This YC advice is easy to say

I run a SaaS company that monitors LinkedIn engagement signals so founders can catch prospects right when they're thinking about the problem their product solves. Small tool, fixes a genuine problem.

However, in hindsight this looks so obvious. It definitely wasn't when I started ideating and came up with the idea.

And that's the thing about YC advice. "Build something people want" is obvious once you've found it. Same with "talk to your users," "do things that don't scale," "charge from day one." Every single one of those sounds genius after you've lived it and reads like a fortune cookie before.

No amount of re-reading Paul Graham essays closes that gap. You just have to get there.