As we accumulate knowledge on a subject, we tend to forget how much we had to learn to get there.
If we went back and listed all the prerequisites to become knowledgeable on something, we’d mostly be listing all the things it took us to go from Point A to Point B. So, if we handed that list to someone even slightly different than us, it might not be a feasible path at all.
Without some context, we can gloss right over places where people would be willing to pay good money for help.
Dropbox is “Trivial”
Back in 2007, one of the founders of Dropbox posted a screencast on Hacker News. It showed some of the elements of what would become the now nearly ubiquitous cloud storage platform. One guy—who had plenty of truly intelligent and nice things to say—responded with this:
For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
Let’s be clear: what he said was 100% true, and it wasn’t even the only way to go about it.
To him, something like Dropbox wouldn’t be worth any time or money, because he could build the whole thing “trivially”.
To nearly 200 million people, it’s worth the time or money or both. Why?
Money vs. Time
We all have different thresholds for exchanging money for time. For instance, most people buy a bottle opener instead of spending the time to learn how to open a bottle with various common objects. As our time becomes more valuable, we are more willing to exchange money for time.
I know that’s a big “duh” moment, but understanding how to detect others’ thresholds often eludes us.
This is why “niche” and “automation” are becoming common words associated with startups: to identify a place where a collection of people are willing to trade money for time sustainably is to find a business opportunity. Whether those potential customers don’t have the time or interest in learning something new doesn’t matter—they’re willing to trade money to get on with the parts of their lives that will bring them income or happiness or both.
Consider keeping a spreadsheet of what customers/clients ask for that seems “trivial” to you. If you notice one or two that start to repeat, it might be worth your while to validate it as an opportunity for a product or service. When that idea becomes validated, you won’t have to sugarcoat its trivial nature to anyone—the people who will pay won’t care, and the people who care wouldn’t pay anyway. Focus like that is priceless.