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People say this but I don’t buy it at all. If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel an

People say this but I don’t buy it at all. If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel and a software program that was outdated a decade ago. The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Just check out the number of posts you see on HN where you have people that started "successful" small (< 10 people) SaaS businesses. In basically all instances: 1. These stories get a ton of upvotes because they're actually quite rare. 2. The total income to the founder is still considerably (like way considerably) less that a senior dev at a FAANG.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Big sample size issue here. I don't know why anyone would want to share that they have a profitable one person business, as it only invites competition. The people actually doing that are almost certainly going to keep it a secret.
epicureanideal 2y ago
> The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exist but are highly unique in each case, there may be a reason it's solved in a one-off way by Excel or scripts rather than a scalable product. The use of Excel isn't inherently ripe for disruption. There are plenty of problems to be solved that just can't be solved profitably. It would be no better than solving a problem that someone has but is unwilling to pay for.
- dannyphantom 2y ago
  Your comment reminded me of a cool little project I found a few years ago re: niche problems and smaller solutions - the target demo being soldiers who (very generally) have some disposable income to spend on a small app that can improve their professional QoL was kind of genius imo. There was (still is, though the website is now dead) a really cool website/app that a fmr Air Force soldier made called AFI SWiM[0] that extracted 'Shall, Will and Must' references from Air Force publications which blew up in popularity among the target demo. The dev recently(ish) wrote a blog post[1] how it surprised him to see the app[2] had gotten around ~20k downloads, though I am unsure if the app was always priced at $1.99 (which would be just under $40k). I like the idea of developing a problem solver for a niche market, though finding and monetizing it definitely is pretty tough. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220601160702/https://swim.afiexplorer.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220601160702/https://swim.afie... [1] https://willswire.com/blog/chat-afi/ https://willswire.com/blog/chat-afi/ [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107 the github repo: https://github.com/willswire/afi-swim https://github.com/willswire/afi-swim
  - cvwright 2y ago
    Your story supports the position that it's safer to take the FAANG job. This guy found an underserved market opportunity, built something, got some success marketing it, and made a whopping total of $40k. Meanwhile the FAANG guys are making that every two months, without all the risk.
    - wonger_ 2y ago
      Imagine if this app was B2B instead of B2C, or if it pivots to B2B in the future, or if it's acquired. Imagine also future passive income with little maintenance. And his project seemed like a side project written over a few months. Still risky, but the expected value is comparable to a stint at a salaried job IMO, once you find a decent market opportunity. Not to mention the qualitative value of self-employment, and that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs.
epicureanideal 2y ago
If you know of some boring, obscure market niches that are also likely to be profitable, meaning the cost of customer acquisition is easily less than the profit per customer, and is scalably solved with a software product, please either share with HN readers, or at least offer to sell them to us. They say ideas are worth nothing, but not to me. If you really have some good ideas (see definition above), I would be interested in buying them at a reasonable price.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Here's one that I have dealt with personally: paying taxes as an American that lives abroad (and wants to use the foreign income exclusion) is a nightmare filled with misinformation and tedium. I don't know if this is actually a market worth pursuing, but I do know that I paid some company $500 to fill in a form for me and help figure out the process. They probably spent an hour or two on my case. With the increase of dual citizens, digital nomads, etc. this seems like a growing market to me.
  - phonerphone 2y ago
    Which country did you do this in? I will need a similar service soon
    - keiferski 2y ago
      I used a company called Greenback.
  - happyraul 2y ago
    I too used Greenback once. The truth is that if one has a relatively simple situation, e.g. salaried employee, then it is entirely realistic to do this oneself. With more complexity (other types of income like interest, capital gains,...) it can be more time consuming, but still doable. I am not a professional, so seek and pay for professional advice, if that is what you need. I've been doing my own taxes as an American living abroad for ~a decade. If anyone is in a similar situation and has questions, feel free to pm me. Because financial/tax advice from strangers with no professional credentials on the Internet is always a good idea. :p
Merad 2y ago
I used to work in internal IT at a Fortune 500 working with different departments in the company to turn Excel spreadsheets and Access97 tools into web apps with real databases. The problem is that the companies/departments where this is the case all have their own workflows and business processes, and 99% of the time are completely unwilling to consider change. It'll be really challenging to develop software that can be sold to multiple companies even when they ostensibly do the same thing.
- edgriebel 2y ago
  And you’re going to hit the ever-present concern at companies, namely “it’s working perfectly fine, why would I spend any money on it?“
fuzzfactor 2y ago
>their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. And the problems were so important that somebody, anybody, stepped up to the plate with a digital solution as soon as it was barely possible. Sometimes you have to admire that effort to a greater degree than a more technically advanced alternative. I'm sure some of these are ripe for transition to a truly more effective approach in every way but often there is no fooling them trying to provide anything less. And disruption itself can be the enemy in some things like this.
ak_111 2y ago
50% of those places are using excel and outdated tech because they have 0 budget to spend on tech no matter how good the replacement (in fact even if it is cheaper, approving the alternative is too painful a process), "their problem" is not that nobody had solved their actual problem but trying to convince someone upstairs to approve spend on an alternative solution.
bnhlth 2y ago
I’ll add to that: in many industries/domains the incumbents are benefiting from the status quo and have no interest in upending it, while others have accepted some of these as “hard facts”[0]. I’m working on one such problem in the healthcare space, as an outsider. In early stages, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere. [0] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/
Noneofya 2y ago
> If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel and a software program that was outdated a decade ago. Which just proves the immense value of Excel and the relatively bad value proposition of custom-made software. > The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. 1. Yes, which is why it’s increasingly hard to start a business as a pure software engineer. To put it harshly, most software engineers don’t know enough about the real world out there to solve its problems. Many choose to create software for other software engineers for this reason, and that market is fierce. 2. Another issue is that only those specific businesses might have those problems. Even if you know about them, solving them might not be a good business case. Solving them must be lucrative enough to allow for a small target audience, or the problem needs to be common enough to allow for economies of scale, which brings us to back to point 1.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

