
Ask HN: I'm out of ideas for side projects. Help please. - JohnnySpaghetti
Hi HN,<p>For the last few weeks I&#x27;ve been trying to come up with ideas for income generating side projects ($500-1K range). Things I&#x27;ve considered:<p>- SaaS, physical products, etc. related to activities or hobbies I personally enjoy.<p>- Online drop-shipping store (selling products from e.g. AliExpress) catering specific niches.<p>- Review websites for specific niches, monetization via Amazon Affiliate links.<p>I used the AdWords Keyword Planner tool to research different niches, see how many monthly searches they have on average, and how much the suggested bid is.<p>I tried pretty much every niche I could possibly think of, no matter how small or ridiculous. What I found is all those niches are already quite saturated. Same story for stuff related to my personal interests.<p>Now I&#x27;m stuck and out of ideas.<p>Perhaps you guys could help me come up with new ideas. Are there any niches you&#x27;re personally interested in that you feel are underserved or could use some competition? Any products or services you wish existed?<p>Thanks!
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mindcrime
One idea you could try is this: take an "old" idea and "remix" it, improve it,
etc. The book _Rethink_ [1] has a lot on this. And it makes sense.. in
computing, things really tend to go in cycles and what's old is often new
again. Take Neural Networks for example. This is an idea that's so old it's
practically archaic. But add some new ideas on training (backprop, discovered
in the 80's or so), along with hardware advances due to Moore's Law and the
advent of the GPU, as well as the surge in data volumes enabled by the
Internet, always-connected devices and advances in storage technology, and
BOOM... you have the hottest topic in the world today.

So go back in time... read old computing books, read old issues of InfoWorld
or Network Computing from the 90's or early 2000's, or find some old issues of
Byte magazine on Ebay, and mine through those... and find an old idea that can
be combined with some new advances or new technologies, to make something
that's mondo radical.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Rethink-Surprising-History-New-
Ideas/...](https://www.amazon.com/Rethink-Surprising-History-New-
Ideas/dp/1501145606)

~~~
theoh
I'm sure I've read a jokey guide to succeeding as a CS grad student that tells
you to do exactly this, but tongue-in-cheek. Maybe someone else will recall
the URL.

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ladytron
Go somewhere that has very little technology - maybe where there are a lot of
older people or poor people. Analyse the market and see if you can automate
something or streamline a process with technology. Look for problems in a low
tech area you can solve with a bit of tech.

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
Thanks for the ideas!

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benologist
[https://techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/](https://techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/)

[https://angel.co/saas](https://angel.co/saas)

Lot of dead startups probably had good ideas and bad timing or execution. Lot
of live-startups you can compete with. Giant startups making javascript
frameworks and animation libraries smell ripe for disruption too.

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
Thank you!

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CuriouslyC
The way I see it, the biggest opportunities for the foreseeable future are VR
and tools that leverage deep learning to enable unskilled people to produce
high quality creative works (e.g. neural drawing, neural music making, neural
writing, etc). Doing a side project in either of these areas is more likely to
lead to something revolutionary, and even if you fail your job prospects will
be greatly improved. On the other hand, both of these areas are hard, but in
life, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

~~~
fspear
I agree however, creating something revolutionary in these spaces takes more
than just fiddling with a couple of tensorflow tutorials or udacity courses.

For instance I've always wanted to have a music recommendation engine/app that
instead of using collaborative filtering uses some kind of machine learning or
deep learning algorithm(s) to identify lyric sentiment, complexity and
melodic/rhythmic patterns to recommend me music based on that (across
different genres). It turns out that something that seemed straightforward (I
really thought I could tackle this after playing around with tensorflow and
machine learning tutorials & MOCS) actually requires a lot of
specialized/intimate knowledge about how these algorithms work and the theory
behind them, I would need to spend quite some time studying (and
understanding) before I can even begin coding this as a side project for
instance.

~~~
mindcrime
Offhand, I would have thought that would be limited more to knowledge about
audio signal processing and what-not, than the actual machine learning itself.
I mean, yeah, you can get REALLY deep in the weeds with neural networks, but
you can do an awful lot without doing so. If you ever feel like writing about
this, I think a lot of people might find value in a blog post from you about
what challenges you ran into and what you found out so far. I know I would.

~~~
fspear
Yes you are absolutely right, DSP knowledge is also a must. I didn't get that
far, I started by identifying what makes people like a certain song and got it
down to: Lyrical themes (and overall artist thematic) and melodic and rhythmic
patterns. For instance by analyzing data from last.fm I found that a lot of
people that listen to Black Metal also seem to have an interest in
european/celtic/gaelic folk music, but not all only certain artists with
specific lyrical themes and what seemed to me as specific melodic patterns.

