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Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

• ageitgey 8y ago
  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.
  • ronilan 8y ago
    You use “the world is full” twice. First to describe the high supply of software developers looking for projects and second to describe the high demand for said services. So why hasn’t supply met demand? Why isn’t the market working more efficiently? There can be various explanations for that, obviously, including the lack of information you hint at (“secret”, “have no idea”), but Occam's Razor would suggest we examine the assumptions first. I’m not so sure that there is such a strong demand side in this market.
    • TAForObvReasons 8y ago
      There's strong demand at a competitive price point and acceptable license terms. Even though many software companies and startups are trying to push SaaS software "rental" terms, many of the market participants are looking for a one-time purchase more similar to "ownership"
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y ago
      Well I will doubt the supply side. I think it's a simpler assertion, because I know so few nerds.
      • jjeaff 8y ago
        I think if you live in silicon valley, you have a distorted view of how many people can build software. I grew up in the mid-south and know of literally one or two other people that code. I know live in a major metro area and still only know maybe 3 people that code. It is actually a rare skill. At the same time, I can't even count how many contractors, real estate agents, sales and marketing, and doctors and lawyers that I know.
        • fierro 8y ago
          everyone from high school is a real estate agent
        • totololo 8y ago
          Global dev population is 20M. If the global workforce is 4B people, that's 5 per thousand. Not much indeed.
    • egypturnash 8y ago
      Lots of things are worth applying some automation to, but not worth enough to pay someone to provide as a service.
    • aaavl2821 8y ago
      I think part of the issue is that the software startup playbook is not as generalizable as its advocates suggest it is, and an under-emphasis on domain expertise vs software expertise For ex, in multi-stakeholder industries like healthcare where the people who pay for a product often have incentives that conflict with the incentives of the user of a product, following the North Star of "making something people want" can lead you astray. So many digital health companies make products no one will pay for, or that end up in a narrow consumer lifestyle niche instead of actually improving healthcare in a meaningful way. A team of engineers / data scientists who "follow the user" isn't enough. It isn't even enough to focus on physicians. You really need to talk to administrators and see how the sausage is made
  • TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    > almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times I strongly disagree with the implied defeatism here. There have been many attempts and many failures with many popular ideas for non-obvious reasons, and it is worth being #11 if you can A) identify why the previous attempts failed, and B) find a different angle that avoids the issues.
    • RickS 8y ago
      100%. Google wasn't the first search engine. But they were effectively the last. First to market is only important insofar as it's correlated with making sticky products, building a moat, and not dying. That's what you actually want.
      • la_fayette 8y ago
        Hmm. I switched successfully to duckduckgo...
        • pizza 8y ago
          Fair enough, but Google has made their mission about making the world's information accessible, moreso than being the best search engine; I assume you still use YouTube, perhaps you use Google Maps (although there are plenty of good navigation alternatives), perhaps you use Google Translate, etc.
          • paulgb 8y ago
            > I assume you still use YouTube An aside, but funny enough, one thing I like about DDG is how much better it is at finding YouTube videos. I assume Google is encumbered by antitrust fears or something when it comes to video search.
            • milesvp 8y ago
              I’m not sure it’s a complete aside. What you’re describing is the general recipe that business school warns against for entrenched industries. That is to say, if you give up low margin products, you give an inroad for competitors to gain competancy and scale. Rebar in the steel industry is sort of the hallmark example. Even though search is still an important part of their ad income, I don’t see google’s dominance in search lasting another 100 years, since there will continue to be smaller competitors who excell in some small low margin area and it will slowly chip away at their brand.
