How did you guys start building different products?

I already knew how to code - I got the idea for my product from a business challenge. I was working for a company that was not able to onboard new customers due to a very badly implemented / architected customer onboarding / activation / provisioning solution. It was a really extreme case, and the business (it was a very well-funded startup) was struggling. I proposed a workaround solution to my boss at the time, and he agreed, so I delivered it. It was very simple and worked very well, so the business and IT operations users were won over. It worked so well that my customer asked me to make a more powerful and generic version of the solution, that also ended up being a big hit and in the end got deployed at the global level of the group of companies, and the customer gave me the IP rights to the solution so that I could make it into a product that everybody could use. So basically I got lucky - product development in the beginning was based purely on real business needs - I knew I had to deliver performance and reliability in fault-tolerant IT process orchestration regarding onboarding and activating new customers. Then I got lucky again as the solution was mission-critical, so the customer wanted to ensure that they got longer-term support, so the customer was motivated to give me the IP rights, so I ended up founding my company based on that IP. I suppose it's not the typical product story - you can't count on getting lucky, but in my case being the right person in the right place paid off.

Mostly, everyone here knew how to code. To get ideas, there are many ways. Talk to the customers, look around your surroundings or just for fun (likes games). Find out problems from the existing customers (must be more than 6 to find one unique problem) using other products/services. It's a lengthy process to understand technical, historical, financial and personal pain/gain. It'll totally worth it in the end. To get an idea to find problem around you is to read 'David Nichols' reply besides he got so lucky. It's easy to understand the pain points and offers the solution quickly. Last, for fun is all about your wild imagination, and we'll have that.