Just check out the number of posts you see on HN where you have people that started "successful" small (< 10 people) SaaS businesses. In basically all instances: 1. These stories get a ton of upvotes because they're actually quite rare. 2. The total income to the founder is still considerably (like way considerably) less that a senior dev at a FAANG.

keiferski 2y ago
Big sample size issue here. I don't know why anyone would want to share that they have a profitable one person business, as it only invites competition. The people actually doing that are almost certainly going to keep it a secret.

epicureanideal 2y ago

> The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exist but are highly unique in each case, there may be a reason it's solved in a one-off way by Excel or scripts rather than a scalable product. The use of Excel isn't inherently ripe for disruption. There are plenty of problems to be solved that just can't be solved profitably. It would be no better than solving a problem that someone has but is unwilling to pay for.

dannyphantom 2y ago
Your comment reminded me of a cool little project I found a few years ago re: niche problems and smaller solutions - the target demo being soldiers who (very generally) have some disposable income to spend on a small app that can improve their professional QoL was kind of genius imo. There was (still is, though the website is now dead) a really cool website/app that a fmr Air Force soldier made called AFI SWiM[0] that extracted 'Shall, Will and Must' references from Air Force publications which blew up in popularity among the target demo. The dev recently(ish) wrote a blog post[1] how it surprised him to see the app[2] had gotten around ~20k downloads, though I am unsure if the app was always priced at $1.99 (which would be just under $40k). I like the idea of developing a problem solver for a niche market, though finding and monetizing it definitely is pretty tough. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220601160702/https://swim.afiexplorer.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220601160702/https://swim.afie... [1] https://willswire.com/blog/chat-afi/ https://willswire.com/blog/chat-afi/ [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107 the github repo: https://github.com/willswire/afi-swim https://github.com/willswire/afi-swim
- cvwright 2y ago
  Your story supports the position that it's safer to take the FAANG job. This guy found an underserved market opportunity, built something, got some success marketing it, and made a whopping total of $40k. Meanwhile the FAANG guys are making that every two months, without all the risk.
  - wonger_ 2y ago
    Imagine if this app was B2B instead of B2C, or if it pivots to B2B in the future, or if it's acquired. Imagine also future passive income with little maintenance. And his project seemed like a side project written over a few months. Still risky, but the expected value is comparable to a stint at a salaried job IMO, once you find a decent market opportunity. Not to mention the qualitative value of self-employment, and that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs.

