Want to build a software product that actually earns income?

In this (Part 2) episode Patrick McKenzie (Patio11) shares specific tactics for researching a market and finding a problem to solve. Listen now.

Highlights

• Don’t think up a cool product idea, go and spend months developing it, and then try to find customers. It won’t work.
• Instead, go out and talk to people and see if you can find 5 people who will buy it.
• Trick for interviewing people in potential markets: tell them you’ll pay them their normal rate, but instead of getting their service, you get to ask them questions about their industry (Patio11 interviewed massage therapists and stylists this way)
• Be relentlessly curious: ask people about their business problems.
• “Businesses have a lot more money. The people who are responsible for making a purchasing decision in the business aren’t spending their own money; the office manager at a business is very not reluctant to spend 200 dollars a month of that business’ money.”
• Avoid the education and hobbyist markets: Patrick loves Dungeons and Dragons, but doesn’t think you can make much income by building software products for D&D players.
• “There’s different types of pain: you want to be solving a problem where people know they have the problem and are actively looking for solutions, rather than something that the pain is bearable, or is just considered so endemic to the condition that they are not actively trying to get better at that.”
• Have the humility to talk to people and find out what they really want.

Show notes

• Patrick’s blog: www.kalzumeus.com/blog
•  Patrick’s training site: training.kalzumeus.com
• Bingo Card Creator
• Appointment Reminder
•  Email Patrick: [email protected]

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