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Show HN: DemandHunt – Make something people want

26 points by personjerry 4y ago

Hi HN! I've been working on a small project called DemandHunt. Basically I aggregated problems in niche communities so that you as an entrepreneur can take inspiration. The background is that I've worked with a number of startups and I've found that many entrepreneurs already have a technology or solution in mind and work backwards to find the people with the problems to solve. This is YC's "Solution in Search of a Problem" problem, and my understanding is that it's typically better to work the other way around so you can build the right solution for the problem you find instead. Thus I figured maybe some hacker types like me would appreciate reading about problems in their interest areas so that they can get the ball rolling from the right direction. I went and did some reading in some niche Reddit communities and manually aggregated the user posts into tangible problems that might inspire you. I'm curious to see if this is interesting or useful to anyone here! Let me know what you think, if you want me to target your interests, or updates, or anything :)

svvvst 4y ago
I think this has a lot of potential as the platform develops more. Looking forward to seeing what happens!
blahblah1234567 4y ago
Sounds like a fantastic idea. You could create categories for various industries, contact companies at those industries to have them post their pain points/needs for products. And potentially partner with freelancer sites (and consultancies based in those particular industries).
techdragon 4y ago
I like the concept in general more than this implementation… it feels like this is a boutique form of a specific business report I see offered for sale occasionally while researching a new idea. There’s a little niche of business analysts who make a living selling “market opportunity” oriented versions of the more common “product/market analysis” reports you see floating around. The kind that list the companies either making the product or serving the market, and how much their estimated costs are by research into their consumables or best guess operations costs, staffing and average salaries, and estimates of potential profitability of sales figures are possible to gather. The niche of “opportunity” reports tends to take this format and focus less on the total profit or cost and more on the operating margins each company is likely working on, with a bigger emphasis on potential disruptions from related industries, known market trends and when appropriate customer demand and sentiment. I’m basing this off the few I have read and I’m by no means an expert in these reports since they usually try to sell them to you for several thousand dollars which, like I said, means I’ve read only a few of them in full. This feels like that kind of report… but without enough information and (currently at least) for pretty “trivial” problems that people have in aggregate. I personally don’t find it hard to browse reddit and see what people are bitching about. I could probably even automate it with some sentiment analysis and keyword extraction scripts if I really couldn’t find anything to spark a new idea… All of this is to say that the current implementation feels like the only things your going to suggest are low average revenue per customer/user bulk/aggregate user experience problems… what I wish for is more of a bounty board where sufficiently pissed off people can post their “demand” and flesh out the thing they want to see exist, others can “me too please” them so I can tell if it’s just one random person or not, and they and subsequent people can post a ballpark of what it’s worth to them… this isn’t the same as a freelance listing site… that’s a deliberate contract pipeline the people posting there have the money and already want to pay someone to make something… what Im thinking of is conceptually close, but where the relationship is “many to one”. The freelancers are in a “one to one” contract with the people posting the things that want built, where as this is a “many to one” opportunity where the makers/developers that look at the things people want and think to themselves “I could do that”, have the opportunity to sell their work to the people that stood up and said “hey I want this but I can’t make it, I’d any else does I’d totally pay for it”. But that’s just me wanting a cool idea source and a sales lead generator to hop in the blender and make me a delicious new way to find places to earn money… I’m sure you’ve got a longer term product vision and if this is where it’s starting, it looks like it’s off to a good start, just not going the direction I personally wish.
- personjerry 4y ago
  I've worked on something like what you talked about, a "problems" discussion board, and indeed companies exist that offer such a service (i.e. https://canny.io/ https://canny.io/) but the issue was that in a forum explicitly about problems, users typically don't end up putting their money where their mouth is. Additionally, users aren't themselves designers or problem solvers and often spin their problem (or even proposed solution) in a way that they don't even really want or isn't effective from a business sense. All that is to say, I think that site you're proposing turns into "building product by democracy" which isn't super effective, actually. You're right about the specific situation of what I've built so far, it is a tiny version of those reports. But it's $10, and what I had in mind was not to necessarily target and solve those problems, but act as a starting point for entrepreneurial users to read and explore existing problems. From what I've seen so far, such a niche of entrepreneurial users might not exist - I think they probably do have their problem area already in mind, so unless I nail that area, they won't be paying for inspiration for random niches. My next steps might be to deploy some automation to make these documents, and therefore have something for any niche. But right now my engagement numbers don't seem to warrant that direction, unfortunately :(
meowtastic 4y ago
I wouldn't say r/startups is that niche. I think it's worth investing more time in some even smaller communities. Otherwise people will think they could do the research themselves.
- personjerry 4y ago
  Yeah, you're right. I tried to find some big and some small communities. I think I have to align better the communities I choose and who I'm showing this to.
throwaway-blaze 4y ago
Do you have some proprietary tech here or you just do the hard work of combing thru the postings on the communities and figuring out some pain points/problems? One to add: Parenting.
- personjerry 4y ago
  I'm doing it manually for now! If it picks up I'll think about automating :) Thanks for the suggestion!
wilsonjohn 4y ago
Hey. I'm looking for r/productivity and r/crossfit and any problems around "checklist". Is that a possibility?
- personjerry 4y ago
  Hi! I just added r/productivity and r/crossfit to DemandHunt: https://www.demandhunt.com/#communities https://www.demandhunt.com/#communities Let me know if these end up being useful for you! :)
- personjerry 4y ago
  Hi! Yeah I can do that for you, I'll reply here when I have those ready :)