  • rustyboy 8y ago
    >The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that are totally unrelated to your experience. Great advice, my SO works outdoors doing field studies and the amount of shit they talk about doing manually is astounding. They pay people (or sometimes unpaid interns) to go through hours of videos documenting everything they see! Almost all cataloging and measurements are done with little to no technology. Another example; I volunteer for a program that does some human intake and processing, before I got there everyone used a series of paper forms that got updated by work of mouth. Now? Google Spreadsheets. There's hundreds of industries, organizations, and groups that do extremely manual labor intensive work because it hasn't even occurred to them it can be automated or turned in to a service, but you'll never meet them if you hang around tech people all the time because the solution is always on their mind.
    • kaybe 8y ago
      I still remember this guy: > I work at NASA creating procedures for spacewalks (EVAs). > Currently we write these procedures in Microsoft Word. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5585535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5585535 (2013) Hm, I wonder if they changed the system by now? edit: Seems like there was still work to be done 3 years ago at least.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080941 (2016)
      • jamesmontalvo3 8y ago
        Nope, we're still using the same system. Wow...the first time I mentioned that here was 2013. Ouch. It's something I've wanted to work on all this time but just haven't been able to fit it in. Some students used it as a group project [1] last semester, though, and another group of students may pick it up this semester...so I'm hopeful. [1] https://github.com/jamesmontalvo3/spacewalk https://github.com/jamesmontalvo3/spacewalk
    • thirdsun 8y ago
      Yes, that's my experience as well. Once you step out of tech bubble you'll encounter countless small and even mid-sized businesses that could greatly benefit from rather simple CRUD apps and solutions that might seem very obvious to you. Or in other, more specific words (and I have no affiliation with the product): Showing them how to use something like Airtable and setting up a simple template for them could change their world.
  • jen729w 8y ago
    I’ve thought about doing this sort of thing, but co-opt a friend/colleague/someone your husband knows as the SME in the different industry. You need the insight in to that industry — by definition, you don’t have it. So find that person, and don’t just take their idea and leave. Work with them. Have them be the champion in the industry for this thing you make. Who knows best where the thing can be sold? They do!
    • jjeaff 8y ago
      I would add to that though, that while they are the expert in their industry, you would be surprised how experts can have blinders on regarding inefficiencies. So don't be afraid to ask questions and pitch ideas. I have seen plenty of experts that don't recognize huge pain points in their own industry because that's just the way it's always been done. You can be an expert in something, but if you aren't also an expert in software, you likely haven't thought of all the possibilities that software could solve for you.
  • balls187 8y ago
    > The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that are totally unrelated to your experience. I'd slightly rephrase this: make friends who are business owners in different industries. Having a good idea is only the first step. You need to be able to market it, and ultimately sell it. Business owners face business problems, will have an idea on how much they're willing to spend on it, and will understand the budgets and where they can be applied. Rank and file employees often do not make purchasing decisions on behalf of their companies. Some may, but most do not. My personal story: I became friends with the owner of a nearby gym, and I was immediately impressed with how he ran his business, and more importantly his ability to stay ahead of the curve, learning and adopting new ways to market his business. For a free membership, I would do one off small projects, that typically string together API's offered by the different services he used (Scheduling, waivers, forms). None was particularly interesting, until he came up with a hodgepodge system for contacting new members. I helped him build some flexibility, and we both came to the conclusion that if we built a platform that specifically did this, we could market it and sell it. We boot strapped it and made about $13k in revenue the first year. Now that we have a viable business, we've shifted to growth: get customers.
    • JCharante 8y ago
      Thanks for sharing your experience, that sounds awesome!
    • jklepatch 8y ago
      “I would slightly rephrase this: make friends who are business owners in different industries.” I find it difficult to put in place a process to consistently meet business owners. Some ideas: - going to meetups or better organizing one - going to conferences or better give a talk - be part of mastermind groups (but dont know where to find good one) - hang out on entrepreneur communities like indiehackers. Other ideas?
      • danhodgins 8y ago
        Go to tradeshows or conventions. They are the biggest concentration of business owners anywhere.
  • neillyons 8y ago
    This is great advice.
