Should you build what you love or what will make money?

I would view it through this lens:

Work on something you can imagine working on with no money for a year.

Because that's how long it will take for things to get going and the revenue to start to trickle in (give or take). If the idea of working on it for a year with no upside does not excite you, don't waste your time, find another idea.

Other commenters are correct in that, it's quite easy to be passionate about something once it has customers / revenue regardless of whether it is "sexy" or not. But you still have to grind your way to that point first.

That's the part where most people give up because they aren't passionate about what they are working on.

Everybody tells you to do what you like. But the reality is not rainbow and unicorns. If you WANT money then you should think about them first, not what you like. And then in the end there are tricks to full your brain into "liking" stuff and keep being motivated.

Build something to make money fairly passively then build something you are passionate about and hope it makes money too.

Build what you love! Nothing is more important in life than to spend time and energy on what you deeply feel is worthwhile.

Why not both?

But it depends. Is your goal to make money or to mess around with code?

If it's the latter, build what makes you excited. Use bleeding edge tech. Scratch your personal itch.

If it's the former, identify a way to provide value that people need, want and pay for, and figure out how you can get your product in front of those people. Choose safe technologies. Solve the customers' problems first.

And if you want to build a real business, hire someone to help you build it. Your goal is to get away from writing code asap so you can work on the business, not in it.

Definitely you should build that what you love and keeps you going 💪

There's no reason why you can't build something that makes you excited and also has a higher potential for success.

Regardless of what you build, most startups and new businesses fail so the odds are against you regardless. There are so many things that you have to focus on and do well in order to beat the odds.

It's not like you can know what will or will not be a "success", build what your passionate about.

I am sure both are possible. If you are most motivated by money, particularly out of necessity, I am sure you can get motived to do something you are not excited by. Go and build the next CRM for proctologists! :)

By extension, I believe doing something you are interested has a greater chance for success. It is hard to do something well that you do not understand. It is hard to understand something well if you don't enjoy it. And it is helpful to know and understand the people who will use your product. Hard to do that if you can't relate to their needs, problems, interests, etc.

I have revenue-generating projects that I heavily neglect and I am sure I could grow faster and bigger, but I don't love working on them. I have funner shinier things grabbing my attention! Not to say those things will be successful, but I may be more likely to not neglect them if they get traction.

Build something you are passionate about, but what might make you money too.

Passion is a hugely underrated fuel for endless motivation.

It is pretty hard to build something you are not enthusiastic about. In most cases, your project will pivot in something different than when you started before you are really successful, that's why I would go with the one which motivates you.

lets go - no question here! To be happy is more important - money will follow 🙌🏻

This is a false dichotomy. Making money is unrelated to how exciting the thing is.

Like in gardening you must choose a plant you will like. If you care for it over a long period of time it will bloom. I hope then that you will have chosen a flower you find beautiful.

Of course, you could grow anything. If you truly don’t care which flower you grow then focus only on the money. Either way you will need to care for your business for a very long time in order to see it bloom.

Something that makes money is objectively measurable while excitement is subjective.

I agree with yongfook—work on something you enjoy and you believe has the potential to make money. Because if you don’t enjoy it you’ll stop before it makes money... and you may even hate it enough to stop even if it does make money. That’s called a curse or golden handcuffs.

I suggest planting seeds that will grow into a plant you both enjoy looking at as much as you enjoy caring for.

Build what you love and be passionate about it, success and money are by products of this

Money comes first. There a many examples of exciting products that never made enough money. Investors lost patient. Founders got tired. Never saw light at the end of the tunnel. Then customers left because there were not enough resources and investment. At the end, everyone loses! Yes, RethinkDB comes right in my mind.

Try making something profitable first. Seriously.

Every person has a different energy, judgement, skills, contacts, and work ethic so there is no correct answer. However, what we know for sure is that you won't be very happy if you build a product that no one likes or uses so that should always be your priority.

If something excites you, it probably excites you because it has huge potential but it doesn't really matter what the industry is because every industry has both successful and unsuccessful products.

So go with what excites you, just make sure that it's something people will use.

As other posters have implied, it's surprising what you can find "exciting".

I didn't wake up one day with a burning passion for multi-step form builders.

But the feeling of solving a problem you understand, building stuff customers want?

That's the exciting bit.

As long as you avoid industries you can't relate to, or know nothing about - the excitement of building cool shit will be enough to see you through!

You build to solve a problem you have. And you expect many others have, too. Fixing problems in your life probably makes you excited.

Curious pattern: your problems will probably change as the time passes, and that's why sometimes we give up projects before finishing/shipping them, because new problems arise and we want to fix them, and they look more exciting and more current.

Sometimes you need to insist with an old problem if you want to build something meaningful that exceeds the weekend-long project.

I suppose it would really depend on your outlook. I am a minimalist. Which means i dont need a lot of money to fund my lifestyle.

3kMRR after taxes would allow me to quit my day job. I created JustFitness.io because i was dissatisfied with the fitness apps on the market at the time. I needed what is essentially Trello but geared towards workouts.

There are roughly 7.5 billion people on the planet and I am not special. There must be others who feel the way I did. So the answer was simple. Solve my own problem and learn to market.

I vote to build what brings you joy.

If you want to be working full time and support yourself on your product, then you probably need to focus on something that can be profitable even if it’s dull. If you like your day job and want to keep your projects on the side, you have the freedom to build a lot of things you are enthusiastic about and see if any of them end up making you money.

I think for long term success you need to build something that excites you but that can also just be "solving a problem", some people find that exciting enough to motivate them.

Most problems that haven't been solved yet are in "unsexy" industries or are boring but they are a good opportunity because if something's boring less people want to tackle that :)