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I've had my target on two separate pieces of unsexy enterprise apps. One is the most popular mini-storage management software. It's basically a CRUD to manage a

I've had my target on two separate pieces of unsexy enterprise apps. One is the most popular mini-storage management software. It's basically a CRUD to manage and search available units. It also has some basic accounting functionality built-in and credit card processing. I built an MVP, showed it to a friend whose father's company pays 300k/yr for a 130-site license. It took me about 3 weeks. Even though it worked he told his son that he didn't think it was possible that I could build something in 8 weeks that could match the software he's paying ~28k/mo to license. I built the MVP as an exercise in learning a language so I wasn't very attached to it. I dropped it and went to working on my current startup.

tectonic 14y ago
Fascinating niche. How did you think of this?
andyakb 14y ago
Why wouldnt you pursue this more when it is so clearly lucrative and you have a great contact at the company?
- sachingulaya 14y ago
  This wasn't the only lucrative opportunity I saw at the time. Since I dropped that project last year I started importing products from China. I'm seeing triple digit monthly growth and am at 5 employees. There's lots of opportunities out there in unsexy industries.
  - love_to_know 14y ago
    > I started importing products from China Care to elaborate on this? I'd be very curious to know.
    - sachingulaya 14y ago
      Sure, shoot me an email.
i386 14y ago
The problem wasn't that he didn't believe you, he just thought your offering was too cheap (price and labor). Next time, tell them it took you 6 months with a larger team and ask a lot more for it.
- sachingulaya 14y ago
  We knew eachother personally before this. The plan was to pique his interest with an MVP and then decide how to proceed. With no interest from him I switched gears to one of my other ideas...and its been going better than expected.
jiggy2011 14y ago
You said that you showed it to your friend, but did you show it to his father? It is possible that he didn't believe you could have done the software in such a short time because he knew from experience that the business was dominated by thousands of corner cases that would need to be addressed in order for the software to be viable. If you had shown him, he might have been able to give you examples of these.

tectonic 14y ago

Fascinating niche. How did you think of this?

andyakb 14y ago

Why wouldnt you pursue this more when it is so clearly lucrative and you have a great contact at the company?

sachingulaya 14y ago
This wasn't the only lucrative opportunity I saw at the time. Since I dropped that project last year I started importing products from China. I'm seeing triple digit monthly growth and am at 5 employees. There's lots of opportunities out there in unsexy industries.
- love_to_know 14y ago
  > I started importing products from China Care to elaborate on this? I'd be very curious to know.
  - sachingulaya 14y ago
    Sure, shoot me an email.

i386 14y ago

The problem wasn't that he didn't believe you, he just thought your offering was too cheap (price and labor). Next time, tell them it took you 6 months with a larger team and ask a lot more for it.

sachingulaya 14y ago
We knew eachother personally before this. The plan was to pique his interest with an MVP and then decide how to proceed. With no interest from him I switched gears to one of my other ideas...and its been going better than expected.

jiggy2011 14y ago

You said that you showed it to your friend, but did you show it to his father? It is possible that he didn't believe you could have done the software in such a short time because he knew from experience that the business was dominated by thousands of corner cases that would need to be addressed in order for the software to be viable. If you had shown him, he might have been able to give you examples of these.