One way to find new product opportunities, when not focusing on technological risk, is to analyze markets where startups are being acquired. Look for companies being purchased either for their lean products or through acqui-hires, where teams are brought in to solve problems for enterprise clients in larger organizations.
Then build the 0 to 1 to serve prosumers and SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses). The long tail of companies requires only a few core features, and your goal is to fulfill those needs. This is typically easier to accomplish with smaller teams.
Moreover, this type of product can be built by engineers who excel at product development, design, and marketing—skills that rarely overlap with traditional computer science graduates. While these technical backgrounds are crucial for scaling technology companies, the immediate challenges are more about skeuomorphic design, where user problems are well-defined but the execution—creating something seamless, easy to use, and delightful—is often the challenging part.
