Don’t build something clever, build what people need!

Al Walid Ashik
Nov 5 · 4 min read
Photo by Skyla Design on Unsplash

I was reading a book, name The $100 Startup where the author mentioned a story that, Back during 1849 there was a California gold rush time. That time people went crazy about digging and finding the gold as treasure.

Every people in that time thought about nothing but mining the gold from the heart of the earth.

While everyone was crazy about digging the earth, mining the gold and getting super rich over night, one business man thought differently. Instead of mining gold like everyone, digging 100 meters hole in the earth to find treasure, he did the opposite and came with billion dollar idea.

He carefully noticed how people were crazy about digging. So he realized sooner people will run out of shovel to dig in that specific area. More people will need more shovel to digg the hole very soon. So he went north and came back with importing shovel from there. Then he started selling those shovels and generated more profit than digging hole to find gold.


If you want to have a good business idea then you don’t have to think out of the box. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist like Elon Musk. You’ve to carefully notice people’s need overall only people have the money in this planet that you or your company need. So only think about people’s problem else you will have a wonderful business idea but nobody will give you the money for it. So at the very beginning write your idea in a form of business plan.

In Bangladesh now we’re getting bored with ride sharing app business. Every company seems to have a ride sharing app or everybody wants to develop an app that is related to ride sharing. Pathao, Shohoz, Pickme and there is a lot in this country. Still every body is hunting the ride sharing app business idea and eventually they’ll get failed because of big brothers already captured the market. That’s why somebody said it best,

Do not enter the crowded market.

While ride sharing seems gold revolution to you, you need to think about selling the shovel.

We have so much opportunities for starting different different businesses, But we always look for to become the competition of giant companies. We know that those companies service has already proven market. Those companies service people want to buy. So we do not think anything else. We mistakenly believe if people buy from them, use their products then obviously people will come to us, use our product.

But that not happens always. We simply don’t have any idea how many ride sharing companies miserably failed in this small country. Pathao, Uber and Shohoz are doing great. But look for others, they are in deepest darkness.

Photo by Rob Schreckhise on Unsplash

Look at your own problem first!

I’m sure you know the initial story of Alibaba. There was a time people went crazy about dot com boom as like above gold rush story. When the first time internet came to public, everybody was so amazed of it.

Oneday Alibaba founder Jack Ma wanted to buy something from internet. But he didn’t find any sites to buy anything. Remember this is the story when just internet arrived in the world. So Jack Ma was very shocked seeing that when internet seems god to everyone but there is no way nobody can get or buy anything from the internet.

That’s when he decided he will create such a shop that people can buy from. Later he created Alibaba. The biggest online giant for buying anything in a very reasonably price.

Jack Ma carefully thought about what was missing in the future and what was the problem that time. Now we know ordering from online reduces so many times from us. Simply it’s best when you value your time. So you shop online to save times.

The Best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

This wonderful line came from David Ogilvy. You will have many ideas jumping around in your head in future. But that one idea will come from funniest way that you couldn’t think of anything but the idea itself. Almost all the tech giants we see today, solves one specific problem so perfectly that they have created such monopoly in most crowded market, Internet.

When you want to search for an information, you always think about Google. When you want to connect with your friends, your first choice is facebook as like everybody else. When you want to shop online, you choose amazon. When you want to watch videos, you browse YouTube. When you want to have a video chat, you open Skype.

See the pattern. These are the company which solves specially one problem in a finest way that nobody can. You don’t have to solve many problems. You have to just take an initiative to solve one problem that people are willing to pay for it. Sometimes solving one single problem gives you solving hundreds problem revenue. The bigger problem you solve, the higher revenue you generate.


Al Walid Ashik

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I write about Personal Growth, App Business, Passive Income, Startup & Android Development.