I have knowledge, tools and technique but no ideas. How to overcome this phase?

What are you genuinely interested in in your normal life? Gaming? Healthy eating? Real estate? Code? Effective altruism? Think about it hard. Not something that's just a means to an end for you, but something you truly enjoy and can happily spend years involved with.

Okay, now do some research to find valuable problems. If it's an industry you like, you can probably think of some problems on your own, some ways things could be better.

This is a risky step, however, because most problems aren't valuable. Even if people complain about a problem, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll pay to have that problem solved, or that they'll use a solution to the problem, or use it frequently, etc. You'll want to look for proof. There are some good tricks for doing so.

The book The Mom Test has some excellent material on interviewing people without being accidentally lied to. Jason Cohen has a very educational story about how he interviewed users when coming up with ideas. You can also use Amy Hoy's Sales Safari technique to avoid talking to users altogether, and instead look for truth in candid conversations and recommendations made on Internet forums. The approach I personally like best is to simply look at the industry and see where money changes hands. What are the products/services being purchased? If people are paying for something, that's a solid sign it's valuable!

(Usually it's the case that the valuable problems are kind of boring. For example, companies need to hire developers, but it's hard. People want to eat healthy, but healthy food tastes bad, or is hard to cook, or has fewer delivery options. Golfers need golf balls. Founders want to accept payments. Businesses need marketing tools.)

Once you've hit on a problem that you're relatively sure people find valuable, you should learn about the market around it. How are people solving it today, or getting around the lack of a solution? Who are these people? What do they care about? How much money do they have? How big of a priority is this problem for them? How long has it been a problem? Will it continue to be a problem? Etc.

You should also think about distribution channels. Where do these people hang out online? How do they find products and services? Can you break into these channels on the cheap? Etc.

And pricing. Will people pay a lot for this? I'm a huge fan of high ARPU businesses. They make your life way easier as an indie hacker.

This process doesn't need to take forever. If you're really familiar with the industry, you might be able to work a lot of this out in just a few hours. It's way easier if you're part of the market you're serving, because you already have a ton of knowledge. But you shouldn't let that make you lazy and avoid research altogether. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool." This whole process is about finding truth.

Ultimately, once you're pretty sure about the problem, the market, the pricing, and the distribution channels, you should think about a product. Tailor the product to be an amazing solution to the problem you identified, for the people in the market you chose, that you can sell profitably at a price they'll pay, and that's distributable via the most promising channels you discover. Most people do this backwards. They start with the product idea, then awkwardly try to shove it into these other holes, where obviously it doesn't fit. Don't be most people!

There's other validation to do as well, especially once you have a product idea. You need to make sure this is really the thing you want to work on. Add any kinds of questions you want to your validation checklist. Mine mostly revolve around my own personal failings and weaknesses. I don't want to work on code-intensive ideas, for example, because I know I'm liable to code for 9 months without launching anything.

Obviously this is not the end of your journey. You probably got some things wrong. So you'll need to proceed with a testing mindset. That means bite off small chunks at a time. Build a fake landing page and test it in your distribution channels. Build an MVP. Pre-sell people. Launch early, launch often. This is the execution phase, and it never stops. You're always testing, always taking baby steps, always moving forward.

When you find wins they'll provide you with advantages. Use those advantages to parlay your wins into bigger wins. That's how you start small but end up doing bigger, cooler things.

Here's a rough breakdown of this whole process (roughly) as applied to me coming up with the idea for Indie Hackers:

1. I like entrepreneurship and code. So I turned to HN to find ideas there.
2. It was clear that people on HN had the problem where they wanted to start profitable side projects, but needed more information. I could see them literally saying this in the comments, and begging anyone who shared a story for more info, more details, revenue numbers, etc.
3. HN's market is just like me: entrepreneurial developers. I knew them well.
4. HN itself is a distribution channel. One I had access to, for free, and knew well. Perfect.
5. The product could be interviews that solve the problem (providing information) for the market (includes the exact info developers care about) and channel (amenable to sharing on Hacker News).
6. Hey, interviews can also be distributed via email. So I set up a mailing list as a secondary channel.
7. Provided I got enough traffic to the interviews, I could monetize via ads. I could also build up a mailing list, which I could use to advertise a nascent community and grow it from scratch, which I could use as a moat against copycats, etc., and continue parlaying.

Go to g2crowd reviews and read 1 star reviews. Pain points lead to ideas or offer an app building service. That could be a revenue stream in itself.

Listen to people in your life. Note down when they complain about things that they encounter when they are working, relaxing or enjoying themselves. The more they complain about a thing, the more likely that other people have the same issues. Find strong pains, and imagine a world without them and what is needed for that to happen.

(In your current case, don't try and solve dev problems. That is a tainted field for you, with negative connotations. Avoid that for a while and help someone else solve their problem.)

Hmmm... watch people, listen to them, try to understand what they are struggling against and how it can be solved.
You also can get 16 ideas of SaaS applications in my free email series here: https://www.caravelstudio.io/saasideaweekly
But if you don't want to wait for 16 weeks and have 16 + 7 more ideas at once you can buy my book: https://www.saasforge.dev/books/23-ideas-for-your-next-saas
(see my profile for the discount details).
Thanks!

Hey:) just do some market research - where are the big cashcows and what are the pain points?.. Who do you want to target - b2b or end consumers? Young, old? For example, few mega Consumer trends right now are Purpose-driven consumption and digital health. Look into it, write your key problem (For example: How can I help the young consumer to have transparency over his consumption impact and „do good“? Or „How can I help people to take care of their elderly loved ones?“...) - And once you wrote your focus question, go from there. Talk to people, learn their specific pains and gains; then design your prototype. >> I always track trends, usually with tools like Trendwatching.com and look into best practices, that’s how I come up with ideas

Focus on problems, ideas will follow.

Build a website to match people with tools and technique but without ideas, with a pool of ideas?

Take a 2-year sabbatical from coding and immerse yourself in some other life discipline. Try to become someone else; rebuild your identity from scratch; learn something new. Get exposed to the many problems and scarcities of this world. Then think about how to fix them using information technology and you're bound to get some ideas.