  • antoineMoPa 8y ago
    Not that I want to be anti-innovation, but what if spreadsheets allow the user to be more in control, have more flexibility and avoid monthly payments of 3-5 cloud services? Maybe replacing every spreadsheet is not optimal.
    • gremlinsinc 8y ago
      Airtables is a good example, though -- I'm seriously thinking of creating an OSS version of Airtables, that has more field types -- like being able to edit using Markdown... or join across bases, not just tables.. There's SO much more you could do w/ their tech, and blocks should be free - just they should have a marketplace and take a cut of sales--something like shopify... if I OSS'd it, I'd do some hybrid like wordpress does, but require a % on anything in the 'app store' -- but all core features would be free / foss.
      • totololo 8y ago
        would be amazing!
        • gremlinsinc 8y ago
          Features I'd like to build into it: Bubble like app from spreadsheets. Hosted and oss version. Extra types: json, md, xml, etc. Time tracker.
  • U597418 8y ago
    This is horrible advice. You're positing that there is no room for innovation within the software development domain. This is a stupid assertion.
  • zeroname 8y ago
    Is this just your "reasonable sounding opinion" or have you yourself had any success in doing what the OP is asking about? Or are you yourself sitting in a comfortable office job in "business and industry"? > The business and industrial world largely still runs on excel spreadsheets, emails and word docs. Why assume that changing this hasn't been "attempted 10 times"? Perhaps the reason for that is simply opaque to you and as a software developer you think in terms of software solutions. However, getting these solutions sold is the real problem.
  • mindcrime 8y ago
    The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that are totally unrelated to your experience. I agree with this, but I'd add one more point. In addition to face-to-face time with these people (which can be hard to come by, either on your end or on theirs), you can try to learn about other industries by reading their books, whitepapers, journals, etc., watching their videos, documentaries, etc., and following industry trade magazines, analyst reports, and the like. This stuff you can at least do on your own time, late at night or on the weekends, whenever you have time to spare. Given this kind of research, you can put together a tentative "value hypothesis" regarding a potential solution in some other space. Then you can maximize the value of your face-to-face time with other people by talking through a specific hypothesis, instead of just an open-ended fishing expedition. Of course, if somebody is willing to give you a half day of their time, and you have that half day free, then go for it. But generally, people are more open to sharing their time if you can make it clear that you respect their time and that the interaction will be somewhat directed / focused.
• throwaway-1283 8y ago
  Indie Hackers is a good resource https://indiehackers.com 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.
  • michaelbuckbee 8y ago
    I have seen more success from freelancers -> very profitable side projects than any other form. It makes sense: you're being paid real money to provide a custom solution to a problem, so if you can make a generalizable version of that solution you can at least feel confident that you're solving a problem people will throw money at to fix. The most common thing I've seen is that freelancers will (as the situation calls for it) strike a deal with their client to carve out a feature as an independent SAAS, bill the customer a much reduced rate for that "set" of work and bring them on as the first "customer" of the SAAS so there's some social proof.
    • rpeden 8y ago
      I think freelancers and contractors also have an advantage in that they're exposed to a far wider set of business problems when compared to a developer working as an employee. When you're exposed to a bigger set of problems, you're more likely to see something that you can provide a solution to. And when you see similar challenges happening again and again, you start to get a sense of what problems need a software solution. If only one client has a specific problem, it might not be amenable to a SaaS solution. But if you see the same problem occurring over and over across multiple clients, you might just have a good SaaS idea on your hands.
    • bitL 8y ago
      All freelancers should learn how to quickly assemble a simple SaaS (e.g. Bootstrap + Flask + Stripe) and then quickly implement a version of whatever they were doing in their paid projects (making sure it's legal ofc) and expose it as an SaaS using their SaaS template. They can even form a separate Delaware LLC for each of them, once the SaaS is built they can just try to sell it; lots of money there as well as not many people can build a company from the scratch.
• sigfubar 8y ago
  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.
  • Varcht 8y ago
    Don't forget to do some research to see if it already exists, often it does.
