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Comment by amix | Hacker News Reader

I think a better approach is to solve your own problems. This way you don't have to waste time cold calling people and hoping they are sincere with you with their feedback. You are the user and the creator... It's a very powerful position to be in.

I would recommend reading Paul Graham excellent post on "startup ideas" (which could easily translate to "project ideas"):

"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself." http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

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The problem with that approach is that most of us don't have corporate/business problems when we think about solutions. I can't foresee what a lawyer or advertising agency might struggle with.

I'd prefer to find customers who are richer than I am. That probably means that they have different problems to me, and almost certainly have different worldviews.

Solving your own problems can be a great source of inspiration. But if your goal is get your project widely used, you need to make sure others share that problem.

Sometimes asking around about pain points in other peoples lives/businesses can also be very fruitful

Solving your problem is a good way to find ideas. You know the problem well and the context the problem is in. However, if your work life, social life or life in general is not too varied, finding a problem to solve can be a problem in itself. Not being respectful and some people live quite contented lives like these, but living a simple, straight forward, suburban life style can be hard to find pain problems.

So to increase the ways of gaining problem to solve, getting out there to experience different aspects of life and talking to other folks are two sure way of find problems to solve. The side effect is that you will be a more rounded character and will, most probably, enjoy life much more.

Basically, this is what Nathan is saying.

The problem is that people could be insincere, non-rational or ignorant. I doubt they will know what their problems are, what they are willing to pay or what the solution could be. There's a great quote by Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

For Nathan his pain point could be something related to writing and publishing books. I think this would be a much better problem domain since he is a user and I am sure he has some problems regarding this process that could be improved.

Great quote! It stresses the point that a great solution to a problem could comes from a different domain.

You will just have to make sure many others have the same problem and like your solution.

That's why the idea he seems to be settling on is exactly that: a problem that he has. (quote from the post: "It solves a problem I have, so I want someone to build this software.") Not only coming up with a problem is easier when you have it yourself, but also execution, making key decisions and keeping up the motivation will be easier.

Also, You can always create new “needs,” after a while people realize that the new need has been a pain. Here is my thoughts:

http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=18

Upvoted. This is the best way to find genuine ideas in my experience. I also want to add that I've found a good way of finding problems is to constantly keep trying new things.

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