
Ask HN: How do you come up with side project ideas? - 404error
Everyone says to scratch your own itch and build something you would use.<p>What if nothing itches? Maybe I just live a simple life and don&#x27;t feel I have a need for much. 
What I do have is an itch to build something.<p>Unfortunately my job has changed so much over the years I hardly do any type of development work anymore. My job is shifting more into an Ad Farmer role.<p>Recently I have begun work on an internal system for work and it has reignited my love for it. Every time I get in this mode I have an urge to build something but I hit a roadblock when coming up with an idea.<p>I don&#x27;t care to build yet another picture&#x2F;messaging&#x2F;food review&#x2F; web app.<p>So my question is, how do you come up with ideas for side projects?
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phantom_oracle
Talk to your market if nothing itches for you.

You may not have issues, but a lot of other people do.

Especially in more mature markets, you'll even find markets for these niche
wants (think instagram, twitter) or as it is known as "first-world problems".

A good example is that recent front-page HN link about "I still haven't found
the perfect photo organization tool yet" and through that, you'll have 10K
users (if marketed well enough).

~~~
404error
Thanks for the advice.

I guess a first world problem for me would be the way private messaging works
on Twitter. I wish there was a way to have a private group messaging feature.
I find myself having to screen cap a conversation back and forth between
recipients.

~~~
phantom_oracle
I'd avoid twitter for the single reason being their API user-limit.

If your service explodes somehow, you'll easily end up at 75,000 users with
the stress that your product will die as user 100,001 will not be able to
join.

Also, you need to determine whether your problem is either "a proper product"
or just a "feature request".

In the case of the above, it seems like just a feature request.

~~~
404error
True, that sounds like a feature more than a product, plus I would hate to
have to rely on third parties.

I want to build a product, something useful.

~~~
phantom_oracle
Try this:

[http://ideasquares.com/about](http://ideasquares.com/about)

~~~
404error
One thing I have been doing lately is going through sites like Freelancer.com
and browsing their projects section. I have been looking for "build a website"
projects and gathering ideas this way. Feels a little dirty since they are not
my ideas.

------
Gustomaximus
I'm the opposite, I always see opportunities. I'm marketing side of the world
so I probably look at things a little differently from many here. My biggest
challenges are time & reasonably priced development. I work fairly long hours
and have a young family so pursing things is hard and there is only so much
finance I can commit given my income is better than average but I'm not
exactly rolling it it. I'm trying to find some affordable developer(s) I could
fund to work for me in more affordable countries like
India/Philippines/Indonesia but it's hard to find good people cheaply. I've
used a guys in India for basic projects but found the quality and attention to
detail on work terrible. The time cost to me on unessential back and forth was
huge. I'm considering trying to find someone in the Philippines next as I've
heard they can deliver better work and hopefully work a bit more
independently... realised I'm ranting a bit...

But for me, I spot ideas in day to day life. I generally see market opening
when I find personal frustration with something. Or see something existing
that could be used in a new market. The latter can be good. Look at a few new
hot start-ups and think to yourself, how would this work in an entirely new
markets & user-case?

I keep a notebook when I spot these gaps/opportunities in the market that
could be challenged. It can be frustrating when 6/12 months later you see
companies forming in these niches.

~~~
404error
This is great! I work for a newspaper and have thought about talking to some
of our sales reps about any frustrations their clients may have expressed. I
figure this would be a good place to start collecting ideas.

"Look at a few new hot start-ups and think to yourself, how would this work in
an entirely new markets & user-case?" I will definitely do this to try and
spot some opportunities. Thanks.

------
vram22
Interesting question. Going to have a shot at answering it.

You said:

>What if nothing itches?

Then the obvious thing is, find things that itch, or rather, pain, others.
(It's been said on this site before. more than once.) Find processes that
people do as part of their work or business, in which they have some pain,
i.e. some area with friction, that potentially can be done better, using
software (if they don't use any, or better software, if they do). Go to some
meetups. And I don't mean tech meetups. We techies (not all) tend to live in
our own echo chamber or bubble; I like to combine the two words and call it a
bubble chamber, just for the heck of it - not really the same as this one:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_chamber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_chamber)

So I mean business networking events. Talk to people there, introduce
yourself, ask them about their business, and at least some of them will
probably tell you about some problems they are having, without you even having
to ask. I've seen it myself in real life. Some of the projects I've worked on,
I interacted with people on the (factory) shop floor, and they often talked
about issues with the existing software or with their work. Some of those
issues could be made better with software.

~~~
404error
Thanks for the ideas. There is a small group that organizes mixers around
here, I'll make an effort to get out there again and network.

