HACKER Q&A
📣 gokulnair2001

How do you know if a tool is solving a real problem?


Hi HN,

I’m building a system that sits between application events and downstream consumers (analytics, decision systems, AI, etc.).

The goal is to make raw product events more structured and canonical, so deriving patterns, insights, and higher level signals becomes easier.

Before going deeper, I’m trying to sanity check the problem itself:

* How do you validate whether a tool like this is actually needed?

* Have you felt real pain around event schemas / analytics / telemetry?

* What tools already solve this well (or badly)?

* What would make you try a new solution here?

Not pitching, just trying to avoid building something nobody wants

Would love to hear your experiences.

Thank You

  👤 hackersk Accepted Answer ✓
The best validation signal I've found: can you find 5 people on Reddit/HN/Twitter actively complaining about the exact pain you're solving? Not "it would be nice" — actual frustration posts.

For event schemas specifically, I'd look at how teams currently handle this. If they're writing custom parsers per integration, that's real pain. If they just dump everything into a data lake and query later, the problem might not be painful enough to switch tools.

One thing that worked for me: build the smallest possible version and offer it free to 3 teams. Don't ask "would you use this?" — ask "can I set this up for you right now?" If they say yes and actually use it after a week, you're onto something. If they ghost after day 2, the problem isn't urgent enough.

👤 enjoykaz
If someone uses it without you prompting them, then tells a third person — that's usually the clearest signal. The hard part isn't measuring usage, it's whether it spreads without you pushing it.
👤 fuzzfactor
It would be good to know in advance, but I think the best validation is when the problem recedes to the position of "solved".

You can't do much better than that.

So maybe you have to first make sure your approach will address a real problem to begin with, than consider how much of a complete solution it could possibly amount to.