Why you shouldn't solve your own problems
I’ve always been hesitant about trying to build a product that solves my own problems.
Here’s why.
As makers, we’re always told to find solutions to own problems. By building something you need, it proves that there’s at least one person in the world who would find value in it.
This is where I’ve always gone wrong.
You see, as a maker, we experience an entirely different calibre of problems from most day-to-day people.
For example, my list of problems:
- How can I create a profitable lifestyle business
- How can I add as much value to my audience or community as possible
- To some extent, how can I even create a legacy online
When previously building products to solve these pain points, I’d always struggled to find users, let alone paying customers.
By taking a step back and reviewing the problems of day-to-day users, you can identify a niche that’s big enough to serve and add value to.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. I know there's no right or wrong answer, but I'm genuinely curious to hear your own thoughts.
If you’re building a product to solve your own problem, let me know if you found it difficult to acquire like-minded users.
Often, successful founders started in an entirely unrelated industry / life experience, and then 'stumble' into a startup that solves their problem.
So the phrase is not wrong, it's just more subtle, and incomplete: Above all, make something people want. If you don't want anything / have any real problems to solve, then you need to find a problem elsewhere.
I wholeheartedly disagree. When you are the first heavy user of your product, you will identify issues and find ways to solve them faster. Most users do not know much about technology to know whats possible or not (relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1425/ ).
Most products are a solution in search of a problem. I lost count of how many times I've seen indies creating products and later finding out there isn't a market for them. When you build for yourself, the product will never be a complete failure, because you'll always have at least one user ;-)
Just try to find a problem you have and know most people have, to avoid creating another todo app. Think about different types of products ( http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sXY481XPikQ/VPRj116UGDI/AAAAAAAAAFg/9eeN4SdG4l4/s1600/consumer%2Bproduct.png ) and how to market what you build. And think about a problem large enough that people will pay to solve.
If I weren't building my personal finance management app I'd be building an app to lose weight ;-)
This is exactly the kind of discussion I wanted to have. These are all validates points!
Even though you're solving your own problem, have you found it difficult to find others who also experience this pain point?
My main issue is in convincing people to enter their personal financial information and use Pleke to manage their finances. The onboard process is not simple even when I help them configure it at their side. I plan on overcoming this by creating some videos and how-to guides.
I haven't launched yet because I'm still working on issues and features identified on my daily use and improving the look and feel. Last three minor features were all based on my own feedback from using my product, which is priceless!
It’s a great question. I think a research driven approach is better. I had no idea how to do this so I enrolled in 30x500 which I recommend or listen to all their podcasts and read the posts which are free.
From that my approach is to find an audience I’m a part of that pays money to better itself and then analyse that. I may not exactly solve a problem I’ve had, but rather something I have identified through the research that I can help with.
I’m still going through this process and learning though.
The problem with using a problem I’ve had is that say it’s a problem I had at work I don’t know if other companies have that problem. Often I find they don’t - I have a problem because of something quite unique we are Le doing and I don’t know what the general problem is that 100 people have. This has lead me to want to learn more about market research and choosing whet to build etc.
That's a great decision-making strategy. Trying to talk to potential customers as much as possible throughout this process is essential.
I think another important aspect is the FREQUENCY of the problem. Are you/other people facing this problem on daily basis? Is it a problem that looks you in the eye every day and reminds you of how painful it is?
Great point!
Well, I think that you push too much on the business side of the thing :-).
Several years ago, I worked in B2B sales while being CTO at the same time. Pretty time-consuming... And so I often didn't have enough time (and passion) to save contacts from business cards to my phone.
I often just took a photo of the business card. However, it wasn't possible to dial the phone number from the picture, and so there were two options for me: remember the number or switch between gallery and dialer several times.
That was my pain. Nothing big.
I wanted to solve this issue. I was looking for a way how to show a small dialer above the photo or have a dialer in the notification bar on my Android phone. And there was such an option. I developed a little app just for me, but soon I realized that there could be more tools to help me with my daily tasks. And so I added a browser and calculator.
What if I'm not the only one in need of such a solution?
I released the app on Google Play as Floating Apps. It was the first app of its kind available in the store. Now, it contains around 40 tools and has more than 8 million downloads. It belongs to maybe 0.01% of apps to get to such numbers.
It's translated to more than 30 languages, with half of them not using the Latin alphabet.
It's a pain to translate mobile apps continuously. I hated it, and I was looking for a solution. There were some, but none of them seemed to be developer-friendly enough. I wasn't an enterprise with a dedicated localization manager — just me and my wife on maternal leave who helped me answer user emails and comments.
And so I started Localazy to help other developers localize their app. It's a developer-centric and developer-friendly solution for app localization, with sharing and saving money and time in mind. Something different from existing ones. Based on concepts born from my pain points.
And so, being LAZY to save contacts gets me a few years later to LocaLAZY :).
What I love about Localazy is that we help people to understand each other. By giving developers the right tool, people around the world can enjoy mobile apps in their native language. Such a beautiful vision for our small company! Isn't it? Remember, it all started with a photo of the business card.
When born, Localazy was a basic translation management platform with a unique pro-active review, and its great vision came later. It evolved into something great.
Don't push too much. Don't start with the greatest mission ever in your head. Notice even small issues in your daily routine. But when you find the pain, tackle it like nobody else. Evolve it into a great mission that is worth your time and money.
Really inspiring!
When you first encountered these small problems, did you allocate time to validating a solution with other potential users?
With Floating Apps, not at all. I really built it only for myself initially and the very first public version was completely different from what it is now.
With Localazy, I did. The idea was growing in my head for almost 2 years. I discussed it with other developers and it was shaped by many inputs.
Appreciate the insights.
Depends very much on the product/problem.
If you're a technical personal building a solution to a technical problem, for other technical people go for it.
If you're a technical person, building a video sharing app because you want to share short videos of your dog, don't.
You make a great point. I can understand that in some cases, it definitely would help to have an inside perspective on a unique problem.
What's important in any chase is trying to talk to as many customers as possible to identify how common the problem is.
Agreed. Also it's important to not ignore the idea of making progress.
Sitting around waiting for a "good" idea is the worst thing you can do, because that gives you no momentum at all.
As long as you're open to pivoting your idea, it's better to start now. Better to experiment and learn, even if it ends up not being the thing that succeeds. You'll still be closer to success.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
I've had a similar experience when building products in the past.