I run a site about Health Savings Accounts[0]. Each year that you have contributions or distributions in your HSA, you have to file tax form 8889 to report these to the IRS. The form is overly complicated with pages of instructions so I wrote a blog post on how to complete it. A reader wrote me requesting help and, importantly, offered to pay me to fill it out for her. I thought it over and considered opening a tax service to fill these out for people. I didn't want to spend my days filing people's taxes one by one so declined, and instead programmed it and launched EasyForm8889[1]. It is an online service that asks simple questions and completes the tax form for you.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.hsaedge.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.hsaedge.com</a>
[1] <a href="https://www.easyform8889.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.easyform8889.com</a>
You should work on a product that solves YOUR problem instead of making a product than determining the problem that it is solving.<p>This is a very common sentiment and is echoed almost everywhere startup related. You can read PG's essays on the matter or watch some Startup School videos.<p>I understand you may already have a product so hopefully others can give you more advice.
You don't.<p>First you find a problem, then solve it. Go read everything on <a href="https://stackingthebricks.com/" rel="nofollow">https://stackingthebricks.com/</a><p>(I've been there. Built a product. Talked to potential users to try to find a problem it would solve, they talked about their problems. We ignored those problems, focused on our technology instead. Far far better to find the problem <i>first</i>, and then build a product.)
The problem I found was/is an industry paying people do create X analysis/report routinely. I wrote an app to do this in the browser using new APIs. So I know the industry, the people who need and use these reports and the complexities and costs in making them. I found this opportunity by automating part of my day job.