It's a common meme in startups that a good way to start is to build something that solves your own problem.
There's lots of stories of successful founders this worked for so it feels true.
Since most startups fail we also know that most advice given about them doesn't work most of the time.
So where should you start instead?
Solve a problem for people you like.
It's a subtle difference that might save you years of struggling and make the journey much more fun.
So whats the primary difference between building for yourself vs building for people you like?
In a word?
Selfishness.
There's a reason Y Combinators slogan is "Build something people want" not "Build something you want".
The world really does not care what you want.
If you focus on building something for yourself you will likely have a Total Addressable Market (TAM) of 1.
If you are a starving founder who's probably living of the excess heat of the universe via free tier SaaS your TAM is also probably $0.
Not great.
Maybe even more importantly you will have the wrong mindset about what you need to do every day in your business to win.
If your building a product for yourself you will tell yourself you know exactly what to build and you will not talk to customers.
You will probably waste months or years of your life building something no one else wants.
Congratulations.
The truth is by being the kind of person that might go and build something from scratch, spending years of effort to solve a problem you have, with the hopes and expectations that lots of other people want that solved, you essentially prove you are not the ideal customer for your product.
Your ideal customer would never ever do that.
Your real desire was the business you thought you where building not the product.
Now does this mean you should go build something for a random industry that seems "profitable?"
No.
Remember the part about people you like?
You probably know a lot of things about them other people don't.
These are probably your friends and personal network or a group you aspire to be a member of.
What matters is that these are people you care about and you uniquely understand in some way.
This helps in sales, marketing, hiring, and almost every part of your business.
When you like your customers you will also enjoy talking to them and do it more often.
Building a business around customers you like is an under appreciated life hack.
By focusing on building a product for people you like vs building a product for yourself your focus moves from internal to external bringing the cleansing light of reality into your thinking and business from day one.
You still need to rely on your intuition, build a business you want to own, and you can even build things that solve your problems too but you should never ever do it in a vacuum.
Don't build something you want.
Build something other people want.
Start with a customer you like if you don't know where to start.