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Far and away my most common experiences with business ideas others try to give me: "Oh man you should make an app/website to do X! God it'd make my life/job so

Far and away my most common experiences with business ideas others try to give me: "Oh man you should make an app/website to do X! God it'd make my life/job so much easier." "Cool, yeah, great idea" Then I unlock my phone, check the app store, and yep, there are already 25 complete solutions to this exact problem on just this one platform. Oh but they would totally pay for it and it'll definitely make me rich, never mind they haven't even bothered to google for a solution, which already exists in exactly the same form I'd make it, and is free or cheap. Ok. Toss that one in the ol' round-file.

jagged-chisel 7y ago
Send them an affiliate link with "Remember that app you said I should build?"
kirso 7y ago
Here it only depends on whether its a zero-sum (winner takes all) market, or whether you can improve an existing model and eat chunk of it (look how many alternatives of Mailchimp spun out, I love all of the incl. mailerlite and EmailOctopus!). So I wouldn't through the towel just because there is competition, but rather look at the opportunity cost, do you really wanna spend time working on this?
- shantly 7y ago
  What throws me is that they seem to think this would make their life much easier, and that there's no solution unless someone makes it... but there already is one. There are several. Specifically for their problem. Most of which seem to get the job done just fine. It'd be a big help to them, but they haven't even spent as much time as it took to describe to me what they want, looking for an existing solution. I'd bet they've never even asked anyone else in their line of work if they have a solution. Anyone who has, doesn't have the problem anymore. They don't need me to write an app, they need me to teach them how & when to effing google. I'm aware of the ability to out-compete existing solutions on quality and UX and such, but most of the time when this happens, there aren't really any clear pain points in the existing solutions that I'm being told about, the person suggesting it is just totally oblivious to their existence, and they sure appear to do exactly the thing they need. I do like the affiliate link suggestion from the other poster, haha.

jagged-chisel 7y ago

Send them an affiliate link with "Remember that app you said I should build?"

kirso 7y ago

Here it only depends on whether its a zero-sum (winner takes all) market, or whether you can improve an existing model and eat chunk of it (look how many alternatives of Mailchimp spun out, I love all of the incl. mailerlite and EmailOctopus!). So I wouldn't through the towel just because there is competition, but rather look at the opportunity cost, do you really wanna spend time working on this?

shantly 7y ago
What throws me is that they seem to think this would make their life much easier, and that there's no solution unless someone makes it... but there already is one. There are several. Specifically for their problem. Most of which seem to get the job done just fine. It'd be a big help to them, but they haven't even spent as much time as it took to describe to me what they want, looking for an existing solution. I'd bet they've never even asked anyone else in their line of work if they have a solution. Anyone who has, doesn't have the problem anymore. They don't need me to write an app, they need me to teach them how & when to effing google. I'm aware of the ability to out-compete existing solutions on quality and UX and such, but most of the time when this happens, there aren't really any clear pain points in the existing solutions that I'm being told about, the person suggesting it is just totally oblivious to their existence, and they sure appear to do exactly the thing they need. I do like the affiliate link suggestion from the other poster, haha.