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My experiment that I am thinking of recently is almost the opposite. 1. Start with markets with high competition. E.g. paid alternatives to Google forms. 2. G

My experiment that I am thinking of recently is almost the opposite. 1. Start with markets with high competition. E.g. paid alternatives to Google forms. 2. Get a list of 50+ products competing in the space. If < 50 go back to step 1. 3. Google to find what people, who are on the paid tiers of those products, complain about. This is easy as I am now Googling brand names so should get laser targeted results (v.s. googling "problem I had creating a form" -> Stack Overflow user who'll never pay for a form!) 4. Interview them to dig in further. If you can't get any of these people to even spare 5 minutes to talk, then it might be an indicator that you wont get them to buy. 5. Based on this, derive a hypothesis for a MVP that would solve the problem, along with the market it serves and where to find these people. 6. Presell to people in #4. If they say no - dig in further as to why. If they say yes, aim for maybe $1000 monthly revenue presold, then build. The reason for this approach is it filters for the "are people motivated enough to spend money" which I think is the biggest risk for the ideas I come up with. Since they are (they already use the "competitor" product"), can I carve out a niche where I do something better for a specific group of people? Can I reach them easily without spending crazy money on ads? And am I solving their problem? Caveat is this is designed as an idea generator for an Indie Hacker style project, not a startup!

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
This active approach to engaging people nicely compliments advice you hear about on setting up passive channels like landing pages w/ Google Ad Words campaigns.
siquick 6y ago
I can't really imagine ever paying for a product that isn't working in any capacity. I think 6 only works if you can manually complete the process behind the product to give the buyer the illusion that the product is a real product.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  And yet people do (kickstarter, for example, or those books where there is only 1 chapter done, but you pay almost full price anyway and wait for the rest)
  - abeyer 6y ago
    I think there's a big difference between the types of things that succeed as a kickstarter and yet another SaaS product in a crowded niche.
    - sushshshsh 6y ago
      Can confirm that I'm much more likely to spend money on someone's interesting creative story than on literally any SaaS
- imtringued 6y ago
  I think the goal is reducing risk to something manageable for a single person without capital. If your customers don't believe in the product then you'll have to be the one who believes in the product and for a single person that is a pretty good signal to look for something more worthwhile.
munificent 6y ago
You should probably add a step: 5.5. Derive a hypothesis for why the 50 other competitors have not already solved this problem or couldn't do so quickly once they discover your solution. If you don't have a good answer for this, then the odds are one of two things will happen: 1. You will waste a bunch of time only to discover that you were ignorant of some deep constraint of the problem area. 2. Your competition will re-implement your feature and crowd you out.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Sounds good, thanks for adding that. I think the ideal answer would be "if they tried to solve this problem it would be bad for them. Too distracting, and they'd half ass it because it isn't their focus". Rather than "oh that little feature is on the backlog".
- ttul 6y ago
  ... or they already have your feature in development and will crush you before you even launch...
- camhart 6y ago
  I wouldn't worry so much about #2 unless the market is extremely small or you're looking to raise money or your only vision of success is a giant company. Most markets with existing companies serving them are big enough to support a small indie company. And there are things you can offer as a small company that's difficult for big company's to offer.
  - munificent 6y ago
    That's true, but personally, I would be really hesitant to get into a market with several large dominant players without a significant edge. The reality of business in the US is constant consolidation towards a small number of huge, anti-competitive players. I can't find the source right now, but I've seen statistics that the total number of businesses in the US is much smaller today than it was, say, 50 years ago. So I think your expectation, assuming you are in the US, is that your business has one of a few trajectories: * You deliberately aim for a market with many small businesses and forces that go against consolidation. There are fewer of these over time, but anything explicitly local, has few economies of scale, or where consumers specifically target variety is a good place to look. Think restaurants, luthiers, and other "craft" businesses. Then you can have a long moderate term success while staying small. You probably won't get rich but you might like your life. * You try to grow very rapidly to get to be a big fish before the other big fish eat you. You take a ride on the VC train and if you're lucky escape with your soul intact. * You aim to get bought. You lose the experience of it being your business but you might get rich in return. * You get crushed or bought against your will. Short of simply fading away from lack of success, this is probably the most likely outcome.
101008 6y ago
I like this approach. I want to build an alternative for GoodReads focused on privacy (a là Pinboard). Should I search on Twitter for people complaining about GoodReads, ask them why, and after getting feedback, ask them if they would pay for this service? (Something like $10 yearly, or around that)
- wukerplank 6y ago
  Be sure to post here when you go live, I want this! I used Delicious Library to keep track of my books but it seems abandoned. I guess the challenge is to have an extensive catalog/API that makes it easy for users to add books to their library.
  - FtCollins 6y ago
    I would imagine there is a massive library API available somewhere.
    - wukerplank 6y ago
      Haven't looked into this for a while, but most projects I saw were using Amazon's API, which I guess has the largest international catalog of books. The typical next result is GoodReads, which would be awkward to lean on for building a competitor.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  > Please add something like followshows.com, so I can follow authors or series and see a list of upcoming releases. I wanted to build something like that but realized it would be a PitA to get that data. Oh, and allow me to filter out reviews with over x emojis and over 0 animated gifs. I’d say those are my main complaints/missing features for goodreads ;)

