How to come up with ideas, if you're not experiencing problems?

The thing is that you do not always have to find a problem per say to come up with something mindblowing.

Take Henry Ford. When he created the first production car (Ford T), he always said that if he had asked people what they needed/wanted (i.e. which problem to solve with vehicles), people would have told him: "The ability to attach more horses to the carriage". And he created something totally new.

Same goes for Jobs and the iPod - nobody really had a crippling issue not having "a thousand songs in your pocket".

What that tells us is that more often than not, starting from a problem you are familiar with is a very good start.

But you can also dream of something new. Totally new. And make it happen. Nobody says dreaming is bad, let alone acting on your dreams.

You will need a fair amount of vision, patience, hard work and convincing - but hey - that's the same for every business you will create, no matter how big or small!

Hi Sai, maybe you're not experiencing any problems because you don't seek for it. Try to observe your environnement carefully, maybe there is something that bother you but you are used to it so you don't pay attention.

Sometimes people are not even aware they have a problem because they have find what works for them and they are happy with it.

Another way to find problems is to look for bad comments from other people about a product. I advise to look at this thread of Pierre de Wulf @Daolf https://twitter.com/PierreDeWulf/status/1329765202095575041

Maybe you can pay attention in a topic you like or you passionate about and look in some product/Saas if they don't misses something because they only try to catch the big fish.

You also can look here https://www.softwareideas.io/ by Kevin Conti @Kevcon80 it's a great newsletter which can provide great opportunities. His analysis is very relevant (the work is quite impressive)

Otherwise there are some resources where you can find ideas like
https://needgap.com/ (users who share some problems they have)
https://www.starterstory.com/low-capital-ideas?_ke=eyJrbF9jb21wYW55X2lkIjogIkpjaGtpdiIsICJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJqY2hhbXBhZ25lLmVyZ29AZ21haWwuY29tIn0%3D
https://www.ideasgrab.com/

I hope it help ^^

I believe that there’s lots of opportunity in fields that are far removed from most devs’ spheres. Eg my dev business partner has gotten great ideas from people he knows in Politics and construction.

Thus maybe you could start talking to the non technical friends and relatives you know? Get them to share any pain points of their job/business, regardless of how “insignificant” it might feel to them.

Pieter Levels (from nomadlist) says be more original and interesting. This is a great video overall, but this is about ideas: https://youtu.be/6reLWfFNer0?t=418

Hey Sai! That's a really good question, this actually depends on what kind of ideas you're looking for, if you want to create the next unicorn startup, read Paul Graham, but if you just want to create a small saas business, also called micro saas, which is bootstrapped and profitable, then "scratching your own itch" only goes so far. Read the blog about micro saas by Tyler Tringas.
If you get interested in micro saas, I'm working on a newsletter for micro saas ideas, which covers everything from market background and competitor analysis to an actionable MVP and associated risks, all of this is quantified and the analysis is data driven through various sources. If you want a sample newsletter, shoot me a quick email at guptaujjwal.official@gmail.com.