alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Backlog – a public repository of real work problems
AI has made building fast and cheap, but finding the right problems still feels hard.
I built World’s Backlog (https://worldsbacklog.com ) to collect real problems directly from people working inside different industries.
Contributors post workflow pain, others validate it, and builders can study severity, frequency, and willingness to pay before building anything.
Would love feedback from builders and people who feel real pain at work.
Comments
Nice idea, sort of like the inverse of Product Hunt.
1) it seems aggressively walled off by login/singup, e.g. one must signup or login just to view the details of a problem.
2) there is a variation of this in the corporate world where “innovation” consultants try to pitch corporate clients on the idea of featuring business problems to a panel of startups. There are a few problems I’ve seen with this model but the most applicable is, people most passionate about a problem set aren’t always the decision makers to procure or fund the solution.
3) have you thought about how to make this a functioning market? It seems like you need to attract builder to work on these problems and subject matter experts to document the problems more deeply than the top level titles.
What worries me is that the item I most know about seems like the problem statement is not that useful. The title is "early delay detection for shipments" and the text seems to mostly be about inventory (so the description is odd).
The frame is that enterprise solutions for these problems do not scale to smaller retail chains, and I find that at least believable.
The thing about this problem is that it's not hidden. It's extremely obvious. I work in SaaS targeting logistics (transportation for me, transportation, order management and warehouse management for our company), so I know a bit about this space, though I'm not in it directly. Plenty of people are solving this problem for bigger companies.
I put roughly 0% credence in the idea that many many people haven't noticed this is a problem for smaller companies. I put low credence on the idea that no one has tried to solve it for them via software. What I suspect is that this is a case where the basic idea is super-simple and obvious, but the reality of producing something that works in the market is hard.
None of that is to say that there couldn't be a real improvement here. It's just that I suspect it takes a real insight into why this problem hasn't been solved yet, and a new angle to make your solution work.
Love the idea, I build something similar for focused for my country, Puerto Rico. https://traquealo.com
Similar: "[flagged] Database full of 1000+ validated problems that can be turned into applications" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42260998)
Great idea! I would n it differently, tho - many of "problem owners" might not be aware of the term backlog.
Yes please, this is a great idea. I feel like the key is to promote it among non-builders.
This is a smart idea. Looking forward to seeing it populated!
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The wall around viewing an item is too heavy handed IMO.
Use verified email (or magic link) to auth for posting and actions (validating). The posts themselves should be public.
You’d also get some SEO opportunities from more public pages.