Anyway the thing that stumped me was identifying/creating the "features" for
rhythmic & melodic patterns, eventually I realized that I was way out of my
league and had to drop it.

Later on I found that someone else was already working on this:
[http://benanne.github.io/2014/08/05/spotify-
cnns.html](http://benanne.github.io/2014/08/05/spotify-cnns.html)

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atmosx
I believe that all the ideas you mentioned could work, if implemented
correctly by a skilled entrepreneur or dedicated team. None of it seems
brilliant or original by any means, but generally speaking, the _idea_ is
overrated.. Even apparently stupid ideas (another note app? Really? REALLY? -
another bookmarking app? Oh please...) can work wonders if executed correctly.

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
Thank you! If you have any personal experience on this, I'd love to hear it.

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b_emery
"Live in the future, then build what's missing."

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

Looks of good meta advice there. Also, read a lot from adjacent fields. I do
this in research and the cross pollination is a big source of ideas. See the
book "Where good ideas come from" for details.

Based on watching my kids, I'm convinced that we're input-output machines. If
I give them a bunch of ideas (without them realizing it) I see these ideas
come back later, distorted and recombined with other ideas in their play. I
think that basic mechanism of creativity is inherent - and also very useful.

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JPLeRouzic
* Many new jobs exist only to make sure that some robot works correctly. Even heavy equipment are robotized and remote controlled nowaday. Maybe you can create one million jobs thanks to a portal that would enable employers to recruit capacity to monitor through Internet, it would be improved later (two years) with capacity to assess and much later (10 years?) to operate equipments. The employer buy capacity, not a team. The employees bid for the job, but several can work simultaneously. A majority logic helps to verify if they are reliable. There is a reputation system for employees.

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nnn1234
Here is a place where you can easily create a group around your idea. Github
exists for coders, people are massaging it for other projects. Crowdsourcing
platforms are many but each have their faults. I am building a platform for
anyone to contribute to projects. We are disrupting the future of work. PLease
check out www.crowdraising.co/metacampaign and there is an explainer video
that does the job
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3QT4lqco8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3QT4lqco8M)

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0xdeaddead
Don't create anything new, find a product that people use (and pay for) but
are not 100% satisfied with, and make it better.

~~~
mindcrime
One thing to try is do a google search for "$PRODUCT_NAME sucks". Find the
forums and blogs where people rant about the problems with that product, and
then use those ideas in your own thing.

For example:

[https://www.google.com/search?num=30&q="sharepoint+sucks"](https://www.google.com/search?num=30&q="sharepoint+sucks")

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nassir
Might be worth exploring emerging and frontier markets in areas such as
payments etc. What I've come to realize is that in the US market at least, the
cost of customer acquisition is high and continues to rise, hence if you are
not well capitalized, within a short span you are out of the game

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arisAlexis
funny I have the opposite problem. I have a ton of them in a backlog but don't
have time to implement.

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
Would you be willing to share some of those ideas? I can contact you privately
if you prefer.

~~~
arisAlexis
you haven't mentioned anything from your background, most of them are app
based. you can find my email on my profile

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nnn1234
I would say look at indiehackers and see if there is something similar you
want to do. Also why not join someone else s project? Collaborate on something
that's close to your vision get them to sales and voila.

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fspear
I'm stuck in the same spot. I agree that a lot of niches are already quite
saturated.

Are you open to collaborate? Maybe if we put our heads together we could think
of something.

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
That would be awesome :) How do I contact you?

~~~
fspear
Can I contact you? A bit hesitant about putting my email here.

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
You can email me at: hi [at] leandro [dot] me

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gressquel
I have a cool project that I started on but didnt have time to finish. Anyone
interested PM me, its stack; .net core Html Jquery

.net core / c# is the only requirement

~~~
ejanus
Mail me(interested)...mail address in my profile page

~~~
gressquel
I cannot see any contact details on your profile. user: ejanus

created: 2036 days ago

karma: 22

about: Software programmer

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tomcam
Classic motivation for successful projects like this is pain points. Do you
have any itches that could be scratched by a technological solutions?

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pravenj
maybe hack a project for extreme affordability from hackproject.org? More
problem discussion in the slack channel where you can self-register
hackprojectorg.herokuapp.com. Even old problems or simple problems that you
might have not even looked at with passing eyes could have dramatic effect for
extremely rural areas and what the UN calls the frontier worlds.

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jason_slack
I have some ideas for HFT and also a few ideas for blockchain uses. I don't
have time to work on them. Email me if you want.

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Exclamationmark
I have a couple of ideas that I do not have the skill to create and am happy
to share. One I am interested in using if you build it. What's the best way to
contact you to share them?

~~~
JohnnySpaghetti
Please email me at: hi [at] leandro [dot] me. Thanks!

