Has this ever worked for you? If so, could you walk us through your journey?
In my experience if you spend a really long time trying to identify a problem to solve, you end up burning too much time on a problem that may not work. The Indiehackers approach is like the opposite of that where you shotgun low-effort attempts at ideas until you find one that sticks. I think most folks trying to build a business want something in the middle though. Use your experience and your knowledge to winnow the market of potential opportunities and to offer you an advantage (with your expertise) then iterate by creating different products until one of those products gets traction.
When I worked at a tech company that eventually became one of the Big Tech Unicorns of the last rush, we had plenty of products that completely bombed, much to the sadness of the folks that worked on them.
This approach has worked for me, and many others. Read the Lean Startup for the general approach, and The Mom Test to learn how to talk to prospective customers. The main point is that you need to talk to customers and work with them throughout the process.
In my experience if you spend a really long time trying to identify a problem to solve, you end up burning too much time on a problem that may not work. The Indiehackers approach is like the opposite of that where you shotgun low-effort attempts at ideas until you find one that sticks. I think most folks trying to build a business want something in the middle though. Use your experience and your knowledge to winnow the market of potential opportunities and to offer you an advantage (with your expertise) then iterate by creating different products until one of those products gets traction.
When I worked at a tech company that eventually became one of the Big Tech Unicorns of the last rush, we had plenty of products that completely bombed, much to the sadness of the folks that worked on them.