    • sosborn 8y ago
      The fact that something already exists doesn't exclude the possibility of making money off of that idea. In fact, it actually validates the thought that the idea is viable.
      • Varcht 8y ago
        In fact, it actually validates the thought that the idea is viable. Not sure you can go that far. The first part of your statement sounds reasonable though.
    • guytv 8y ago
      If it does not exist, most probably there's no market for it.
      • Varcht 8y ago
        There are no original ideas left? That's depressing.
  • fermienrico 8y ago
    Your advise is good but often leads to products without real problems. You don’t have to find a novel problem. Find a product that already exists and out-do them. If you can criticize a product, you can make a better version of it and create value for your customers. Finding a novel problem also works but less often than going after an existing known problem with some unoptimized solutions out there.
• halfjoking 8y ago
  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
  • vilaca 8y ago
    you lost me at 3.
  • mrfusion 8y ago
    Any examples?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • halfjoking 8y ago
      There are probably a bunch on ProductHunt. For example https://remove.bg https://remove.bg got a lot of upvotes - it probably uses this on the backend: https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/research/deeplab https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/research/de...
      • mrfusion 8y ago
        So who would pay for that? I can’t imagine there’s much demand for an app to remove image backgrounds?
        • tdfx 8y ago
          If you've got pageviews, you've potentially got revenue.
        • halfjoking 8y ago
          That's why I put ??? as step 3. :D I'm not the person to sell you it. That's just an example where someone might make money.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• rc_kas 8y ago
  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.
• newusertoday 8y ago
  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.
• modeless 8y ago
  > 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.
  • stevenwliao 8y ago
    Many companies are happy to pay for IntelliJ, Docker, and GitHub. I think it depends on which tools you choose to build.
    • modeless 8y ago
      GitHub is a good example of a software development tool that is a cloud service instead of a local program, and thus has an easy and effective monetization strategy. Still, though, the vast majority use it for free. IntelliJ and Docker give most of their products away for free. Why? Probably mostly because there is no good solution to licensing local software. They rely on the patronage of a relative few corporations, who have legal departments that will enforce the licensing rules on their behalf to avoid legal risk. Unfortunately that means that their business is an enterprise licensing business which is difficult to break into. Success in enterprise licensing is less about product quality and more about sales. That's not the kind of business I'd like to be in.
      • stevenwliao 8y ago
• lordnacho 8y ago
  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.
• philbo 8y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html
  • dilippkumar 8y ago
    +1 Follow up reading: Peter Thiel’s “Zero to One” https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296 https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/080...
• elorant 8y ago
  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.
• bargl 8y ago
  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.
  • LyndsySimon 8y ago
    The problem with this is scaling - I've done similar things, but never invested the time necessary to wrap it in a nice UI and monetize it. The degree of customization necessary for each customer usually ends up being pretty high. My project that comes to mind is when I helped a NAPA parts store retrofit a new cash register into their inventory system. Their inventory system was running on AS/400, and their old register that failed was a beast that let them enter a part number for each item, then communicated with the AS/400 over a proprietary protocol to get the price. When the transaction was completed it decremented the stock. It took me about sixty hours to reverse engineer the protocol from the failed register, then another forty or so to write a Python web service that communicated with it and exposed an API and ran their dot-matrix receipt printer. I farmed out creating a web UI to someone on Upwork and left them with a documented solution that let them use off-the-shelf hardware to talk to a small server that then spoke AS/400. I've since replaced the server with a Raspberry Pi, but otherwise it's been in place since 2003. The front-end was originally a touch-screen Windows CE client I snagged at a freight auction, and the last time I stopped by (a couple of years ago) they'd replaced that with an Android tablet on a pedestal and another tablet that they could carry around. That sort of thing obviously has value to a lot of businesses, but each one is going to have a unique setup. There probably aren't a lot of parts houses out there that bought that particular vendor's inventory system in the 80s/90s, haven't upgraded, want to keep using the same backend, and are willing to upgrade their registers to something modern. I'd go so far as to say it's probably a unique situation.
