
Ask HN: How do people sell algorithms online? - max93
I see many great people develop great algorithms in hacker news everyday. But what is the best way to find buyers if you want to sell ?
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dalke
Algorithms are trivial to come up with and nearly impossible to make money
from.

Look at all the CS papers with algorithm upon algorithm. Arxiv has about 7 new
submissions per day under "Data structures and Algorithms",
[https://arxiv.org/list/cs.DS/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/cs.DS/recent) ,
and that's only a small part of the published literature.

You need an algorithm which can solve a problem people have, and which is
worth money to them to solve, and you have to convince them that what you have
is worthwhile.

For example, I sell a product which mixes some existing algorithms with some
of my own improvements. People don't buy it for the algorithm. They buy it
because it is very fast at what it does, and people are willing to pay for the
performance. It's also a very widely used concept in my field, which means I
don't have to convince them to use some alternative approach, which would need
its own set of justifications.

~~~
max93
It's cool. How do you find your buyers, via some platforms or friends?

~~~
dalke
Word-of-mouth, conferences, postings to relevant mailing lists, and a no-cost
download of an older version, to test it out. Very old school.

------
ankurdhama
People buy product, create a product around your algorithm and you are good to
go.

