First, let me say that in general I hate the negativity that has come to infect Hacker News, so it is only with much self-consciousness that I provide the following negative reaction. The mixergy post says "If you’ve heard me say that entrepreneurs should start by finding the pain, wait till you hear the first thing today’s guest did." (And the submission headline supports this lede.) The advice within the recording is that the founders of Submittable got together and made a list of their personal problems, and Submittable was like third on their list. I don't think that's particularly novel helpful advice given that it's basically the entirety of Paul Graham's famous essay "How to Get Startup Ideas" which I hope everyone here has read. If there were more detail on other ideas and ways to find startup ideas, it would be fine, but this is a one/two sentence explanation of the most obvious and well-known method, being used to justify the entire interview. The real question is what do you do when you don't have any problems and you don't know anyone with business problems.<p>That said, this isn't a reflection on Submittable as a company or the Submittable founders. I'm sure they are awesome and have an awesome service, and I hope they have the best of luck.
I did some work in a similar space. It's amazing how many publications and organizations out there need a good solution for doing something as simple as a photo contest or a simple storage for documents. This company did a good job tackling a specific audience of "publishers, universities and art organizations." While the work I did was on a product that was able to be flexible enough (more generalized consumer feedback) to facilitate this kind of thing, I think they made a great decision to build something specifically for this type of problem.<p>I wish them the best of luck in their business, it was an interesting ride for us.