XLNavigator exists because I was going insane.

I had an Excel workbook with 80+ worksheets. Every time I needed to find a sheet, I'd scroll through the tiny horizontal tabs, squinting at names cut off after 10 characters. Click, scroll, click, scroll, click, scroll.

One day I thought: "Why isn't there a vertical tab sidebar for this?"

I searched. Nothing quite worked. The few solutions I found were abandoned, ugly, or overkill.

So I built it myself.

That frustration—my frustration—became a product used by thousands of people at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Chase.

This isn't unusual. Most great products start the same way: someone had a problem, couldn't find a good solution, and built one.

The Best Focus Group: You

When you're the user, you have advantages no amount of research can match.

You know the problem intimately. Not abstractly, not from interviews—viscerally. You've lived it.

You can test instantly. No recruiting users, no scheduling calls. You just use it and feel what works.

You can't fool yourself. When something is broken or awkward, you'll know immediately because it will annoy you.

Market research can lie to you. User interviews can mislead you. Your own daily frustration cannot.

Why "Build for Others" Often Fails

The alternative—building for a market you're not part of—is much harder:

You're guessing what they want. Even with research, you're interpreting their needs through your assumptions.

Feedback loops are slow. You have to build, ship, wait for feedback, interpret it, then iterate. Each cycle takes days or weeks.

Motivation fades. When you don't personally care about the problem, it's easy to lose interest. When it's your own itch, the motivation is self-sustaining.

I've seen founders spend months building products for markets they don't understand, only to discover the market doesn't want what they assumed it did.

I've never seen someone build for their own problem and completely misread the need.

The XLNavigator Story

Let me tell the full story.

I was working as a consultant, managing massive Excel workbooks for financial modeling. Dozens of sheets per workbook. Multiple workbooks per project.

The horizontal tabs in Excel are a nightmare when you have more than 10 sheets. You can't see them all. You can't search them. You can't organize them visually.

I looked for solutions:

  • Old add-ins that hadn't been updated in years
  • Complex enterprise tools that cost thousands
  • Workarounds that required VBA and constant maintenance

Nothing just worked.

So I started building. First for myself—a quick tool to list sheets vertically. Then I added search. Then color coding. Then I thought, "Maybe others have this problem too."

They did. The product basically built itself because every feature came from my own frustration.

That's the advantage: every decision is a real decision, not a guess.

Finding Problems Worth Solving

How do you find your own problems worth solving?

What do you complain about? The things you complain about regularly are problems you've accepted. Stop accepting and start solving.

What workarounds have you built? Scripts, spreadsheets, manual processes you've hacked together. These are products waiting to be built properly.

What would you pay to have solved? Imagine a tool existed that solved your problem. Would you pay for it? How much?

What's everyone else in your field complaining about? Your problems are probably shared. The complaints in your professional communities are validation.

The Authenticity Advantage

Building for yourself has a marketing benefit too: authenticity.

When you're the user, you speak the customer's language because it's your language. You understand the pain because it's your pain. Your marketing writes itself because you're just describing your own experience.

Testimonials start with your own story. "I built this because I needed it" resonates because it's obviously true.

Compare that to a founder who's never experienced the problem trying to convince users they understand. The difference is palpable.

When Building for Yourself Doesn't Work

Fair warning: building for yourself isn't always the answer.

Your problem is too niche. Market of one. If you're the only person with this problem, you're building a tool, not a product.

You can't reach others with the problem. Even if others share the pain, can you find them? Some problems are real but the market is too fragmented.

You solve it before building. Sometimes just building a quick workaround solves your problem well enough. That's fine—not every itch needs to become a product.

But when the problem is real, shared, and findable—building for yourself first is the fastest path to something people want.

The Permission Slip

Your problems are valid business opportunities.

You don't need to find a "market" first. You don't need to validate externally before you start. You don't need permission from the market to solve your own problem.

Start with what frustrates you. Build the solution you wish existed. Use it yourself. Then see if others want it too.

The best products come from people who couldn't find what they needed, so they built it.

What's frustrating you today?

Related Reading