In this clip from REWORK: scratch your own itch.

Fried and Hansson’s point: the easiest way to make a great product is to make something you want to use. Solving someone else’s problem is stabbing in the dark. Alan names the other plays too — bet the next 20 years like Musk, improve what’s proven like Dyson — then lands on the book’s closer: solve your own problem and you can fall in love with what you’re making, because you’ll be on it for years.

Founder translation: don’t invent a market you don’t live in. Build the tool you’d pay for this week. Dogfood it. CatalogMiner for creators with a dead archive, Weeklock for a week that won’t hold — same rule. If you won’t use it, don’t ship it.

Make something you want. Then stay long enough to love it.