The hardest part isn’t building. It’s choosing what to build.
I’ve been thinking a lot about something that doesn’t get talked about enough:
Choosing the right idea is harder than building the product.
When you’re a developer or maker, it’s easy to get into “just ship it” mode.
You enjoy building. You know how to launch fast. You want to see progress.
But shipping fast doesn’t help if the idea itself isn’t tied to a real, painful problem.
I’ve made that mistake before - maybe you have too:
- Built something that looked cool, but nobody actually needed
- Added features because they were fun, not because they mattered
- Showed prototypes to other founders instead of real users
- Fell in love with the solution, not the problem
The result?
A neat product - and silence.
Recently I’ve been forcing myself to start from the opposite direction:
Instead of:
“What can I build?”
I ask:
“Where does the pain happen consistently?”
I look for:
- Conversations where people complain without being asked
- Problems they solve manually, repeatedly
- Things they hack together in spreadsheets, Notion, or Google Docs
- Places they spend time or money in inefficient ways
When I find a recurring pain, I try not to build anything immediately.
I talk to people first.
Not to pitch. Just to understand how they solve it today.
And here’s the wild thing:
Every time I actually pause to learn - the idea becomes smaller, clearer, and more valuable.
So I’m curious:
