Don't throw away an idea because someone else has already made it. This is crucial. People completely underestimate the amount of money you can make as a runner-up, or even as a 5th or 10th-place service in some markets. Most of the products I'm involved with have made me quite substantial amounts over the years compared to the minimal time required to upkeep them. There's at least ten companies I can name at an instant that do almost exactly the same, yet I still make money doing the very same thing. Appreciate the invaluable advantage a market-proven idea brings and focus on whatever its target audience lacks or loves most about the most-popular offering. It doesn't mean you have to copy something (where's the fun in that), but consider this if you start working on something and then come across someone who's done the exact same thing with good success. Don't give up, use it.
I send out a daily newsletter with short snippets of pain points in different industries - http://www.oppsdaily.com
Here is archive of sorts - http://www.oppslist.com
The ideas are of a mediocre quality, but I find they help stimulate thought.
Another idea is to go to a place like Fiverr and look at which services are most widely bought. Then build a saas solving one of those problems.
After many decades of coming up with ideas, I have discovered something. Every single one of my good ideas have been ideas that somebody else also had. It shouldn't be surprising because there are something like 7.7 billion people in the world. If you have a good idea that nobody else had, then that's a 1 in 7.7 billion idea ;-) Having realised this, I now use the fact that the idea is already known to be a good test of how good the idea is. If the idea has already been tried then I get an even better idea of how good it was.
Here's the thing: the world is not short on good ideas. Actually, you don't even need to have one to be successful. You just need to be able to recognise a good idea. The rest is execution. You execute better, you will win bigger.
Here's another cool thing I learned in decades of looking at the technology world: name one dominant company whose product was the first to market in its field. I literally can't find one! They probably exist (and this is HN, so there will be someone coming along shortly to point it out to me ;-), but the most important thing to realise is that most (by an incredible margin) successful projects became successful be learning from the previous king in its area. Word processor, spreadsheet, OS, game (of any genre), source control service, etc, etc, etc.
Don't be afraid not to innovate. Learn how to deliver. Learn how to distinguish between good and bad. Learn how to optimise the good. Learn how to please unhappy customers of existing products. Learn how to do all that while making money, not spending it.
Or the other way is just to close your eyes and pretend you invented it. If you become dominant, nobody will realise you weren't the first ;-)
I was lucky and found a small little gem on 1kprojects.com that turned itself into a nice little profitable side-project in 5 weeks (not linking to it because i don't want to seem like I'm advertising). Making half my monthly salary at my day job from it.
Sometimes it's just the simplest, least technical and gimmicky things that make money.
@adamfaliq here are my bulletpoint suggestions: - find something people are doing in excel over and over, make it a saas (search google keywords for excel templates) - find something that currently costs people time to do (some form of shopify work?) and automate it or make it a profit center for someone - pick an existing marketplace (salesforce, shopify, magento, etc) and build something there so you're spending less on marketing and know there is a built in audience used to paying for things
at its core it is a matter of can you save people money? time? or can you make them more money? those are the reasons people pay for things. Also competing on price alone is a fools errand.
feel free to email me for more help, i literally do this for a living (helping students generate and grow their businesses at a university).
The quickest way to build an impressive SaaS project in 2019:
1. Find a cool machine learning project with preferably pre-trained models so you don't have to do much cleaning/moving data.
2. Get those models doing inference on a server and expose it as an API.
3. ??? (marketing/sales/business stuff)
4. Profit
Find a popular service (Salesforce, Wufoo, Asana, Xero, Gmail, etc) and scour the forums for things people repeatedly request to be added. Pick a popular request that you have reason to believe won’t be added as a feature soon (e.g. company said so, it’s been years of waiting, it’s outside of obvious product expansion, etc). Go build it as an add-on (chrome extension, api, etc). Market it on the forums. You can even reach out to people and ask in advance if they would pay. Show them screenshot mockups and state a price.
I was in a similar situation as you except I have a full-time job. I started https://cronhub.io a year ago and it's currently a profitable side-business.
You don't need to focus on the idea too much. I think it's important but seeing other companies solving the same problem should not discourage you to come up with your own solution.
Take a look at these products for inspiration (https://www.indiehackers.com/products) and some of them solve a similar problem but they still co-exist.
Indie Hackers is a good resource https://indiehackers.com
The lowest effort/highest reward ones I have seen are curated subscription email groups e.g. a vetted list of high quality freelancer jobs for freelancers.
