRONG. What a brainwashed moron I was. The market does not necessarily want the most efficient solution; especially in the tech industry which is founded on monopolies where the money will come in no matter what the efficiency is; efficiency is irrelevant, so long as a solution just works and you have the right social connections a company might pay 100x more than it's worth; will barely make a dent in the balance sheet. Unfortunately, I didn't have any social connections.

So yeah I can fully relate with the author of the article. DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR PASSION IF YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY. FOLLOW THE MARKET AND EXPAND YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK. If the market cares about adherence to some fickle trend, make sure that your product adheres to that trend and make sure you get involved in the money-oriented community which inevitably forms around that juicy cash-rich, "fickle as a squirrel at a nut convention" trend!

Worst case you can sell your hot startup to Google for a few millions and they will shut down the whole thing later when they realize how crap of an idea it was but who cares. You got paid and now you can use the money to fund your next financial scheme and make even more money while all the passionate morons rot in their poverty and comment on HN about how shitty everything is because their time is worthless in dollar terms.

> Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it.

People think they can get more cake by appealing to everyone but in the result make products that appeal to no one.

The main problem I see over and over again with creatives when it comes to marketing is not being specific enough. Nothing appeals to everyone.

You got to know you target audience. What age range, gender, general demographic are you aiming for? What other books are in the niche you are targeting? What do your reader like about them? What is your unique selling point?

You might think that marketing a book with broader appeal would be easier. No. The more specific you can get, the easier it will be. People will gladly throw their money at you for finally scratching their specific itch, you just gotta find them.

Chances are if you like something, there are other people out there who also like that thing and are willing to pay for it. Sure, there is a tradeoff, as smaller niches mean a more limited market and some niches can be too specific to be economically viable but let's be honest people overestimate how unique they are most of the time.

But yeah, marketing sucks and not everyone is or wants to be good at it.

> Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it. I

The author did try.

From the post:

> And yet, in spite of my passionate “passion”, I never made enough money to quit the day job. I followed my passion and all it gave my was wrist pain.

Writing for the market was their second attempt at trying to make money.

I agree, but the problem is how to avoid this. Once your livelihood depends on the thing you do for fun, it seems quite likely that you will start thinking about how to make it sell better. And after a while this may start to infect your inspiration... is your artistic integrity so strong that you can choose to do things that hurt your income?

Of course the solution is to be financially independent already... but then you're not actually living off your art anyway.

>Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it

It doesn't sound like that's the case. This specifically talk about stories that they wrote for fun and for themself.

I think the story is a little bit more interesting because even if you make something exciting for yourself, that doesn't mean it sells

> If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than what you want, you're going to make garbage

100% agree. This is also why so much music is commercial