~~~
vram22
You're welcome.

------
Yadi
There are a lot of ways to come up with an idea if nothing itches:

1- Learn a new technology and you realize there is a missing feature in
between 2 technologies and now you can full-fill it and make it happen: it can
be a Rails gem, Node package, some library, or a service.

2- Try talking to peers and folks who you feel are smarter than you, if you
can be influenced by them, they can give you a good insight on what solution
is missing around you or in a specific field.

3- CHECKOUT PG's essay on coming up with startup ideas:
[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

4- DON'T push it, don't focus on coming up with an idea just for the sake of
doing something. Once you let that go, some ideas will come to you.

5- Go to communities like /rails or /webdev or just go on Github and do a
random search and see what people have built and left it alone, maybe you can
fork something then rebuilt it or go on top of it.

6- I personally endurance through books, tweets, blogs, hackersnews, reddit,
quora, github, my client startups every f#$kin content I can find when I get
excited and want to build something :)! So I'm not sure if that is the
smartest way to do it all the time.

~~~
404error
Thanks all are great suggestions, I will do some homework this week and see if
I can get the ball rolling on something.

~~~
Yadi
If you were still getting 404 idea not found, ping me maybe I can share some
random thoughts :)!

~~~
404error
Will do! Thanks I appreciate it. More than likely I will take you up on that
offer.

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atmosx
Jesus, I have more ideas that I can count, totally overflow my brain. Of
course the first version is dazed and confused but over time some of those
(those on whom I spend most time on) seem to come out somewhat polished...

IT is only a hobby to me, but all in all, until now I'm a sucker when it comes
to implementations. Most of my projects are abandoned the moment I realize
that _I solved the hard part and now I have to do boring part_ (e.g. the hard
part is the back-end and boring part is the front-end which never gets
finished/polished/presenable-to-thir-parties).

The best way to come up with an idea, is to try to _automate_ something in
your daily life. Not something that _bothers_ or something that _someone else
will find attractive_. Doesn't even have to make sense to others, up to the
point where it is ready.

Anyway good luck :-)

ps. To give an _idea_ , I had thought of 4Square-like idea long before 4Sq.
And at least 5-other things that turn-out to be startups and then big corps.
But keep in mind that ideas are cheap, implementation costs.

------
jbranchaud
Work on someone else's side project. I think we too often ignore this as a
possibility. There are tons of people out there with an awesome vision/idea,
but without the resources to achieve it. Find an awesome open-source project
that is busting at the seams with issues/PRs and lend a hand.

------
rayalez
There's a lot of great suggestions in this topic. Here's what I want to add:

> "Serious Creativity" by Edward de Bono - excellent book on this topic.
> Explains a lot about inventing new ideas.

> /r/SomebodyMakeThis - subreddit where people post ideas for apps and
> projects.

> Look for new emerging markets/technologies. For example recently I've
> discovered for myself Ubuntu Touch - mobile OS thar is awesome and, I
> believe, is the future. So basically you can take any existing idea of an
> app for android/iOS and implement it there. That way you immediately have an
> infinity of new ideas. Same obviously goes for any new platform that you can
> build apps/projects for.

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rudimental
Keep a running log of anything that seems missing or any problem you
encounter. Extend it to people you are close to, family, friends, colleagues,
people you admire. Keep this somewhere you can access easily and from
everywhere, like Evernote. What problems do people have? What could be easier?
What could make something better? You'll orient your mind towards problems and
solutions, and before long, you'll have a long list of side projects from
which to choose!

------
jordsmi
Usually I try to make things that are a need in certain niches that I am into.

I have no problem with projects, I just can never finish/put any of them into
production

~~~
404error
I have hit this wall as well. Half way through a project I stop and ask
myself:

Who is going to use this? Does anyone have a need for this? How do I get
people to use this instead of X? Can I monetize this?

Half way through working a project I sometimes give up because I'm not sure I
would even use it. That's the problem I'm trying to solve, figuring out what I
can build that compels me to see it through and solve a real problem even if
it's not MY problem.

------
wislon
Most of my side projects tend to be mobile apps. Find things in the real world
that either piss you off or make you wish that there was a better way of doing
things. For example, public transport is usually a good source, and any PT
company worth its salt has an API you can hit to do something useful with.

~~~
404error
I can see how public transport can be a pain in a big city. I live in a city
of about 100K on the Central Coast of California. We build out not up like
some of the more densely populated cities. Big money here is agriculture.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Build something agricultural.