There are tons of problems that haven't been solved. Best way to identify one is to get involved with small companies and find their pain points. Especially ones not directly involved in technology. Think about commerce shops for example. Or art shops. Or food shops. You have to gain experience from the inside to come up with an idea, or if that's not possible just go ahead and ask them directly to name a few of their issues.
I did a consulting gig for an art gallery a couple years ago and I came up with a dozen ideas by watching how they operated. I'm sure the same applies for a gazillion of markets out there, ones where technology isn't that dominant.
Side note. You may want to take a look at the famous "passive income" threads in here. There are hundreds of ideas and projects in them that could inspire you to build something new. Just make a search for "passive" on the search box at the bottom and good reading.
Thats hard to answer. And to be honest, if I had any good ideas, I would probably work on them myself.
Sometimes you just have to compete against existing ideas and try to do better than them.
I, honestly, picked a library that I was passionate about (puppeteer) and sorted by either most commented or most reacted. This plus the fact that I was having hosting issues with Headless Chrome. browserless.io came quickly after.
I know this sounds dumb, but I found this to be very useful
https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becomi...
It's an entertaining read, but the premise is
- idea generation is a skill - you need to practice - come up with 10 garbage ideas per day (and occasionally one or two are good)
I did a joke side project that encouraged users to pay $1 for a ridiculous startup idea ("Uber for firemen" or "Disrupt the cat grooming industry")
It made me $25 - but gave me the next idea. It had turned out to be more annoying than I imagined to put a payment button on a website (unless I wanted to use PayPal. I didn't - I use Stripe).
Without running a back-end, like an ecommerce app or a home-rolled Heroku app or something - for token exchange, you can't use Stripe. I don't mind building that kind of thing, but I figured other people must.
So I built Trolley [1] - it's a popup payments widget / cart, using Stripe, that works just by pasting in a snippet of HTML.
4 months later and I've got a few hundred users, I've started marketing it specifically to JAMstack and static site people, and I'm enjoying making it, very much.
[1] - https://trolley.link
You'd be surprised how many problems are 'solved' but only barely. I use software that I hear people complain about every day. They have pretty sales webpages but the software itself is buggy, slow, hard to use, and support is unresponsive. Just make something 10% better and you would make a killing.
I'm avoiding mentioning a product or category not just to avoid throwing someone under the bus, but because I can think of many examples of this. None of the software (or any other kind of product) that I use today was the first of their kind. They learned the lessons from the earlier versions, and did it better.
Even if every problem you can think of has been solved (and I'm skeptical of that), I'm sure you don't think that all existing software is already perfect. Pick something that's terrible, and do it better.
Let dissect this a little,
1. List 3-5 things that you enjoy doing routinely 2. Now imagine how you can improve some of its aspects 3. What would that ideal world look like? 4. Everything can be improved!
Mine - Meditation - When I was starting guided meditation options were limited, still are to an extent. Some are expensive and some are limited with options. It does not have to be a solo journey like mine and many others' were. If I did not have anything to work on I'd create a database of guided meditation tools resources, there are 1000's on youtube. I'd categorise them by mood, skills-level etc... Have a basic social aspect to it by adding a community that share the passion and I then can introduce paid features such as Journaling etc. By leveraging the free database of contents out there one would have a decent competitive advantage. Just a thought...
I thought about this a while ago. And while I have about 5 really solid ideas already I want to make time to execute... if I didn't here is what I would do.
I would go out and take part time jobs in all sorts of industries. Go be a landscaper for 2 weeks. Ride shotgun in a trucking rig for 2 weeks. Tag along with a surgeon for a day or two. I think that I would leave with a ton of ideas.
There is (was at least) even a website where you can pay others to apprentice them for a "day in the life", some are talented, some are celebrities.
Think of when kids play, if there are toys everywhere they will end up combining the ideas in different ways. But if the toys are boxed up and put away in between different experiences, they might never put toy A and toy B together, draining them of potential creativity.
The noise equals creative opportunity. Get some more noise!
1. Go to your nearest finance department, either in the company you're working for or a relative's company, whatever.
2. Find a specific task that they're using Excel to accomplish.
3. Make a web app that reduces their clicks and typing into Excel.
4. Charge whatever you want-- they will pay.
> I would like to work on a side project that eventually would lead to some revenues this summer. My question is, how did you find problem(s) to solve ?
