Building something people want

Here's the latest article from Joel Spolsky in Inc. magazine.

Probably worth a read for anyone involved in product development.

We had the pleasure of meeting Joel when we first started Inkling 4 years ago in Silicon Valley. Joel spoke to the group of Y Combinator startups at our weekly meeting.

The biggest piece of advice he gave is in this article.

Figure out the root problems that matter.

Too often we tend to think we have this problem and that problem and this problem.

For Joel, and very likely many companies building new products, the most significant problem to work on is building a useful product. It's not worrying about people stealing your ideas or building some difficult to manage affiliate network. It's not the perfect Google Adwords campaign, or the perfect font size.

It's building something people want. And then doing that some more.

(Borrowed from a Y Combinator motto.)