~~~
404error
Wikipedia builds a better picture of my town.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria,_California

Know of any webapps that connect customers to local farmers? Offline we have
farmers markets.

~~~
htp
A college friend in San Luis Obispo is working on this:
[http://horsepower.com](http://horsepower.com)

~~~
404error
That's awesome. I see that hes looking for developers, I'm mostly a
PHP/Laravel dev. Great idea though.

------
dllthomas
How do you _avoid_ coming up with side project ideas? Want to work on some of
mine?

~~~
anmonteiro90
Are they too personal or would you be willing to share some of them?

~~~
dllthomas
Happy to share! Anything someone else takes up is one less thing distracting
me from whatever I _should_ be focusing on.

First, there's Snowdrift.coop. This is my full-time project, and I'm paying
another full-time dev (less than he's worth) out of my own pocket, but we're
more than happy to welcome contributions from others. An interview with my co-
founder was just published in Linux Magazine: [http://www.linux-
magazine.com/Online/Features/Snowdrift.coop](http://www.linux-
magazine.com/Online/Features/Snowdrift.coop) Drop in on IRC if you want to get
involved!

I've also got a chore tracking site that I put together for my household,
which my wife and I have been finding valuable. It needs some work before I do
anything substantially public with it, but I'll share if anyone's interested.

Aside from that, there are a few things I'd like to have or see explored:

I'd like a notification daemon that lets me review recent messages and batch
notifications by priority.

I'd like to see a file system (I've been calling it "cronfs") that lets you
place filesystem objects in time. Working right, you could implement cron atop
this in a couple lines using dnotify to watch a "now" subdirectory. A big
advantage of this is that you can trivially do level testing ("should this
service be up?") instead of just the edge triggers that cron supports, but I'd
also like to see what else would grow out of it.

I'd like to see exploration of "genies" and an implementation of more of them.
Genies are a framework (conceptual more than code, so far) for long running
individual tasks requiring repeated interaction in the shell. The name is
meant to invoke "not quite a daemon" or "a kind of daemon". The idea is that
when you invoke a genie it registers with your shell before dropping into the
background, future commands can be easily sent to the genies associated with
your current shell, associated genies can be polled for updates before
rendering the prompt, and the meaning of commands doesn't shift between
polls/commands. I have a (hacky) libpurple client implemented this way, as
well as associated scripts:
[https://github.com/dlthomas/genies](https://github.com/dlthomas/genies)

Something I think would be worthwhile, but might be sticky
politically/socially, is adding a couple new capabilities in terminfo and
building out support in screen/tmux and enough terminal emulators to be
meaningful. There's two things I would like to see here. The less
controversial is a way of signalling "this is a notification, get it to the
user appropriately" \- which urxvt should send to dmesg, ConnectBot should
turn into an Android message, screen/tmux should forward if they're able and
just note if they're not, &c. More controversial is a way of rendering
graphics within a subset of characters that are then still treated like
characters - there have been a few attempts in this area, none has quite
worked out. Rich terminals in general - historical and future -are an
interesting research topic.

I also have some things I'd like to blog about, but they probably _are_ too
personal to hand off, at least in the sense that explaining them in enough
detail for someone else to write them would basically be writing them myself.

I may add more as I think of them, but I should go do some cleaning...

~~~
404error
I actually love the idea of chore tracking. Furthermore, I think this can be
turned into a game. Add a point system for chores where once a chore is
completed you are awarded a point. After X amount of points you earn a reward.

If this is for kids, rewards can be video games, pizza, etc.

~~~
dllthomas
The way it currently works, chores have a frequency with which they need to be
done, and the overall list is sorted by (time since last completion / period).
This makes it easy to see the next few things that need doing. Chores can be
claimed, which makes it slightly easier to avoid stepping on each other's
toes. We require N chores be completed every day to maintain a streak. Every M
chores completed, you also earn a credit, which can be spent in place of doing
one chore. We've found this to be a nice tradeoff between the rigidity but
motivation of "don't break the streak" and the flexibility to have days when
we're genuinely too busy to do all the chores.

Another nice feature for us nerds is that the chore list is maintained in a
git repository (or several).

What I'd like to do is split the front end from the back end in a way that
allows me to interact with multiple households/contexts that might be shared
with different groups of people.

------
bramgg
I recently wrote a blog post[0] on this topic. Heads up my website is
painfully slow ;)

[0] [http://www.bram.gg/post/how-to-get-ideas-for-side-
projects](http://www.bram.gg/post/how-to-get-ideas-for-side-projects)

~~~
404error
Thanks, I'll look through some of those sites you recommended.

------
hashtag
I keep a list of things I want solved for personal reasons each time they come
up

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pratiksaha
I have wondered the same myself sometimes :-)

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altico
check our yahoo q&a or quota...... they always have people posting questions.

