[kevsim]

One mistake I (and no doubt other founders) made was assuming you'd "get it right" because you were scratching your own itch. My cofounder and I started our company [0] literally based on the pain points we were feeling and still, when the first user tests on the first version of the product came around, users didn't get it. Or they didn't see the value. It was a tough lesson - we were building the thing we thought we wanted and others didn't want it. But we persevered, pivoted a little here, rewrote a lot there, and ended up with something that users not only liked a lot more, but also worked better for us too.

Moral of the story is scratching your own itch makes you qualified to talk about the problem, it doesn't make you an expert on a good solution.

0: https://kitemaker.co, the super fast, hotkey-driven product management tool/issue tracker that has deep integrations to GitHub, Figma, Slack, etc.

[nmfisher]

Yeah, this is a good point and something I learned the first time round.

Just because I (as a manager) had previously been willing to adopt bleeding edge tech with no hoops to jump through to eradicate hundreds of man-hours, doesn't mean that the average customer is.

If you're not representative of the typical customer/user, you need to find someone who is to use as a yardstick.

It doesn't automatically mean you're headed in the complete wrong direction, but it does mean a lot of your initial assumptions (pricing, deal size, sales cycle, etc) are probably way-off.

[mgadams3]

completely agree with this. This is why the idea behind Cagan's "Empowered Product Teams" [https://svpg.com/empowered-product-teams/] is so important. Founders are often too blinded by their initial approach of solving their own pain that they are blinded to superior alternatives that could be more easily seen by fresh eyes. Key is to empower those people to solve the problem, not just implement a solution.

[kevsim]

We're big Cagan fans at Kitemaker. In fact, most of our thinking around the product is tied into empowered product teams. Cross-functional, autonomous, self-organizing and impact-focused. We want Kitemaker to be the best tool out there for such teams.

[stevejpurves]

"..makes you qualified to talk about the problem..." I like that take, you are in a position to empathize but not necessarily know the solution or even the real problem as it manifests differently in different settings outside of your experience

[walty8]

But, that's still better than 'trying to create a product that may solve the problem of others', right? I mean, feeling the pain seems a valid start point?

[kevsim]

Absolutely! And I personally find it much more motivating than just chasing a business idea that I don't personally care about.

Does, I think, raise the chance of falling in love with your solution though, which is also dangerous.