Technical founder, can build anything, have no idea what to actually build
I have been a CTO and technical founding engineer at a couple startups for the last few years, mostly building other people's ideas. finally want to do my own thing but i'm stuck on something kind of embarrassing for an engineer: i can't pick what to build.
the building part doesn't scare me. it's the "what" that's killing me. b2b, b2c, ai stuff, some vertical niche thing, micro saas, boring-but-profitable... they all sound fine when i think about them for five minutes and then fall apart when i think about them for ten.
honestly being technical makes it worse. "can i build it" filters out nothing because the answer is always yes. so i've got no constraint forcing a decision.
couple things i keep flip flopping on:
do you build in a space you already know well, or go where the money is even if you're an outsider? and is "i personally have this problem" a real signal or just me rationalizing something convenient?
mostly though i want to know how people actually validated before committing months. not the lean startup textbook version, like what did you really do. did you talk to people, did anyone actually pay, did you fake a landing page, what.
curious what ideas people killed and why too, that's probably more useful than the ones that worked.