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

This active approach to engaging people nicely compliments advice you hear about on setting up passive channels like landing pages w/ Google Ad Words campaigns.

siquick 6y ago

I can't really imagine ever paying for a product that isn't working in any capacity. I think 6 only works if you can manually complete the process behind the product to give the buyer the illusion that the product is a real product.

quickthrower2 6y ago
And yet people do (kickstarter, for example, or those books where there is only 1 chapter done, but you pay almost full price anyway and wait for the rest)
- abeyer 6y ago
  I think there's a big difference between the types of things that succeed as a kickstarter and yet another SaaS product in a crowded niche.
  - sushshshsh 6y ago
    Can confirm that I'm much more likely to spend money on someone's interesting creative story than on literally any SaaS
imtringued 6y ago
I think the goal is reducing risk to something manageable for a single person without capital. If your customers don't believe in the product then you'll have to be the one who believes in the product and for a single person that is a pretty good signal to look for something more worthwhile.

munificent 6y ago

You should probably add a step: 5.5. Derive a hypothesis for why the 50 other competitors have not already solved this problem or couldn't do so quickly once they discover your solution. If you don't have a good answer for this, then the odds are one of two things will happen: 1. You will waste a bunch of time only to discover that you were ignorant of some deep constraint of the problem area. 2. Your competition will re-implement your feature and crowd you out.

quickthrower2 6y ago
Sounds good, thanks for adding that. I think the ideal answer would be "if they tried to solve this problem it would be bad for them. Too distracting, and they'd half ass it because it isn't their focus". Rather than "oh that little feature is on the backlog".
ttul 6y ago
... or they already have your feature in development and will crush you before you even launch...
camhart 6y ago
I wouldn't worry so much about #2 unless the market is extremely small or you're looking to raise money or your only vision of success is a giant company. Most markets with existing companies serving them are big enough to support a small indie company. And there are things you can offer as a small company that's difficult for big company's to offer.
- munificent 6y ago
  That's true, but personally, I would be really hesitant to get into a market with several large dominant players without a significant edge. The reality of business in the US is constant consolidation towards a small number of huge, anti-competitive players. I can't find the source right now, but I've seen statistics that the total number of businesses in the US is much smaller today than it was, say, 50 years ago. So I think your expectation, assuming you are in the US, is that your business has one of a few trajectories: * You deliberately aim for a market with many small businesses and forces that go against consolidation. There are fewer of these over time, but anything explicitly local, has few economies of scale, or where consumers specifically target variety is a good place to look. Think restaurants, luthiers, and other "craft" businesses. Then you can have a long moderate term success while staying small. You probably won't get rich but you might like your life. * You try to grow very rapidly to get to be a big fish before the other big fish eat you. You take a ride on the VC train and if you're lucky escape with your soul intact. * You aim to get bought. You lose the experience of it being your business but you might get rich in return. * You get crushed or bought against your will. Short of simply fading away from lack of success, this is probably the most likely outcome.

101008 6y ago

I like this approach. I want to build an alternative for GoodReads focused on privacy (a là Pinboard). Should I search on Twitter for people complaining about GoodReads, ask them why, and after getting feedback, ask them if they would pay for this service? (Something like $10 yearly, or around that)

wukerplank 6y ago
Be sure to post here when you go live, I want this! I used Delicious Library to keep track of my books but it seems abandoned. I guess the challenge is to have an extensive catalog/API that makes it easy for users to add books to their library.
- FtCollins 6y ago
  I would imagine there is a massive library API available somewhere.
  - wukerplank 6y ago
    Haven't looked into this for a while, but most projects I saw were using Amazon's API, which I guess has the largest international catalog of books. The typical next result is GoodReads, which would be awkward to lean on for building a competitor.
Semaphor 6y ago
> Please add something like followshows.com, so I can follow authors or series and see a list of upcoming releases. I wanted to build something like that but realized it would be a PitA to get that data. Oh, and allow me to filter out reviews with over x emojis and over 0 animated gifs. I’d say those are my main complaints/missing features for goodreads ;)