We switched to an electric car expecting life to get easier. It didn't. Finding a charging station turned into a nightmare. You'd search "charging station" on Google Maps and half the results were closed while the other half had the wrong plug. Once, on the Istanbul-Ankara highway, we rolled up to our planned stop and found it broken. We didn't have the range to reach the next one, so we called a tow truck. Sitting in that stranded car, we said it out loud: "I wish there were a decent app for this." There wasn't. So we built one.
The first version was embarrassing. Pins on a map, nothing else. No filtering, no route planning, no pricing. The design was amateur hour. But it worked: people could find the nearest charger. 200 downloads in the first week, and we'd done zero marketing. So the problem was real. Reid Hoffman's line is a cliché by now, but it's true: if you're not embarrassed by your first version, you launched too late.
After that, users told us what to build. "We need filters," so we added filters, and usage took off. "Suggest charging stops along my route" was a harder one, but we got there with AI. Every bit of feedback nudged the product forward. It runs on iOS, Android, and Web now, with thousands of active users. It isn't changing the world. But most days it keeps somebody from getting stranded on a highway, and that's plenty for us.
The lesson is a simple one: you don't need a big idea. Look at your own life instead. The small frustrations you put up with every single day are potential products. The only thing that really matters is starting.