Maybe you should work on a project that has no chance to produce revenue but is fun or interesting. Then when the idea comes for something that is profitable, run with it.
You could try to sit down and come up with an idea but I bet most of them will feel forced. You could spark a blunt and come up with tons ideas only to find out later that the dots don't connect.
I think most, if not all, ideas are derivatives of experiences. So just build something and once the right thing comes along I think you'll notice.
Open a fried chicken shop. Like Texas Fried Chicken.
Ok not literally. But the analogy is suitable. I'm suggesting you try learning about an established business model, on a small scale, so that you learn some things about business in general. How to do accounts, pay your VAT and tax, buy supplies, advertise, ship, and so on.
So something like a webshop that sells your favourite widget might be suitable since you're a software guy. You can easily look at how the pages are set up, how payments are hooked in, how to do a landing page, and so on. The advertising side is a deep dive as well, but well supported by your background in coding.
In my view, some possible sources of ideas are sports and hobbies. People will often spend money on something that might improve their enjoyment of those activities. You're tapping into a different budget than the usual business clients, and if it's a non-tech hobby, it's not already flooded with people who can develop and execute solutions.
I hit on a solution to a problem while engaged on web forums related to my hobby. Now I sell a little gadget on the side. The people on the forum, with whom I was already on good terms, provided my initial sales and word-of-mouth.
I suppose that finding problems is not difficult. The most difficult is to find an audience that has the same problem and sell your product. As Lead Startup Methodology tells us that we need to check our hypotheses after that create a solution. A lot of startups die because founders don't catch an audience.
And if you create a solution, it doesn't mean that you will get revenues so fast. The best choice is to find a remote/local job at startups. If you're in London, I think it's not a big deal.
Or just having some projects on side. You will earn more incomes than you can do with a startup.
I use for searching projects Periodix [1] and Facebook groups. There are a lot of projects of startups. ALso, I saw the website that oriented on Positive Impact Projects Jobs [2]
1 - https://periodix.net/ 2 - https://positiveimpacttechjobs.com/ 3 - List of Remote Jobs in Different Companies https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv...
Here are two ideas for desktop apps that I think would be worthwhile:
1) A data copy app. I often need to copy data from one place to another (eg. copy data from MS Access to a MySQL server, export data from PostgreSQL to CSV, fetch data from some REST API and insert it into PostgreSQL). There tools for some of those jobs (eg. CSV import / export from PostgreSQL is solved). But there are a lot of jobs where I end up needing to write a custom Python script just to batch import some data from somewhere. It would be lovely if I just had a GUI app that was built for moving data from A to B.
2) A simple reporting tool for PostgreSQL. Often I just want to create a quick report from some data in a database (eg. how many users have already updated to the latest version?), but I don't want to start learning something like Tableau. I wish there was something more lightweight and affordable for creating just an occasional graph or summary table.
Both of these could start out very simple (do just one little thing) and expand from there, so I think they would be suitable for a side project.
I also think those two ideas have a lot of potential to make money. It's a huge market, and there's plenty of money to be made if you focus on smaller customers or niches that are not interesing for the big players.
If you ever find yourself thinking "If only there were a product that solves my problem XYZ? I'd pay money for that!", then you already know what to build.
If you haven't had such thoughts yet, I'm sure others around you could make suggestions. You'll make even more money by building for a niche market that has been overlooked or underserved by technology companies. The more specific the market, the better, as these tend to be quite sticky.
> I have read books and blogs suggesting that the best problem is the one that I have faced before.
I agree with this advice, but my problem is that most problems I have faced are software development problems. I have tons of great ideas for software development tools that would be super cool. However, there is no market for selling software development tools, because everyone is used to getting them for free from open source projects subsidized by large companies.
Nobody wants to pay for software development tools. Even worse, software development tools tend to be local programs instead of cloud software, and licensing/DRM for local programs is a nightmare for everybody involved. Either you just accept that the majority of people will pirate your software, or you go crazy implementing invasive DRM schemes that hurt your paying customers and still don't work.
I think this is actually a big problem in our industry. Our tools suck because there is no strong profit motive to produce improved tools. We have to muddle through with whatever big companies see fit to subsidize in their open source programs.
One approach is to find something badly done and do it well. My first successful startup was an app that had 20k downloads, with a Facebook community of 200k members, all very active. The creator of the app wasn't focused on making it a startup; they just showcased a minimum effort HTML5 app. I created a nice proper app, and did some e-commerce around the theme (healthy food).