26 points by personjerry 4y ago

svvvst 4y ago

I think this has a lot of potential as the platform develops more. Looking forward to seeing what happens!

blahblah1234567 4y ago

Sounds like a fantastic idea. You could create categories for various industries, contact companies at those industries to have them post their pain points/needs for products. And potentially partner with freelancer sites (and consultancies based in those particular industries).

techdragon 4y ago

I like the concept in general more than this implementation… it feels like this is a boutique form of a specific business report I see offered for sale occasionally while researching a new idea. There’s a little niche of business analysts who make a living selling “market opportunity” oriented versions of the more common “product/market analysis” reports you see floating around. The kind that list the companies either making the product or serving the market, and how much their estimated costs are by research into their consumables or best guess operations costs, staffing and average salaries, and estimates of potential profitability of sales figures are possible to gather. The niche of “opportunity” reports tends to take this format and focus less on the total profit or cost and more on the operating margins each company is likely working on, with a bigger emphasis on potential disruptions from related industries, known market trends and when appropriate customer demand and sentiment. I’m basing this off the few I have read and I’m by no means an expert in these reports since they usually try to sell them to you for several thousand dollars which, like I said, means I’ve read only a few of them in full. This feels like that kind of report… but without enough information and (currently at least) for pretty “trivial” problems that people have in aggregate. I personally don’t find it hard to browse reddit and see what people are bitching about. I could probably even automate it with some sentiment analysis and keyword extraction scripts if I really couldn’t find anything to spark a new idea… All of this is to say that the current implementation feels like the only things your going to suggest are low average revenue per customer/user bulk/aggregate user experience problems… what I wish for is more of a bounty board where sufficiently pissed off people can post their “demand” and flesh out the thing they want to see exist, others can “me too please” them so I can tell if it’s just one random person or not, and they and subsequent people can post a ballpark of what it’s worth to them… this isn’t the same as a freelance listing site… that’s a deliberate contract pipeline the people posting there have the money and already want to pay someone to make something… what Im thinking of is conceptually close, but where the relationship is “many to one”. The freelancers are in a “one to one” contract with the people posting the things that want built, where as this is a “many to one” opportunity where the makers/developers that look at the things people want and think to themselves “I could do that”, have the opportunity to sell their work to the people that stood up and said “hey I want this but I can’t make it, I’d any else does I’d totally pay for it”. But that’s just me wanting a cool idea source and a sales lead generator to hop in the blender and make me a delicious new way to find places to earn money… I’m sure you’ve got a longer term product vision and if this is where it’s starting, it looks like it’s off to a good start, just not going the direction I personally wish.

personjerry 4y ago
I've worked on something like what you talked about, a "problems" discussion board, and indeed companies exist that offer such a service (i.e. https://canny.io/ https://canny.io/) but the issue was that in a forum explicitly about problems, users typically don't end up putting their money where their mouth is. Additionally, users aren't themselves designers or problem solvers and often spin their problem (or even proposed solution) in a way that they don't even really want or isn't effective from a business sense. All that is to say, I think that site you're proposing turns into "building product by democracy" which isn't super effective, actually. You're right about the specific situation of what I've built so far, it is a tiny version of those reports. But it's $10, and what I had in mind was not to necessarily target and solve those problems, but act as a starting point for entrepreneurial users to read and explore existing problems. From what I've seen so far, such a niche of entrepreneurial users might not exist - I think they probably do have their problem area already in mind, so unless I nail that area, they won't be paying for inspiration for random niches. My next steps might be to deploy some automation to make these documents, and therefore have something for any niche. But right now my engagement numbers don't seem to warrant that direction, unfortunately :(

meowtastic 4y ago

I wouldn't say r/startups is that niche. I think it's worth investing more time in some even smaller communities. Otherwise people will think they could do the research themselves.

personjerry 4y ago
Yeah, you're right. I tried to find some big and some small communities. I think I have to align better the communities I choose and who I'm showing this to.

throwaway-blaze 4y ago

Do you have some proprietary tech here or you just do the hard work of combing thru the postings on the communities and figuring out some pain points/problems? One to add: Parenting.

personjerry 4y ago
I'm doing it manually for now! If it picks up I'll think about automating :) Thanks for the suggestion!

wilsonjohn 4y ago

Hey. I'm looking for r/productivity and r/crossfit and any problems around "checklist". Is that a possibility?

personjerry 4y ago
Hi! I just added r/productivity and r/crossfit to DemandHunt: https://www.demandhunt.com/#communities https://www.demandhunt.com/#communities Let me know if these end up being useful for you! :)
personjerry 4y ago
Hi! Yeah I can do that for you, I'll reply here when I have those ready :)