Comment by betwixthewires | Hacker News Reader

Comment by betwixthewires | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to get too lecture-y but if you want to start a business, know what field you want to start it in, but don't even know what you're trying to accomplish, what problems you're trying to solve, how you'll change the market or logistics or whatever, why are you even doing it? How successful do you think an endeavor shoehorned into your desired criteria is going to be?

Twitter influencers? You think you're going to start a successful business by following the right people on twitter?

My advice, find a problem, take the time to understand the problem space very very well, find some novel solution and implement it to the absolute best of your ability. It could be in any space, but if you want to focus on space tech, there are plenty of difficult to solve problems there. Start there, understand the ins and outs of it, find a problem you think you can solve and deliver value by working on it.

I created a business by following influencers on Twitter. I realized that some of them were complaining about the same things and created a service to help them.

I know I was lucky, but following these people allowed me to realize there was a niche to serve.

Technical people are often blind to this as they always feel they need to be on top of a field to create a solution.

I dunno, OP’s approach seems pretty common for serial founders.

The High Frontier is a fun book.

Successfull serial founder or failed serial founder?

Just wanting to get into space tech without any understanding of the topic, the problems and everything is really naive. Some tweets, podcasts or blog articles are not enough to learn about such a highly risk averse and regulated industry. Other commenters have already pointed out why space is a very very very hard industry to be in. You don‘t start that because you like space without a fortune of money to burn on the way.

possibly stupid question: generically, how would you suggest to start actually finding a problem in any industry?

Work in many roles in different parts of different business in the industry for 10-15 years to gain insight into how it works, what makes it valuable and the fundamental challenges it faces.

Go to many conferences to find where the smartest people are and how they are fixing the hardest problems. Meet the important people everyone knows in the industry who can help you navigate it.

Get to the top 1% in one of the skills which is critically important to your industry, so you can grok opportunities before others.

That might get you to the starting point. You can't just google "howto disrupt space".

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