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I feel I can speak to this pretty well, over the past year I've launched 130+ projects as part of https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks https://ae.studio/same-d

I feel I can speak to this pretty well, over the past year I've launched 130+ projects as part of https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks https://ae.studio/same-day-skunkworks and I've come up with ~250+ ideas. Similar to "look for anomalies" my general rule of thumb is to solve some sort of problem, even if it's rather small. So for example: 1. I pick a topic/product. Let's say: Gmail 2. I look for things that I'd like to be able to do, wish I could do, or consider frustrations I've experienced in the past. - I want to review how many emails I get a day on average, where are my "inbox metrics"? - I want to see threaded messages more clearly, why is the design so opposite a normal chat message? - I want to create emails faster, why do I have such an elaborate editor and format for something that I typically want to use informally? 3. I consider ways to solve said problems - Where are my "inbox metrics"? - Chrome extension to show average emails per day, and graph on a timeline which types of emails I get on certain days. Huge personal data opportunity here. - I want to see threaded messages more clearly - An app that connects to my gmail that intelligently restructures my emails to make them appear like chat messages. It handles all the noise, I just message as I would in any instant messenger. - I want to create emails faster - predictive text templates, quick starters, GPT powered replies, change the "bulky editor" out for a simple text box + clever replies. 4. I then research if there are existing solutions to said problems, and if there are, I either ignore and move on, or consider ways that I could quickly one up their product to make mine the better product in the marketplace. For my specific use-case, I'm trying to build a product per day, so I'll look for speedy ways to solve the problem that I've selected in a novel and agency increasing way. But I think this is a great structure for anyone looking to build a startup or a small side hustle.

hooande 4y ago
250 ideas is incredible. if only 1% of them grow to have ~$1MM in value (or anything close), you should have two or three real winners by now. If only by pure chance. I'm really curious about how that's going. I can't quite suss out what your biggest successes are on your website.
- jarrenae 4y ago
  That's definitely one of the goals that I'm tracking for, though I want to stress that profitability per project isn't the main goal, so some of these projects have no immediate monetization strategy. Additionally, the projects are of a pretty strict scope (6-24 hours of work) for MVP, so we're mostly trying to improve the overall structure. In a year I hope to have 2-6 that are decently profitable, and ideally more that are valued in the open source community. I think a few of the most successful ones so far are: https://ghostlystock.com/ https://ghostlystock.com/ https://www.barbellformac.com/ https://www.barbellformac.com/ https://www.heftysearch.com/ https://www.heftysearch.com/ https://www.oldestsearch.com/ https://www.oldestsearch.com/ combined web traffic is around 5-10k views per month (across the pages you see on the main site) Side note: I'm improving that page to make finding popular ones easier. Some aren't worth more than a quick laugh/glance, while others are really worth using.

hooande 4y ago

250 ideas is incredible. if only 1% of them grow to have ~$1MM in value (or anything close), you should have two or three real winners by now. If only by pure chance. I'm really curious about how that's going. I can't quite suss out what your biggest successes are on your website.

jarrenae 4y ago
That's definitely one of the goals that I'm tracking for, though I want to stress that profitability per project isn't the main goal, so some of these projects have no immediate monetization strategy. Additionally, the projects are of a pretty strict scope (6-24 hours of work) for MVP, so we're mostly trying to improve the overall structure. In a year I hope to have 2-6 that are decently profitable, and ideally more that are valued in the open source community. I think a few of the most successful ones so far are: https://ghostlystock.com/ https://ghostlystock.com/ https://www.barbellformac.com/ https://www.barbellformac.com/ https://www.heftysearch.com/ https://www.heftysearch.com/ https://www.oldestsearch.com/ https://www.oldestsearch.com/ combined web traffic is around 5-10k views per month (across the pages you see on the main site) Side note: I'm improving that page to make finding popular ones easier. Some aren't worth more than a quick laugh/glance, while others are really worth using.