Ask HN: How can I make something which people appreciate?

4 points by bbastian 16 years ago | 4 comments

It's one of my dreams to make something which makes someone who I don't know say, "Wow! That's cool!" Either that or build a community. Or both! However, I'm unsure how to do that. I think that I'd like it to be something web-based because of the wide audience which the medium offers. Can anyone give me some advice on how to accomplish this goal?

imp 16 years ago |

I did that on a small scale, sort of accidentally, and dozens of people have emailed me with the equivalent of "Wow! That's cool!" It has also developed into a small, active community.

Although customer development is great and popular right now, what I did didn't use any customer development. It also wasn't originally intended as a business either, but your post doesn't mention anything about money :)

I took an existing web application and gave it a great user interface. That's it. If you can take an application that already exists and make it:

* 10X easier to use

* 10X more fun to use

* 3X faster to use

* Free

then you'll grow to thousands of users via word of mouth and your users will love you.

The easy part about it is choosing the application. Anything that you currently use that's cludgy can probably be improved a whole lot. The difficult part is innovating the user interface, but luckily that is also the fun part (at least it is for me).

This is also similar to what Gmail did. They made web-based email much easier, faster, and fun to use (while staying free), and that app probably has the largest number of appreciative users on the planet. Google didn't have to reinvent email to get those passionate users; they just took an existing thing and made it much better.

barry-cotter 16 years ago |

Modulo the rare exception it takes time, bloody minded persistence, talent and a certain amount of luck. The more of the first two you invest the less the latter two matter, talent because the more time you put in the less your initial (lack of) talent matters and luck because if you spend long enough at it some will find you.

So really you need persistence because if you've got that you won't have a problem keeping it up for (time). Persistence is easiest when you're motivated; when you're doing something you enjoy or that pays well enough.

You're unlikely to get paid until you've made something impressive and people ask you to do it for them. So what you need to do is find something you think is cool and do something about it, publicly, over and over again.

Get a hobby and write about it (blog) or think of an interest and set up a forum around it (e.g. alternatehistory.com for what-if). Things that are harder to do are more impressive and get more attention and link love, e.g. a relatively professionally shot and edited 20min video put up reliably every week on... Chinese cookery, or a programming screencast.

Persistence is key. Calendar time, not wall clock time.

samdk 16 years ago |

Talk to people.

Don't ask them what they want you to build--they probably don't really know. Ask them about the problems they're having, and work with them to solve one.

If you've done a good job of that you'll have at least one happy user, and they probably know others with the same or similar problems.

alexro 16 years ago | |

People have all sorts of problems, so restricting your efforts to a domain you care about is probably the most efficient approach