Building stuff that people care about
Disclaimer: I'm severely underqualified to talk about this
  • How do I pick the right thing to build?
  • How do I actually build it?
Sounds easy, doesn't it?
It's both easy, and also really challenging
Do people want what you're building?

Google Glass: Investment undisclosed (but huge)
Sometimes, your product is just too ambitious

Laundroid by Seven Dreamers: 104M in VC
Sometimes though, you get it just right

Raised > 1.5B USD pre IPO
Finding your niche
You don't have to conquer the world with a few lines of code -- what you do need to do, is identify a very specific and well defined problem
A personal example: BinIt
Okay sure, but how do I actually do this?
Think of an idea.

It could be something that annoys you on a day-to-day basis, a change that you feel you could spark in the environment around you, or just a really cool game :)
Identify your target market - who wants to use your idea?
Reach out to your target market.

Talk to people. Cold email them. Set up Zoom calls. Agree on a pre-defined set of questions that you want answered. Validate that the people who you think have a problem, actually do.
Keep in touch with them. They'll probably end up being your first users.
Put all your work into a pitch deck
Addressing a misconception: Pitch decks aren't useful only if you're trying to fundraise - they're also the best way to get all your thoughts in one place, and really think through your product idea
A few really awesome pitch decks, for inspiration
Okay, now what?
Disclaimer: You don't have to be technical for this stuff to matter.
Build your idea out
The basics
Frontend Development - building actual products that users interact with, be it websites, mobile apps, AR/VR applications, or video games
Backend Development - the stuff you don't see as a user. Database management, API calls, authentication, and everything else that keeps your product running
  • The Flask Mega Tutorial - Flask is a Python server-side framework
  • ExpressJS - unless you have a specific love for Javascript like I do, I would stick to Flask and Python
Data Science - where the magic happens. Jk, where you dump data into Tensorflow/SkLearn/PyTorch and hope for the best
  • Most of the world's data science R&D in Python
  • Deployment/DevOps is in C++/JavaScript/Java
  • SciKit Learn is the most popular ML library out there - regression, classification, etc
  • nltk is the go-to for NLP based processing tools
  • Tensorflow and PyTorch are great shouts for Deep Learning & tensor computation - image classification, generative image modelling, etc
    • Implementation
    • Pushing the team for regular deployments
    • Remember those people who you originally reached out to? Get in touch with them again, and get their feedback
    • Identify feature-sets and aspects of the product that need to be changed or modified
    • Hug Your Haters- Jay Baer
    Project Management - keeping the team together, and making sure that the project's on track
    • Distil down the feedback that you get from your implementation lead
    • Check in with your product teams regularly - make sure that they're doing okay with their workload, and see if they need a hand with anything
    • HBR - What it takes to become a great PM
    So, where now?
    Technical:
    • Build first, it's fine if it all breaks
    • This is what we're here for :)
    • Contribute to open source
    • Start thinking about how the products you use day-to-day, actually work
    Product:
    • Start critiquing stuff you use
    • Pick a product idea, and begin to validate it
    • Learn to enjoy talking to strangers (Try LunchClub)
    • Try and get rid of self consciousness (people don't care as much as you think they do)
    Q/A (I'm done rambling)