epicureanideal 2y ago

If you know of some boring, obscure market niches that are also likely to be profitable, meaning the cost of customer acquisition is easily less than the profit per customer, and is scalably solved with a software product, please either share with HN readers, or at least offer to sell them to us. They say ideas are worth nothing, but not to me. If you really have some good ideas (see definition above), I would be interested in buying them at a reasonable price.

keiferski 2y ago
Here's one that I have dealt with personally: paying taxes as an American that lives abroad (and wants to use the foreign income exclusion) is a nightmare filled with misinformation and tedium. I don't know if this is actually a market worth pursuing, but I do know that I paid some company $500 to fill in a form for me and help figure out the process. They probably spent an hour or two on my case. With the increase of dual citizens, digital nomads, etc. this seems like a growing market to me.
- phonerphone 2y ago
  Which country did you do this in? I will need a similar service soon
  - keiferski 2y ago
    I used a company called Greenback.
- happyraul 2y ago
  I too used Greenback once. The truth is that if one has a relatively simple situation, e.g. salaried employee, then it is entirely realistic to do this oneself. With more complexity (other types of income like interest, capital gains,...) it can be more time consuming, but still doable. I am not a professional, so seek and pay for professional advice, if that is what you need. I've been doing my own taxes as an American living abroad for ~a decade. If anyone is in a similar situation and has questions, feel free to pm me. Because financial/tax advice from strangers with no professional credentials on the Internet is always a good idea. :p

Merad 2y ago

I used to work in internal IT at a Fortune 500 working with different departments in the company to turn Excel spreadsheets and Access97 tools into web apps with real databases. The problem is that the companies/departments where this is the case all have their own workflows and business processes, and 99% of the time are completely unwilling to consider change. It'll be really challenging to develop software that can be sold to multiple companies even when they ostensibly do the same thing.

edgriebel 2y ago
And you’re going to hit the ever-present concern at companies, namely “it’s working perfectly fine, why would I spend any money on it?“

fuzzfactor 2y ago

>their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. And the problems were so important that somebody, anybody, stepped up to the plate with a digital solution as soon as it was barely possible. Sometimes you have to admire that effort to a greater degree than a more technically advanced alternative. I'm sure some of these are ripe for transition to a truly more effective approach in every way but often there is no fooling them trying to provide anything less. And disruption itself can be the enemy in some things like this.

ak_111 2y ago

50% of those places are using excel and outdated tech because they have 0 budget to spend on tech no matter how good the replacement (in fact even if it is cheaper, approving the alternative is too painful a process), "their problem" is not that nobody had solved their actual problem but trying to convince someone upstairs to approve spend on an alternative solution.

bnhlth 2y ago

I’ll add to that: in many industries/domains the incumbents are benefiting from the status quo and have no interest in upending it, while others have accepted some of these as “hard facts”[0]. I’m working on one such problem in the healthcare space, as an outsider. In early stages, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere. [0] https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/

Noneofya 2y ago

> If anything, it feels like the vast majority of the business world is still operating on some combination of Excel and a software program that was outdated a decade ago. Which just proves the immense value of Excel and the relatively bad value proposition of custom-made software. > The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them. 1. Yes, which is why it’s increasingly hard to start a business as a pure software engineer. To put it harshly, most software engineers don’t know enough about the real world out there to solve its problems. Many choose to create software for other software engineers for this reason, and that market is fierce. 2. Another issue is that only those specific businesses might have those problems. Even if you know about them, solving them might not be a good business case. Solving them must be lucrative enough to allow for a small target audience, or the problem needs to be common enough to allow for economies of scale, which brings us to back to point 1.