A second approach is to travel. You'd be surprised how different things are in other countries. I got the idea of selling coffee from Australia, where great coffee is common and Starbucks was "tourist level". Australia also has a lot of mental health apps, which I'm working on now.
My first app was also heavily localised for non-urban Malaysians. There are plenty of keto recipe alternatives for Western food e.g. bacon and eggs. But Malaysia it's a lot harder because the culture is heavily rice based, so a keto recipe app is much more valuable.
So, you can also do subsets of a problem. Like Facebook and Harvard, Amazon and books, Apple and MP3 players.
Find something that you know is profitable and do a better job at it. Ignore any intuition that says that you could never compete with an existing service and that it would be better to come up with an original idea; not only are original ideas very hard to come by, but most ideas are also just bad.
Dont try to actually invent anything. Go B2B, find opportunities to automate/innovate an existing process/service, sell it as a monthly service (recurrent revenue is key), keep your costs ultra low (your time and infra). If one company buys it, two or more will.
I wrote a short article on how I find ideas: https://tinytracker.co/blog/how-to-find-profitable-business-... Hope this helps :)
copy already successful idea so that you don't have to look for product-market fit. Improve it in some dimension i.e. better customer care, lower price, additional feature etc.
If you already have money there are other strategies that you can use to generate extra revenue.
I think no one can tell you what to do if you want to make a profitable enterprise from it. My hypothesis is you can earn from any thing if you are willing to put enough effort.
The way to not stop working on idea is to choose something you really care about and what can motivate you to pursue your goal even if you can't see any returns from it.
For me it was a pain to learn English and to remember all new fancy words I met reading books. As I'm a software engineer my software standards are quite hight and it was hard to find what I want, so I had decided to build my own solution (https://vocab10k.com). Also, you can pick any stack you want :)
I've found that the best problems to solve are the ones you're most interested in. What do you wish existed? What do you wish were better? Don't worry about making money at first. Just find something that you're passionate about creating.
Although I do think there are problems with no solution yet, I agree they are hard to find. I do think though that there are many problems with incomplete solutions. So even if it looks like there are others solving the problem don't be afraid to create your own solution which might be better.
We have started Make My Day https://www.makemydayapp.com as an app for scheduling tasks and drives and found ourselves in the Electric Vehicle market giving a different approach to a solution that was already excited - we believe we give a much holistic solution.
My best idea to help came from when I was working at a Auto Body shop and I was able to help them optimize their books. They used to dread doing a simple export from Excel into a Tax software system (I forget which one) but I converted it to some weird proprietary format and they could import it.
It's not what I'd (personally) start a startup on, but the idea is there. I was also super green and coding in VB so I'm glad I let that miss. If you can get in with a small business owner and see where they're spending repeated human cycles for data entry, you can potentially have an idea.
Let me tell you what usually doesn't work unless you have excellent non-tech skills: having an awesome idea and coding it to perfection and launching it. I tried this many times and failed because I didn't polish it with the right marketing and didn't interview potential clients and all these things developers don't do.
In other words you need a co-founder and this is the trickiest part of all. Where and how to find him/her how to motivate when they usually have high paying jobs etc
You could make a simple but useful app and bundle ads with it to gain profit from that and have an in-app purchase to remove ads for even more profit. Like for example: You could make a calculator that appeals to people taking geometry like a Pythagorean Theorem calculator that shows the answer and work. Your best bet is to pick something easy that appeals to a group of people.
Think about which experiences in your life (or other people's lives) have key pain points that we wish didn't exist. Then think hard about ways to overcome those.
Alternatively, think about trade-offs that you or people in general feel forced to make, and try to build something that offers a compromise, a third alternative that previously didn't exist. That's innovation.
Chart library for JavaScript that is:
- Well documented
- Dev friendly
- High performant
- Framework-agnostic
- Written in modern JavaScript and well architected so it can be tree-shaked and prevent a huge bundle size
- TypeScript support
- Well priced
- Open source
The only decent one that I could find is https://github.com/amcharts/amcharts4 but is lacking from good tree-shaking support and performance
Talk to your parents and their friends about their work, especially if they run small businesses, and what they wish they could do on their phones/tablets, or were easier to do in Excel. If nothing else, it will improve your customer-facing and requirements-gathering skills while broadening your understanding of non-startup businesses.
