"Choose an industry, pick a pain point"
This is solid advice, but for me it is very hard. I always found finding pain-points in an industry as an outsider (not working in the industry day-to-day) very hard. (Living in a relatively small and culturally isolated Eastern European country does not help either.)
By the way the only industry I know well (from the inside, as software engineer) is "big software product development". Nowadays I invest a lot in public markets, so I learned a lot about other industries from an investment perspective, but it is not enough to find pain-points.
I agree that this is the hardest part, and you’ve pointed out the reason why developer tools seem to be over represented in startups. For this reason, I mentioned to check job listings and see what responsibilities they are looking to hire someone to take on.
Just a personal thought (and please tell I’m wrong if this is not the case), I think Eastern Europe as market is ripe for good tech innovation. To my knowledge, it’s not “behind” but products and services seem to reach there after being recycled from Western and Central European companies, with translations into local languages being spotty at best and nonexistent at worst. Someone who lives in a culturally-isolated place might have the upper hand at solving specific problems and being a native speaker of the local language would you give you the upper hand and no competition should you elect to write software to help that doesn’t exist where you are. This could be especially true if you can find software that they wish they could use but is not translated into an language that makes it useful for them.
I've lived in Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary... The key is to go to networking events. (Or co-working spaces, or just show up at their company and say you're interested in working there as an engineer and ask if you could get a quick tour)
If networking events don't happen in your country, then become the organizer. You'll instantly be seen as a leader and attendees will eventually want to talk with you. When you organize regularly, they'll start talking about you. Then you're "in".
If you don't live in the capital city, then it's worth the time & money to travel 1x a month or every 2 weeks. Ask attendees if anyone has a spare couch for you to stay on.
Themes for events you can use the major happenings like AI. Or 'duplicate' Meetup events in other cities.
Post flyers near companies doors, make event on FB & Meet-up, find developers on LinkedIn, there are so many options to get the word out. Split Test and discover which one is most effective (ask attendees where they heard about it)
My network creepingly broke away over the past three years and I didn't bother to re-build it. Your post reminds me of the great discussions I've had at networking events. Time to start that again!
> I always found finding pain-points in an industry as an outsider (not working in the industry day-to-day) very hard.
This is a good place to lean on your network of friends that don't work in the same industry as you.
And if you don't have those kinds of friends... it would be good to work on getting them. It's important for many many reasons to have a diverse social network.
By the way the only industry I know well (from the inside, as software engineer) is "big software product development". Nowadays I invest a lot in public markets, so I learned a lot about other industries from an investment perspective, but it is not enough to find pain-points.