Glad you liked it. So there are a million different opinions on this for sure. I particularly like Dan Norris's take on this to start solving a problem that people are already spending some money to solve now. Not necessarily that they are already spending money on a similar product, but that they are in some way spending money towards solving the same problem. Great interview with him here: http://productpeople.tv/2014/07/10/ep59-dan-norris/
Another tactic: most software can be done on a small scale by a human being behind the scenes. Before you build out some incredible software product, try to sell the service to a few folks beforehand. You can mimic the software product by literally giving them a form to input some data and you then you manually do the work that your code would be doing. Obviously doesn't scale but it's a great way to find out "if someone will pay."
Another tactic: most software can be done on a small scale by a human being behind the scenes. Before you build out some incredible software product, try to sell the service to a few folks beforehand. You can mimic the software product by literally giving them a form to input some data and you then you manually do the work that your code would be doing. Obviously doesn't scale but it's a great way to find out "if someone will pay."