My preferred method of finding something to build (assuming I don’t already have an idea I’m passionate about) is to pair up with someone who has deep industry knowledge in a non-tech industry (or any industry I’m not well versed in). Take their knowledge with your skill set to create a tool/platform/whatever for the given industry.

I find that vast majority of people, even top people in another field, don’t have a good grasp of what is possible with technology. I don’t say that to make them sound dumb, just they don’t know what they don’t know. You get to be the one who can suggest technologies they can use, either existing things you can glue together and/or custom code to help accomplish a task.

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bilsbie 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Good advice but I’ve spend my entire career trying to find those people. Never happened.

	▲	runjake 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They're easy to find. Perhaps your use of my entire career is a tell? You find these people doing non-work/non-tech activities. Activities clubs are beneficial for this. But surprisingly, attending my kids' school sports events is also awesome. I meet parents from diverse backgrounds, and we instantly have something in common (kids on the same team). I meet a lot of people all over the income spectrum. I live in a rural area that is quite poor. Over the past couple of years, I've encountered about a dozen parents who look and dress normal, but are wealthy, and they're either in or they run interesting businesses. They all have super interesting stories and perspectives and you realize a lot of people are successful because they've tried a ton of different things. They don't have high success rates, maybe ~10%, but they're consistent and they're persistent. (I also talk to the poor parents and hear their stories. I have this weird thing where I try to introduce some of the harder working and ethical poor parents to the richer parents, where there may be some mutually-beneficial opportunities, when they'd otherwise be too adverse to introducing themselves.)