

Ask HN: Can I turn my side project into a business? - scrump3y

My friends run an independent theatre and I created a one step booking app to help them manage reservations.<p>This is an example event: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;reactor.reservr.net&#x2F;event&#x2F;8VuwySG8WdY6I4uV<p>The theatre is called #REACTOR (it&#x27;s in Cluj-Napoca, Romania) and my app is reservr.net. Not the best name, I know, but in the meantime I purchased seatsleft.com and will be switching to it next month.<p>Was wondering if I should work on it some more and turn this into a SaaS business.<p>What do you guys think?
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evandonaldson
Congrats, it looks good and translated well into English. A platform for
independents to upload their event and take bookings would be good. These
types of events attract a local market/patronage and so that's where your
market is for each User (Independent). So in terms of business models you
could open your platform for free to the User (independent theatre/event/act)
to add their event and take bookings and they could in turn charge local
restaurants, businesses etc to advertise through them to their local market;
your platform takes a commission of the advertising revenue. Some functional
outcomes your app should offer Users; 1) advertise their event and take
bookings (done); 2) demonstrate to local businesses the demographics of
audience they are attracting to their event (you can capture this on booking-
no big deal) 3) provide simple digital marketing tools for the User to promote
the event and their advertisers (off the shelf integrations are fine) and 3)
collect advertising revenue from participating customers. How all this comes
together is a considerable undertaking but you already have a working MVP you
just need to work with Users (independents) and Customers
(advertises/businesses) to get the product right for both and a businesses
model that supports growth. Do that first before building any scale into your
product. Good luck and congrats again.

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scrump3y
Thank you for the in depth reply. I very much appreciate it.

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arisAlexis
I actually like reservr

