What are some good ideas for a B2B SaaS product? - aml183
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superpermutat0r
Anything related to optimization that can be done tractably with heuristics,
intractably with optimal algorithms.

You end up going from a first customer tweaking what they want, to fulfilling
feature requests from a group of customers, to evolving an entangled behemoth
of heuristics that no one can entangle again unless their process goes through
similar time commitments.

It's customer oriented and eventually the heuristics get good enough and
selling is the main deal.

Heuristic optimization is antifragile by nature (you tweak the solution, vary
the inputs to the heuristic to find something better), just like the business
model of the optimization service is, in times of crisis people reach for a
tool that saves money, unlike other products that lose sales because there's
no money to spend recklessly.

So, the problem is building a good tool for other businesses.

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spitfire
Any examples of specific industries?

I agree with the OR approach, I have some secret sauce which I add on top.

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superpermutat0r
Schedule optimization in various industries. Delivery, health care, public
transit. Any industry that has a workforce that needs optimizing.

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spitfire
Ahh I was hoping for something more specific. That reads like the brochure for
OR. Well known industries, mostly with relatively high startup costs for the
opportunities.

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superpermutat0r
What does more specific means?

You have a fleet of N vehicles, a list of M locations. You have to visit all
in the shortest amount of time. Now add time windows for the locations, now
add the constraint that out of these M locations you have pickups which need
to be delivered (one location needs to be visited before the other on the same
vehicle ride). Add another constraint - several drivers need to meet at the
same time at one of the locations. Let's say drivers do weekly shifts, not
daily, so they drive around the country, finding hotels on the go.

Here's another one.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_scheduling_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_scheduling_problem)

There's plenty of similar problems with small and big customers.

Don't see why the startup cost is high. Most of the big players have solutions
that suck and most of the big players want yearly contracts or are too
expensive for small or middle sized businesses. Big businesses that make a
deal realize after a year or two that the feature spec was a lie and that the
system just does not work.