• analog31 8y ago
  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.
• airstrike 8y ago
  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.
• brianbreslin 8y ago
  @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).
• jonnyrockit 8y ago
  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.
  • RickS 8y ago
    To the extent you're willing to comment, I'd be interested in knowing about your criteria for selecting such a project. - was the domain related to your expertise, or in a niche that was new to you? - what made this project stand out from others / appear to have potential? - was codebase quality a factor in purchase? - do you inherit things other than software from the seller? EG customers, marketing channels, analytics, etc? - what was the value-add that made it work under your stewardship but not the seller's Sales / marketing / dev / featureset / etc - Are you interested in doing this repeatedly?
    • gketuma 8y ago
      http://arthur-osx.com/ http://arthur-osx.com/
      • chvid 8y ago
        I noticed that one too when I browsed 1k a few days back. It advertised that it was already making money. Congrats on your purchase,
        • graeme 8y ago
          That’s not the one I don’t think. It was listed on 1k projects 3 days agp for $950. And that’s not OP posting.
          • chvid 8y ago
            https://1kprojects.com/project/arthur https://1kprojects.com/project/arthur It is not?!
• Xolo 8y ago
  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...
• mittermayr 8y ago
  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.
  • opportune 8y ago
    There are actually pretty straightforward reasons why it's not necessarily optimal to be first-to-market. Someone else has already tons of research into product-market fit and made mistakes along the way that you can emulate and learn from respectively. They've also jump started demand in the market for a similar product that perhaps has different features/quality/pricing
    • jainmukesh 8y ago
      You don't always have to take an unknown path. Many times there are inefficiencies in the current businesses which you can try to solve. Also there may never be a perfect idea unless it is put to execution. I run a community board for deals https://flagdeals.in https://flagdeals.in
  • fierro 8y ago
    see: gitlab
    • mikekchar 8y ago
      See: gitHUB. The whole reason git even exists is because Linus wasn't completely happy with the service he was getting from a SaaS source control service! I mean we can go back decades in this field.
• andrethegiant 8y ago
  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.
• joepour 8y ago
  I wrote a short article on how I find ideas: https://tinytracker.co/blog/how-to-find-profitable-business-ideas https://tinytracker.co/blog/how-to-find-profitable-business-... Hope this helps :)
• cdiamand 8y ago
  I send out a daily newsletter with short snippets of pain points in different industries - http://www.oppsdaily.com http://www.oppsdaily.com Here is archive of sorts - http://www.oppslist.com 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.
  • misiti3780 8y ago
    this is a great idea. thank you for making this. -- i just tried to subscribe but your subscription link(s) are hanging. can you add me (email in profile) ?
    • cdiamand 8y ago
      Thanks for letting me know! Added!
      • sebslomski 8y ago
        Same here please
        • cdiamand 8y ago
          Sure thing! Shoot me your email - cory@oppsdaily.com and I'll add you!
  • writepub 8y ago
    OppsDaily is a brilliant! I'm loving reading real-world problems that people are willing to pay for. Well done.
    • cdiamand 8y ago
      Thanks a bunch! Glad to hear you're enjoying it! Apologies in advance for all the duds I send out :)
• chimen 8y ago
  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.
• ken 8y ago
  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.
  • vaib 8y ago
    Would you be willing to give a few examples of such products if I messaged you separately?
• isaacaderogba 8y ago
  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.
• DVassallo 8y ago
  You try it. Make sure that its failure won't ruin you. Then keep tweaking and trying. Don't listen to any other advice :)
  • ElijahLynn 8y ago
    Truth. The key metric here is "what does failure cost"? If it is low, then it is an easier decision to make! Most of the time failure nets a great learning experience regardless of other outcomes.
• mark242 8y ago
  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.
