
Ask HN: How to come up with side project ideas - theasteve
Hey, lately I been Finding it difficult to come with ideas for side projects. I remember reading a while back Paul Graham and Sam Altman essays on ideas and also startup school.<p>Over the last couple of years I started building small side projects but this past year I wanted to work on a side project that generated money.<p>I built www.artsyspace.net as an MVP for an idea I had. Since I had no success and it seems it’s not a problem people are having I stopped working on it.<p>Now I’m thinking about my next project but I’m struggling trying to find problems to solve. I’m trying to be aware of problems which I can solve with software but they don’t seem like problems others are having.<p>Are there any interesting books on new industries or industries in need of technology solutions? How do you develop ideas for projects or startups? Have you had success with a side project or company? Would love to hear from you
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stevesearer
My side project when I was a teacher was
[https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) and it has been my
full-time work for 7-8 years.

A place I’ve found to be good for idea hunting is the website for the city I
live in which has all sorts of interesting and useful information that is
often organized horribly or hard to find.

One example was that they published crime statistics organized in a table by
the types of crime and district. On a separate page in a pdf was a map that
showed the boundaries for each district.

My idea and project was to create a map where you could see where in town
particular types of crime happened most.

Based on that idea, my office mate came up with the idea (though not
implemented) to find data about bike accidents and map them to streets to see
if there were any hotspots that might be particularly dangerous for cycling.

Ideas seem kind of iterative so once I have one idea and expertise in that
area, I can’t help but think about other similar problems to solve with my new
knowledge.

An example is that because my main job is based around organizing architecture
projects and photos, I noticed that during the process of planning my wedding
it could be interesting to have a website filled with bouquets organized by
the flowers that are in them.

While not a successful business, I learned some new things and ended up
implementing concepts to my main business.

~~~
theasteve
Wow I'm impress by your project. I'm curious were you working on this just for
fun or you had a problem you were trying to solve?

It is awesome, I started browsing and spent a good amount of time looking at
offices. Did you start the project with the want to generate revenue or is
that something that just later came?

Right now I'm super passionate about bikes. I been riding my fixed gear
Cinelli bike all around NYC and I thought building something around that but I
just can't seem to find a problem worth solving with software.

~~~
stevesearer
Thanks!

I made it for fun on a whim after seeing some photos of Google’s HQ and then
not being able to find a place to browse other offices.

It was more for fun and my first advertiser actually contacted me.

One idea I want for running (that translates to bikes) is a map where I can
log where I have run to see what areas in my city I haven’t visited as I enjoy
the exploratory nature of running. There are plenty of places to log single
runs, but seeing them all at a glance would be interesting.

Edit: a quick google search shows me this exists :)

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Retailer
1) Pick a problem, look at existing solutions and think if it's possible to
slim any of them down (to the basics) and charge a lower fee for it. An
analogy would be that people only use a small set of features in MS Word but
new versions are released and then you have to pay a heftier amount for that
newer version.

2) Since you're in tech/software, are there any problems that multiple
friends/family members have asked you to solve for them? Can you write
software for that?

3) Keep an eye out for news outside of the US/Europe. Are there common
problems that people in those other locations are having? Can you automate or
solve any of them.

All of the above (and more) is what led to our building - RetailingPlatform -
[https://retailingplatform.com](https://retailingplatform.com)

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quickthrower2
Another approach is build a community around a topic. This is very open ended
and could be a mailing list, a subreddit, a slack channel etc. Once you have
done this, you might find out about people's problems. As the lead of the
community you might get more insight into this than anyone else.

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yesenadam
(Not an expert.)

I've learnt from HN that the most valuable thing in improving your software is
watching how people use it. Not being told about that or reading about it, but
actually observing.

So maybe watching people in various walks of life, seeing what problems they
actually have, will be more valuable than any amount of reading about it or
they telling you.

At first I was thinking that to get such access you could say you're making a
documentary or writing a book/article about something, but maybe the truth
would be fine here, since the goal is to help them and their field. Ah
although you say it has to make money for you. Maybe focus on the helping
first?

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ecesena
The mantra is to find a problem [you're passionate about] and solve it for a
small group of initial users.

A corollary is to find an emerging technology and make it easy to use or make
something related that doesn't currently exist. I say it's a corollary because
I assume that whoever is working on the new technology has found a problem and
is trying to solve it.

Speaking about myself, I was interested in two-factor authentication and
security keys. A couple years ago I saw an opportunity in FIDO2 [I was betting
on a hopefully growing technology] as there was no open source FIDO2 security
key.

With a group of friends we decided to make SoloKeys [1]. I guess in our case
we decided to make it a company vs a side project, but that's just the amount
of commitment.

Fast forward 1.5y, FIDO2 is implemented on all browser including mobile safari
on iphone and Microsoft is pushing FIDO2 a lot. So I guess the bet was good so
far.

This is a long story to say that maybe it's hard to think to a problem, but
maybe you can find a technology (that someone else developed to solve a
problem) and you can be part of that ecosystem. Best of luck!

[1] [https://solokeys.com](https://solokeys.com)

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bhdzllr
A few weeks ago was a post on Hacker News by Peter Askew how he created his
projects based on expiring domains. You can check which domains are expiring,
buy one and turn it into a project. You may also just use the list of expiring
domains as inspiration.

Here is the link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235671)

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khannavid
Two suggestions come to mind:

\- Check side-project directories for inspiration! For example you can check:
[https://profithunt.co/](https://profithunt.co/)

\- Find an old idea/startup and try to make it better in some way! Sometimes
we try hard to find novel ideas, but making an old idea better, is more
rewarding actually.

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Jefro118
Read this:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/start](https://www.indiehackers.com/start)

