On Making New Things
Paul Graham: Six Principles For Making New Things (via Daring Fireball).
Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.
The key point of that list, the ‘pivot’ if you will, is item (c): that actually need to be solved. That’s where people part ways. One person’s perception of need is another’s state of ennui — or worse. And that, I honestly believe, is why products fail.
Not because the solutions are hard, or obvious, or delivered formally, or polished, or left uniterated. But because it did not merit, in the minds of enough people, that the problem needed to be solved.