
Ask HN: What to work on – Small idea vs. million/billion dollar idea - arunsivadasan
Hi all,<p>Recently, I got really excited by an idea and working on it. Its something that I find very interesting and I personally feel I could learn a lot and the final product would help a lot of people.<p>But I am not sure (provided the product is really good and helps a lot of people) it will be a big business. My best case scenario is a small section of my target customers would end up paying for it. But I am not sure if the eventual revenues will be in the millions.<p>I also saw a YouTube video where Sam Altman where he says the big startups are made in small but rapidly expanding market and such startups (with great execution) will evolve into the billion dollar companies. I thought his advice was basically to focus on &quot;big&quot; things (I may have misinterpreted this but this is the sense I got).<p>My gut says to work on the thing I am excited about and even if it doesnt reach a huge user base, make sure whatever customers I get is very excited by it.<p>My personal ambition is to build a product that people love and which gives me a decent revenue to hire a few people and to continue working on it.<p>Thanks for reading and sorry for the long winded post.
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satvikpendem
Paul Graham says that many of the biggest companies initially start out as
toys, or solve small problems [0]. Gates and Allen thought about whether they
could create a BASIC interpreter and sold it, for example, and used that to
eventually create Windows.

You can't know whether your company will be a billion dollar one ahead of
time, unless you're really working in a large problem space, such as biotech,
space exploration, etc, but it doesn't look like you are. Therefore, just
solve the problems you have, make money (preferably without raising venture
capital), then use that money to fund your business and hire employees.

Check out Indie Hackers for more examples of profitable internet businesses
[1].

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

[1] www.indiehackers.com

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arunsivadasan
I am a big fan of Indiehacker too! Thanks for your comments!

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ndewda
I think this is ultimately a personal choice. People argue that whether do you
want to own 10% of $1B or 100% of $100M.

> "My personal ambition is to build a product that people love and which gives
> me a decent revenue to hire a few people and to continue working on it."

From your last sentence, it seems to me that you already have made a decision
in your head. You are leaning towards building a sustainable bootstrapped
business.

I guess focus on building the product, providing value, start selling your
product early on and let the market define whether its a billion-dollar
company or not.

Highly recommend checking out the following websites: [1] www.indiehackers.com
[2] [https://getmakerlog.com/stories](https://getmakerlog.com/stories) [3]
[https://district.so/bootstrappers](https://district.so/bootstrappers)

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arunsivadasan
wow! > "From your last sentence, it seems to me that you already have made a
decision in your head. You are leaning towards building a sustainable
bootstrapped business." I honestly had not realized this myself ! Thanks !

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s1t5
The chances that you actually have a billion-dollar idea are incredibly slim.
The chances that you can execute a billion-dollar idea to its potential
(considering that you aren't sure what to do) are even smaller. So work on
whatever is interesting to you and just do your best.

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arunsivadasan
Thanks this is exactly what I thought as well! Its a great unknown as to
whether something is a billion dollar idea.

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poletopole
Go with your gut! The worst case scenario is that you end up over engineering
the idea or new technology ends up obsoleting the idea because it takes too
long to develop/research. Everything I've read about unicorn ideas is that the
timing and climate was perfect for the product/service--other factors weren't
as important. In my opinion the best big ideas aren't apps, rather it's
something you made to solve a hard problem or as PG says if you are "living in
the future". Trying to make the concept into an app may relegate the idea
itself.

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arunsivadasan
Thanks! But arent Uber and Airbnb also apps?

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pickle-wizard
Think it depends on what you want.

Do you want to be the CEO of an Uber sized company, or do you want want a
small lifestyle business, that lets you spend your summers in the Bahamas.

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arunsivadasan
Actually I think of it in terms of the product - I want to build something
that helps people and a problem that has a lot of potential to where I can
keep developing and add new features. So I dont really mind if its a small
business which lets me go on vacation in the Bahamas :-) And I dont mind if it
becomes huge. The advice that I get and from what I see online is to focus on
big problems with big markets...

