

Ask HN: What to build OR How to do market research?  - maheshs

I am a developer who builds web apps for lots of clients. 
I want to build something as product for which people will pay, but don’t know what to build.<p>1.How to do market research to know about competition and market size?<p>2.Competition is profitable or not?<p>3.Should I take inspiration from existing products in market?<p>I know best product I can build whose consumer is me itself, but as developer I use most of development tools which are already awesome.<p>There are lots of cool ideas are in my mind like one more twitter client or some facebook app, but these cool apps are not going to make money.<p>I know this problem is not unique.<p>I am expecting some kind of direction from this post.<p>Thanks in advance
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tst
1\. Google is the easy and fast way. If you don't find anything on Google look
for industry associations or industry publications. The hard way is to
actually go out and conduct a survey.

2\. If there are other businesses, it is actually a good sign. Customers maybe
educated about the importance of your product and they are willing to buy it.

3\. A simple idea is "just to make it better". It's nothing wrong with looking
on your competitor's software, asking their customers what they like and what
sucks and built a better version of it.

Your point with development tools and "cool" apps is important. There are a
lot of industries which are neglected with great software solutions. A friend
of mine works in PR consulting for dentists and he told me that many of his
clients use a software for administrating their patients which is horrible,
unintuitive and expensive. His other clients just use Excel.

Edit: A simple method to find ideas for software is observing. Observe how
people use computers. There are a lot of possibilities where a) you could
improve the software or b) you could introduce new software to make their
lifes easier.

