There seems to be a rampant problem throughout the developer community, and its kind of ridiculous. There seems to be a rampant trend throughout the community of people building things that solve no actual problems. People are going through and building things, expecting them to be businesses, but never stopping to ask themselves if they are solving anyone else’s problems. This my friends is the Jeopardy syndrome.
My good friend Mike told me that we as developers build or buy the fanciest hammers around, and then only after that do we look for nails that need, well, hammering. So my question to you, as you are developing your next great thing, are you solving a real problem? This issue can actually be solved well before writing a single line of code. So how do you solve this problem? Start asking people in your target market if they have a problem your solution/idea can solve. Ask your friends, ask your family, ask your business partners, or be creative and use PPC ads to test your ideas, hey if it worked for Tim Ferris, it can work for you.
The greatest products of our time are always ones that solve a problem. Take the iPod, it solves the problem of “how do I take all my music with me?” or the cell phone “how do I make telephone calls without being attached to a wall?”
So ask yourself the following questions next time you have a great idea for a product:
- Does this solve an existing problem?
- Does this ease anyone’s pains in doing stuff?
- Will someone pay for this solution?
- Will someone pay you to promote their products via your solution?
So do you have Jeopardy syndrome? Are you figuring out the answer first, and then looking for the question?
Earlier in the week I talked about goal setting when building a web app, now today I think its important to look at your target market. Who are you trying to sell this app to? Who is likely to use it? How much money is this group worth? Etc, etc.One of the biggest mistakes I hear about or read about regularly is "I am going to target XYZ industry, they don't have anyone doing what I want to do. Everyone in this industry is my potential clientèle." Basically if you re-read this statement a few times there are a couple points you can surmise: 1. No one else is interested in doing this for a reason (hint, find out WHY), 2. You are trying to please too many people.Ok, so lets look at the idea of targeting an entire industry. There is one flaw to that goal: how do you cater to everyone in an entire industry? Look at the marketing industry, there have to ... Continue reading
Everyone is interested in building web apps these days, just look at the hundreds of YouTube copy cats, or MySpace copy cats popping up every day. There are a few things that people are forgetting to look at when they plan and build their web sites/services/apps. So here I am today offering up some free consulting to all of you.1. Break down your goalsWhat exactly does this mean? If you're creating a video sharing site, what is the goal of this site. Is it just to let people share video? Is there a unique way they can do this? Look at some of the popular sites out there, and try and surmise their goals:
So despite the hubbub over the google monster releasing another google product that will take over the google world, people are missing another important announcement: the Google Account system for web applications. What does this mean to you? Not much. What does it mean to me, the nimble web developer? Well for one it means the death of individual signups on sites. Now AOL has open signups using their screenname service (login w/AOL or AIM mem ... Continue reading