May not be exactly what you're looking for, but I find being exposed to abstract ideas quite helpful. An easy way to bring this sort of novelty into your life could be to watch a ~10 minute Ted Talk daily.
Ideally, you would then become more responsive to problems and have a wider solution set that perhaps doesn't just involve software.
What is the name of the book/project that someone made to show one how to create a profitable side business without hiring anyone, AND who published their monthly income and list of projects? The guy who mentioned hiring a server guy every now and then.
The beginning of the book was free to read and garbled the letters as you moved along.
You try it. Make sure that its failure won't ruin you. Then keep tweaking and trying.
Don't listen to any other advice :)
Projects evolve. It's pretty hard to just come up with a world changing idea and it just works.
Typically you start with something small (or even silly), then it may evolve into something else (potentially big). Prepare to work on it for many months (oftentimes many years) without seeing any traction.
Do the world a huge service and build a competitor to upwork.com that does the same thing for modest fees.
Find a market where the leading product could be/should be better. If you can do it (pulling a Shia LaBeouf)...just do it! Most of the ideas I've had were already developed by others so you better get used to it and not wait until you find a "virgin" niche.
What were some of the inefficiencies / pain points at your last startup? Try to focus on a product that could improve some of the road blocks (either technical or processes) that you encountered while working at your last gig.
See also this thread from 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047553
You might want to consider applying for Pioneer—you can get a grant for your project: https://pioneer.app/
If you want profitable you need two things:
- Strong margins - Big market
Only then will you be able to afford to get your offering in front of the customers who might buy it.
Remember that ideas are abundant, solid user experiences and then lastly execution is the key.
I am also on the same boat. Based on my learnings and experience from running failed startups, here's a system I am experimenting.
Step 1: Observation
There are oppurtunities around you; some people are good at finding them and exploiting it to build profitable ventures.
The intended outcome is to find a problem people are struggling with and help them solve it.
Here's how I find problems.
1. Most Voted "Ask HN" Queries: I have already noted your question as a story idea for my medium blog. Since this is something, people need help in figuring out.
2. Comments Most Voted HN Posts : Not all posts have comments where people talk about their problem, but some post has insightful data.
3. Comments on Top-Listed Products on Product Hunt : Find out the top listed products on product hunt. Go to the comment section and check out for the 'cons'.
4. Conversations : Go out and talk to people who have a different perception of the world. Try putting yourself into their shoes. Then try to if you can bring a solution to their problems with the knowledge you have.
5. App Store Reviews / Amazon Reviews: These reviews contain problems with current product users have.
Step 2. Study
Now that you have got the puzzle, you need to find a cheap and efficient way to solve it.
I mostly try to see how people in a different field solve this problem. Later, try to see if their solution can fit into the issue I selected.
I also find solutions in books, research papers, hackathon projects, etc.
For now, you only need to find a theoretical way to solve the problem.
Step 3: Shadow Testing & Writing
Make a landing page about your ideal solution. Make sure you include good graphics such that your product looks ready.
The landing page also won't be enough to attract people. Write about your learnings on Medium or your blog. At the end of your blog add a signup link to your landing page.
If you are new to copywriting, please read the book "How to Write A Good Advertisement" by Victor O. Schwab.
If people can relate to the problem, you would be receiving signups. Ask them to join a slack or a telegram or a WhatsApp group.
Step 3. Validating with the Early Adopters
These people are a boon. They have extended me so much help in my earlier startup. They do this because they would like to see their problem solved.
Start having a conversation with them, build prototypes. Incorporate their feedbacks. Make sure what they are willing to pay exceeds the production cost so that you can make profits.
I hope this helps.
ahhhhh. I need to learn how to code in python first. All these ideas i have in my head need an outlet.
some guy made a lot of money with poofychairs.com
I make 6 figures running dropshipper store.
You can Google more about this business model and I don't even need any programming skills
The world is full of people in your situation who's main area of interest and experience is primarily in software development or start-ups. Because of this, almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times. There's tons of competition even for really bad ideas - just look at how many start-ups in SF tried to offer "laundry as a service"!
The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that are totally unrelated to your experience. The world is full of profitable niche industries that need custom solutions that software developers have no idea exist. The business and industrial world largely still runs on excel spreadsheets, emails and word docs. Those are all areas ripe for new products and many of the top companies in those niche areas have no idea how to apply technology to solve their problems more efficiently.