

Ask HN: How to find ideas for SaaS products / B2B web apps? - AimForward

Hey HN.<p>I know the 'idea' topic comes up a lot here, but I'm asking this from a totally B2B perspective.<p>I'm going with a market-driven approach on my next project, but I'm having trouble finding SaaS products that are needed.<p>The only few ideas I have now are very general, like 37signals' products (group chat, project management) - but that's not really something I want to go up against for this project (although if I don't find anything else...).<p>I'm not looking for new or unique ideas, I'll happily improve on existing offerings.<p>Any advice on where to find pain-points or businesses in need of SaaS products?
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kmgroove
If your not doing trivial applications like 37signals but rather more niche
based applications it can be very hard to find areas to move into unless you
have personal experience in that area. Most applications you see from startups
are based around managment/collaboration/communication/helpdesk because
although these are hard problems to solve it is fairly easy to become at least
moderately knowledgeable in these spaces. There are TONS of needs for SaaS
products, mostly to dethrone enterprise solutions. SaaS apps could exist for
any level of business: accounting, procurement, logistics, managment, etc,
etc. Building these and selling them can be very hard however. That is why
people say build something for yourself. If you worked in procurement for 10
years I am sure you could make a great SaaS for it and solve many pain points,
but you probably haven't.

If you don't have this experience well start asking people who do. There exist
many niche blogs on enterprise software. Reading these will give the creative
mind tons of ideas. Execution can be hard, and sales can be impossible though.

You say you don't want to up against 37signals, well look at it this way:

If you are going for the enterprise type apps the competition may suck, but it
is there, big, and well entrenched.

If you are going for the 37signals type apps/helpdesk the competition is
fierce and the apps are well made. You can compete because there is always
room for a good product but you better be good.

When it comes to b2b if 37signals is your competition your not really in that
bad a place. Many companies compete directly, and succeed in the space.

This all being said, I would look into analytic type software for improving
sales/leads/conversions because there are many creative approaches yet to be
uncovered and with apps like these the proof is in the pudding, and if the
pudding tastes good people will buy.

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jasonshen
Talk to people who work in large businesses. Ask them what troubles them. Ask
them what their bosses complain about.

Look at successful existing SaaS apps (including 37signals', which are not by
any means perfect) and see if you can't make a "quanta" of improvement. Talk
to the people who gripe about the product and build what they wish they had.

There are no easy solutions here - just a willingness to ask questions and a
quest for making things more useful and convenient.

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dotBen
For me domain experience counts for a lot - and is crucial at all points in
the process... from problem discovery + solution development through to how
you go sell and market your service.

What domain experience in the b2b-facing world do you have? Have you worked in
a corporate environment and been part of processes that could be made more
efficient via technology? Perhaps you have worked in a specific vertical like
retail, real estate, accounting etc and can think of pain points there.

Or perhaps you haven't. And that's also my point. If you haven't experience
any of these pain points then how can you _really_ put yourself into the place
of the user or the person who will decide to purchase your service. How will
you even know how to market it - use the correct language, know which places
to advertise, how to create word of mouth, etc?

When things are really low and the business is struggling, etc where will you
find the passion and the drive to wake up in the morning and still be pumped
up about what you are building? How will you keep the fire in the belly
burning if you've never had the problems you are building for?

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ssebro
The best way to find a problem is not to ask for it, but to observe users and
see their frustrations yourself. To be specific, look for weird behavior -
things that a kid wouldn't understand (software so badly designed, you need to
train people to use it OR awkward learned behaviors that exist to get around a
non-obvious problem). You might see an employee who sits on a ball instead of
a chair, in which case the problem is that chairs are not comfortable and
healthy.

If you want more help/tips, contact me at ssebro at stanford dot edu.

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cheald
The best way to find a good SaaS service that needs doing is to find something
that bothers you, or which you want to have available, and then make it
happen. Mine grew out of my hobbies, and was first just a solution to my
personal needs. Having a solution in search of a problem is a somewhat silly
way to approach it.

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jrsmith1279
I've got a SaaS product that I'd like to build, but I'm a pretty novice
programmer. This is a new idea that fills a need, but it's kind of a niche
market. If you're interested let me know and I'd love to talk more about
building it.

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LarryA
Look for places that are using antiquated systems (I know my dentist was still
on Window 98 last I noticed), those are potential markets in the waiting.

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tron_carter
checkout episode 5 of startups for the rest of us podcast, they address this
exact question.
[http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-5-how...](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-5-how-
to-find-niche)

