As developers our problems are often optimized. This makes finding ideas complicated. Finding clients is tricky, and solving problems for them is easier if they are experts in their fields and they understand what they need with depth.
I was always drawn to help small businesses. They struggle a lot in Chile. My friend’s dad has a telemetry company for farms, from wineries, to vegetable growers. Those businesses have to extract water from wells and send their consumption to the Chilean Water Authorities (DGA). He is an agricultural engineer so, naturally, his tech setup was quite “hacky”.
Multiple house servers. Sending data to a FTP server in Australia. For each measurement, one `.csv` file. A visual interface synchronized from a Mac Mini to a Rack. The process of handling this data was finishing after having to do it again. It’s crazy how he managed to do quite a lot without reaching out for help. And I came with some disruption: Moved everything to the cloud by making Docker containers, made a Flutter app to show the data to his costumers, and now we are running fully on Vanilla Ruby on Rails.
He is the expert on the context of his company. Extracting that knowledge was not trivial, and led to model changes, core modifications and very odd cases that could've been tackled differently from the get-go if we shared the same brain.
A guy I knew from high school reached out to me. Martin, a chiropractor, wanted a solution to handle appointments and manage his customers. We recommended Calendly, Agendapro and Doctoralia. But he wanted something more affordable.
We obsessed over Rails to build it quick. Of course without the best practices. Planning Ment was probably one of the first "until 6am" conversations we had. It was so exciting and the ideas kept flowing. The more we discussed, the bigger the project felt, and meeting the deadline started to feel impossible.
We scoped it down. We asked ourselves: What is the most important thing we need to get done in this month? We built that, we did it well, and we called it Ment. Eventually, Martin out-grew us. He hired people to offer his services and the booking process became a bit more complicated. Now are efforts are in building Ment V2.
We used our Uni's Software Expo as pressure to solve one of our own problems.
In the middle of the pandemic, I went on a family trip to Puerto Varas. A beautiful city. We wanted to go to Mesa Tropera (recommended for sure). I walked over, and I got welcomed by a huge line to reserve a spot. I waited 1 to 2 hrs to get a table, time I could've used to rest, study, or even prepare what we wanted to order. When talking about this to my expo's team, others shared the same frustration. We got to work and did quite well on the Expo because we solved a deletable problem we had ourselves.
In the end, finding ideas is simple, but it isn't easy. You have two choices. Find a passionate expert in a growing field and dedicate time solving their problem. Listen until you understand their world as well as they do.
Or, solve your own problem. Pay attention to the frictions in your life. That long line, that annoying process, that thing you wish just worked better, all those are worth to explore. So step away from the computer. Talk to people. Travel. Live. The problems are out there, waiting for you to find them.
I was always drawn to help small businesses. They struggle a lot in Chile. My friend’s dad has a telemetry company for farms, from wineries, to vegetable growers. Those businesses have to extract water from wells and send their consumption to the Chilean Water Authorities (DGA). He is an agricultural engineer so, naturally, his tech setup was quite “hacky”.
Multiple house servers. Sending data to a FTP server in Australia. For each measurement, one `.csv` file. A visual interface synchronized from a Mac Mini to a Rack. The process of handling this data was finishing after having to do it again. It’s crazy how he managed to do quite a lot without reaching out for help. And I came with some disruption: Moved everything to the cloud by making Docker containers, made a Flutter app to show the data to his costumers, and now we are running fully on Vanilla Ruby on Rails.
He is the expert on the context of his company. Extracting that knowledge was not trivial, and led to model changes, core modifications and very odd cases that could've been tackled differently from the get-go if we shared the same brain.
A guy I knew from high school reached out to me. Martin, a chiropractor, wanted a solution to handle appointments and manage his customers. We recommended Calendly, Agendapro and Doctoralia. But he wanted something more affordable.
We obsessed over Rails to build it quick. Of course without the best practices. Planning Ment was probably one of the first "until 6am" conversations we had. It was so exciting and the ideas kept flowing. The more we discussed, the bigger the project felt, and meeting the deadline started to feel impossible.
We scoped it down. We asked ourselves: What is the most important thing we need to get done in this month? We built that, we did it well, and we called it Ment. Eventually, Martin out-grew us. He hired people to offer his services and the booking process became a bit more complicated. Now are efforts are in building Ment V2.
We used our Uni's Software Expo as pressure to solve one of our own problems.
In the middle of the pandemic, I went on a family trip to Puerto Varas. A beautiful city. We wanted to go to Mesa Tropera (recommended for sure). I walked over, and I got welcomed by a huge line to reserve a spot. I waited 1 to 2 hrs to get a table, time I could've used to rest, study, or even prepare what we wanted to order. When talking about this to my expo's team, others shared the same frustration. We got to work and did quite well on the Expo because we solved a deletable problem we had ourselves.
In the end, finding ideas is simple, but it isn't easy. You have two choices. Find a passionate expert in a growing field and dedicate time solving their problem. Listen until you understand their world as well as they do.
Or, solve your own problem. Pay attention to the frictions in your life. That long line, that annoying process, that thing you wish just worked better, all those are worth to explore. So step away from the computer. Talk to people. Travel. Live. The problems are out there, waiting for you to find them.