[whstl]

I dunno, going back to the article, at some point customers are getting exactly what they're asking for:

"their kitchens are custom-built, so they need ovens with specific dimensions. Oh, and a rotating base like the one they already have."

“My oven at home connects to the fireplace. Does yours?”

“I make a lot of wedding cakes, what have you got for me?”

“Do you have a Ramadan mode?”

Those are all problems.

But are they problems worth spending time? I dunno.

[dijksterhuis]

> But are they problems worth spending time?

They're not problems people need solved. They're problems people think they want solved. need != want.

the high street bakers needed reliability with improved efficiency at an affordable price (cost of risk). they didn't need improved efficiency, less reliability and still really expensive.

[singron]

Pre-purchase, the customers are just looking at lists of features. Post-purchase, they realize the ovens burn bread and cake 10% of the time and pizza 100% of the time, and they just want a good working oven that doesn't burn food.

It seems like most customers are returning the oven, which would normally be an extremely strong signal that there is a quality problem. In the SaaS world, the equivalent would be churn, but it's not always as straightforward since if users quit before they sign up (e.g. by reading a review or using a free trial), then they don't show up in that metric.

[throwaway7783]

In SaaS quality is one of the problems that cause churn. Value,price and politics also play a big role - now matter how good or bad the product quality is

[andyfilms1]

The key difference is the founder built a product in search of a problem to solve, rather than the other way around.

The "secret" is just to talk to people in the field they're trying to "revolutionize," and ideally observe them work. Often, people become blind to workflow problems and workarounds become normal process. They never even consider to look for a better way to do something. Those are the opportunities for founders to solve.

But what I've seen a lot is founders just arbitrarily coming up with an idea that sounds cool on paper, raising money, and only realizing too late that there is zero actual market fit.

[evolve-maz]

That's because the assumption is the new product can already do what their current product can, so the things customers ask for is the extras. It's really easy to forget that a lot of work went into "baseline" features which are assumed to be standard (in this case the not burning part).

[gmueckl]

A lot pf good products are a combination of features that customers need and use and features they think they need and ask for, but never use. But the sales wouldn't be as good without them. It's a bit comical once it becomes apparent, but it is a widespread pattern.