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An acquaintance worked for the company and asked for help replacing an existing paper process with an excel document. I helped, but mentioned a web app would wo

An acquaintance worked for the company and asked for help replacing an existing paper process with an excel document. I helped, but mentioned a web app would work much better. The company trialed the excel version but came back with some concerns. I talked it over with the friend and decided to spend my free time building it out. Once I had a beta ready they trailed it in their location and they loved it. We got it into 2 more locations (all free at this point) and everyone loved it. That raised interest and other stores in the district started asking for it. We launched it across the whole district and finally started to charge. After a year the company decided to launch it nationally. It was a risky move to do the work up front since it could have fizzled out, but it worked out in the end.

akudha 7y ago
Beautiful! one again, "find Excel use case and replace with web app" seems to have worked :) Thank you for responding.
- stanmancan 7y ago
  Absolutely, I think there’s plenty of money to be made finding problems companies don’t know they have. The hard part is identifying them, and picking one where the value added by a web app is worth paying for.
akudha 7y ago
Asking here, unable to reply to the comment below. The hard part is identifying them, and picking one where the value added by a web app is worth paying for. As someone who doesn't have any contacts with companies (I'd assume this is true for most people here), any pointers on how to go about doing this? I tried the cold email route (even made a friend this way, we still keep in touch after two years, though we haven't met and probably never will), but I didn't succeed. I probably could have, but it made me so uncomfortable writing to total strangers :(
- adriand 7y ago
  > As someone who doesn't have any contacts with companies (I'd assume this is true for most people here), any pointers on how to go about doing this? You need to develop contacts at companies! There are lots of different ways to build your network, but the bottom line is that to be successful with this line of work, which is essentially consulting (at least in the beginning stages), you need to meet people and earn their trust. If you are introverted this will likely feel awkward and uncomfortable (which is why it’s called getting out of your comfort zone). It takes a fair bit of effort to get someone to the point where they are willing to walk you through their business processes. Showing genuine interest in their operations and asking lots of good questions is key.
  - stanmancan 7y ago
    Yup this pretty much hits the nail on the head. Learning to listen is very important, and really understanding what people are saying. Lots of times they aren’t really complaining, they’re just talking about something and if you’re listening closely you can identify potential opportunities in their systems and processes. Often people don’t know what’s possible, so they don’t come at you directly with a problem. At an old job it was someone’s job to run a “install history report”, it was all the installs that were done the previous week (thousands) and read through it copying and pasting installs from specific cities into an excel sheet. It took about 12 hours a week. He explained this process whole asking a completely different question. I ended up writing a little script that completed this same task in a few seconds. He didn’t even know that was possible, so he didn’t know to ask.
cpach 7y ago
Was it hard to negotiate/agree with them on the price?
- stanmancan 7y ago
  Not particularly, I started a bit higher than I really wanted so they could negotiate down a bit, but it’s a reasonable price for what they get. I think the trick is pricing based on value provided by the solution; what’s it worth to them?
  - cpach 7y ago
    Cool. Well done!
newnewpdro 7y ago
What did your acquaintance get for their part? I had a kindof similar situation long ago, where a friend worked for a high-frequency trading company and I had been developing a low-overhead high-precision resource and system monitoring framework. I would supply him development builds of the agents and a web login to monitor and tune their trading systems while I got some free production testing in return, it seemed fair at the time. As things matured and I started exploring paths for monetization, when I approached that trading company about a possible contract my "friend" demanded half ownership stake in the business in return for their becoming the first paying customer. Nope.
- stanmancan 7y ago
  Acquaintance got the recognition at work for the tool implementation. They also got a vastly superior solution to a problem they had at work. I had another opportunity to develop a similar tool for another company, but the person who pitched it wanted 50% despite having nothing to offer other than the idea, so I politely declined.
- readhn 7y ago
  ... so you got nothing at the end?

akudha 7y ago

Beautiful! one again, "find Excel use case and replace with web app" seems to have worked :) Thank you for responding.

stanmancan 7y ago
Absolutely, I think there’s plenty of money to be made finding problems companies don’t know they have. The hard part is identifying them, and picking one where the value added by a web app is worth paying for.

akudha 7y ago

Asking here, unable to reply to the comment below. The hard part is identifying them, and picking one where the value added by a web app is worth paying for. As someone who doesn't have any contacts with companies (I'd assume this is true for most people here), any pointers on how to go about doing this? I tried the cold email route (even made a friend this way, we still keep in touch after two years, though we haven't met and probably never will), but I didn't succeed. I probably could have, but it made me so uncomfortable writing to total strangers :(

adriand 7y ago
> As someone who doesn't have any contacts with companies (I'd assume this is true for most people here), any pointers on how to go about doing this? You need to develop contacts at companies! There are lots of different ways to build your network, but the bottom line is that to be successful with this line of work, which is essentially consulting (at least in the beginning stages), you need to meet people and earn their trust. If you are introverted this will likely feel awkward and uncomfortable (which is why it’s called getting out of your comfort zone). It takes a fair bit of effort to get someone to the point where they are willing to walk you through their business processes. Showing genuine interest in their operations and asking lots of good questions is key.
- stanmancan 7y ago
  Yup this pretty much hits the nail on the head. Learning to listen is very important, and really understanding what people are saying. Lots of times they aren’t really complaining, they’re just talking about something and if you’re listening closely you can identify potential opportunities in their systems and processes. Often people don’t know what’s possible, so they don’t come at you directly with a problem. At an old job it was someone’s job to run a “install history report”, it was all the installs that were done the previous week (thousands) and read through it copying and pasting installs from specific cities into an excel sheet. It took about 12 hours a week. He explained this process whole asking a completely different question. I ended up writing a little script that completed this same task in a few seconds. He didn’t even know that was possible, so he didn’t know to ask.

cpach 7y ago

Was it hard to negotiate/agree with them on the price?

stanmancan 7y ago
Not particularly, I started a bit higher than I really wanted so they could negotiate down a bit, but it’s a reasonable price for what they get. I think the trick is pricing based on value provided by the solution; what’s it worth to them?
- cpach 7y ago
  Cool. Well done!

newnewpdro 7y ago

What did your acquaintance get for their part? I had a kindof similar situation long ago, where a friend worked for a high-frequency trading company and I had been developing a low-overhead high-precision resource and system monitoring framework. I would supply him development builds of the agents and a web login to monitor and tune their trading systems while I got some free production testing in return, it seemed fair at the time. As things matured and I started exploring paths for monetization, when I approached that trading company about a possible contract my "friend" demanded half ownership stake in the business in return for their becoming the first paying customer. Nope.

stanmancan 7y ago
Acquaintance got the recognition at work for the tool implementation. They also got a vastly superior solution to a problem they had at work. I had another opportunity to develop a similar tool for another company, but the person who pitched it wanted 50% despite having nothing to offer other than the idea, so I politely declined.
readhn 7y ago
... so you got nothing at the end?