Ask HN: Trying to find Pain Points for business

I maintain a tiny project that is called the freeware index and Instead of using a website I simply created a subreddit

reddit.com/r/freewareindex

I started it a few years ago with zero web design knowledge and have learned a bunch.

basically I am a computer tech and it was a pain in the ass to keep up with all the good software that I used so I solved it by building the freeware index.

at this moment there are 2 ways to get the entire index and one of them is via a Google spreadsheet. I recently discovered Google script and wanted to use it to expand the spreadsheet. with Google script I wanted to create a linkable row or sheet instead of the entire spreadsheet. Or somehow separate each sheet into a neat page on the blogger site I put up tariqghrayyib.blogspot.com.

the only reason as to why its so small is because I have restarted the project at least 4 times from scratch and this is the farthest I have gone so far simply because I made the subreddit where I can get more exposure.

if anyone knows Google script and can help that would be beyond awesome

OK, a few observations:

1. Not sure HN is the best place to ask this. Yes, there are plenty of start ups here and entrepreneurs, however, they are all busy just like you finding ideas

2. Go where business owners hang out who don't necessary have the tech skills in house to solve their problems.

3. Start smoking cigars

I pick up a cigar every now and then and head over to any nicer establishment with a good bar, good scotch, atmosphere and where people mingle.

1. The people I meet at cigar places are typically business owners...and not in tech. They own manufacturing businesses, finance, retail and other low tech brick and mortar type businesses who have a need for tech but typically none in house.

2. Cigar smokers love talking to other cigar smokers, even when you are a complete stranger. Also, smoking a cigar takes 1 - 2 hours...so you got them pinned. Start the conversation soft, casual...just like dating. Then start finding out more about them, what they do. Ask some simple questions about their field and let them explain as if they are pure genius. Start talking about their business...and now you start narrowing down on problems, issues.

I do this all the time. It's amazing what you can learn...and they'll love to tell you about it because they are having a good time smoking cigars, sipping scotch and hiding from the wife.

I just recently spoke to a small retail owner who has a chain of consignment stores with a number of POS systems. Buying a POS system isn't a problem, it's doing the financial reporting and consolidating data from multiple locations. He had been looking for quite some time and couldn't find anything good that actually could understand that data came from multiple locations, rather than multiple POSs inside the same store. He also had a huge number of different SKUs since no item coming in is the same as any other in a consignment store. Who knew...I would have thought this was a solved problem. It's a totally un-sexy space but I really think this is where you'll find you best ideas.

If they could answer your question, they probably already fixed it. You need to figure out the solution for them. You probably also need to figure out the pain point.

You may be interested in the technique Amy Hoy recommends in her 30x500 app development course, called a "sales safari." See her blog (unicornfree.com) for details, but the basic idea is to find out where people in a given niche/business hang out, and then lurk there, documenting what you see. Common watering holes are usually places people complain about things and commiserate, and paint points are likely to come up there.

This works better than asking people what their pain points are. For heaven's sake, if you want to know what someone really thinks, asking them is often the worst approach to take!