• febin 8y ago
  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.
• jackallis 8y ago
  ahhhhh. I need to learn how to code in python first. All these ideas i have in my head need an outlet.
• AimForTheBushes 8y ago
  > 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.
• edwinwee 8y ago
  You might want to consider applying for Pioneer—you can get a grant for your project: https://pioneer.app/ https://pioneer.app/
• wenbin 8y ago
  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.
• hogu 8y ago
  I know this sounds dumb, but I found this to be very useful https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becoming-an-idea-machine/ 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)
  • verulito 8y ago
    this!
• ElijahLynn 8y ago
  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!
• ElijahLynn 8y ago
  Remember that ideas are abundant, solid user experiences and then lastly execution is the key.
• ElijahLynn 8y ago
  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.
  • ElijahLynn 8y ago
    Ah I remember now, it is the guy (Pieter Levels) who built Nomad List which started from a spreadsheet and probably more well known by the HN community, https://remoteok.io/ https://remoteok.io/ (and https://remoteok.io/open https://remoteok.io/open). His recommendation is to build like 20 apps, not just one. And to do it all yourself, with little extra help. The book is https://makebook.io https://makebook.io. Sales data here https://makebook.io/open https://makebook.io/open. More links: https://nomadlist.com/help https://nomadlist.com/help https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number-one/ https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number-one/ https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/956176482958639105 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/956176482958639105
• thakobyan 8y ago
  I was in a similar situation as you except I have a full-time job. I started https://cronhub.io 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 https://www.indiehackers.com/products) and some of them solve a similar problem but they still co-exist.
  • bbx 8y ago
    Thanks for using Bulma ;-)
    • thakobyan 8y ago
      Thanks for making it :)
• digitalnomd 8y ago
  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.
• mrskitch 8y ago
  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.
• jakobegger 8y ago
  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.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • zaphirplane 8y ago
    Do you really expect IT / tech people to pay?
    • jakobegger 8y ago
      Yes, of course. I sell a product to a very similar audience, and many people are absolutely happy to pay for a tool that saves them time.
  • dahx4Eev 8y ago
    2) how about metabase?
    • jakobegger 8y ago
• bikamonki 8y ago
  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.
• slig 8y ago
  See also this thread from 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047553
• equasar 8y ago
  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 https://github.com/amcharts/amcharts4 but is lacking from good tree-shaking support and performance
  • cvrjk 8y ago
    Highcharts too? I checked if they had tree shaking, but apparently not https://github.com/highcharts/highcharts/issues/8667 https://github.com/highcharts/highcharts/issues/8667
  • karanke 8y ago
    I'm guessing you've already looked at these, but wondering what features are missing from the following tools: 1. plotly.js - https://plot.ly/javascript/ https://plot.ly/javascript/ 2. Vega Lite - https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/
• muzani 8y ago
  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.
• purplezooey 8y ago
  some guy made a lot of money with poofychairs.com
• Smithalicious 8y ago
  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.
• usgroup 8y ago
  Do the world a huge service and build a competitor to upwork.com that does the same thing for modest fees.
• mikekchar 8y ago
  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 ;-)
• clanrebornsx 8y ago
  I make 6 figures running dropshipper store. You can Google more about this business model and I don't even need any programming skills
• lexda15 8y ago
  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/ https://periodix.net/ 2 - https://positiveimpacttechjobs.com/ https://positiveimpacttechjobs.com/ 3 - List of Remote Jobs in Different Companies https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv0BjsWBR7JntDJqRM6_hyjbE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv...
• MandieD 8y ago
  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.
• achempion 8y ago
  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 https://vocab10k.com). Also, you can pick any stack you want :)
• krschacht 8y ago
  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.
• orasis 8y ago
  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.
• arisAlexis 8y ago
  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
• rorygibson 8y ago
  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 https://trolley.link
• SmushyTaco 8y ago
  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.
• caviv 8y ago
  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 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.