Build for Yourself First - The Best Founder Advice Nobody Follows
Build for Yourself First - The Best Founder Advice Nobody Follows
Everyone knows this advice. Almost nobody follows it. Instead, founders do 50 user interviews, synthesize the results into a feature matrix, and build something that satisfies the spreadsheet but solves no one's actual problem.
The interviews are not useless - they are just premature. People are bad at describing what they want. They describe what they think you want to hear, or what sounds reasonable, or what they saw a competitor do. The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible when you do not have a product yet.
Start With Your Own Annoyances
Desktop workflow automation started as a personal tool. The problem was simple - too much time spent on repetitive computer tasks that followed obvious patterns. Open this app, copy that field, paste it here, click save. Over and over.
The first version was ugly. It only worked for specific workflows. But it solved a real problem that existed every single day, and that meant there was always motivation to improve it.
Why This Works Better
When you build for yourself, you get something interviews cannot provide - instant feedback. You know immediately if the tool actually saves time or just moves the friction somewhere else. You do not need to schedule a call with a user to find out if the feature works.
You also avoid the trap of building features that sound good but add no value. Every feature either helps your daily workflow or it does not. There is no ambiguity.
When to Expand
Once you have something that genuinely works for you, that is when interviews become useful. You have a concrete product people can react to. The conversation shifts from "what do you want?" to "does this solve your problem too?" - and the answers are much more honest.
The path is: solve your own problem, then find others who share it. Not the other way around.
Fazm is an open source macOS AI agent. Open source on GitHub.