
Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea? - adamfaliq
Hi there HNers,<p>Last summer I worked on a startup as lead developer. I learnt about running a startup and talking to users while working there. I have now quit working there to focus on my studies (second year university in London).<p>I would like to work on a side project that eventually would lead to some revenues this summer. My question is, how did you find problem(s) to solve ?<p>I have read books and blogs suggesting that the best problem is the one that I have faced before. I find it difficult to do this when almost every problem that I found, there has always been existing solution or the solution can be solved with some quick searches.<p>Any idea or thought is really appreciated. Thank you.
======
ageitgey
The world is full of people in your situation who's main area of interest and
experience is primarily in software development or start-ups. Because of this,
almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been
attempted 10 times. There's tons of competition even for really bad ideas -
just look at how many start-ups in SF tried to offer "laundry as a service"!

The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that
are totally unrelated to your experience. The world is full of profitable
niche industries that need custom solutions that software developers have no
idea exist. The business and industrial world largely still runs on excel
spreadsheets, emails and word docs. Those are all areas ripe for new products
and many of the top companies in those niche areas have no idea how to apply
technology to solve their problems more efficiently.

~~~
ronilan
You use _“the world is full”_ twice. First to describe the high supply of
software developers looking for projects and second to describe the high
demand for said services.

So why hasn’t supply met demand? Why isn’t the market working more
efficiently?

There can be various explanations for that, obviously, including the lack of
information you hint at ( _“secret”_ , _“have no idea”_ ), but Occam's Razor
would suggest we examine the assumptions first.

I’m not so sure that there is such a strong demand side in this market.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted, it's a good point. The GP
includes this quote, echoing many other people I've encountered who build
software:

 _> The business and industrial world largely still runs on excel
spreadsheets, emails and word docs. Those are all areas ripe for new products
and many of the top companies in those niche areas have no idea how to apply
technology to solve their problems more efficiently._

Spreadsheets are incredibly useful tools! They're general-purpose, easy to use
and powerful. Millions of people use them for programming without even knowing
it.

Email is still great for communicating! It's everywhere, it's easy to use and
it's totally interoperable. How many startups are building decentralized
communication tools right now? Email has been federated for _decades_.

The notion that use of these tools is an opportunity for some more efficient
proprietary solution is a bad assumption. People use them because they're good
and they work. The parent is right: there's less demand than you think.

~~~
jjeaff
While using those tools isn't a sure sign of an opportunity, I've rarely met
someone running their business on spreadsheets that didn't wish they had some
extra functionality or ability to scale up larger. Sure, some are plenty happy
with Excel and email, but there are just as many that would pay for something
better if it existed or if they knew about it.

------
mittermayr
Don't throw away an idea because someone else has already made it. This is
crucial. People completely underestimate the amount of money you can make as a
runner-up, or even as a 5th or 10th-place service in some markets. Most of the
products I'm involved with have made me quite substantial amounts over the
years compared to the minimal time required to upkeep them. There's at least
ten companies I can name at an instant that do almost exactly the same, yet I
still make money doing the very same thing. Appreciate the invaluable
advantage a market-proven idea brings and focus on whatever its target
audience lacks or loves most about the most-popular offering. It doesn't mean
you have to copy something (where's the fun in that), but consider this if you
start working on something and then come across someone who's done the exact
same thing with good success. Don't give up, use it.

~~~
fierro
see: gitlab

~~~
mikekchar
See: gitHUB. The whole reason git even exists is because Linus wasn't
completely happy with the service he was getting from a SaaS source control
service! I mean we can go back _decades_ in this field.

------
cdiamand
I send out a daily newsletter with short snippets of pain points in different
industries - [http://www.oppsdaily.com](http://www.oppsdaily.com)

Here is archive of sorts - [http://www.oppslist.com](http://www.oppslist.com)

The ideas are of a mediocre quality, but I find they help stimulate thought.

Another idea is to go to a place like Fiverr and look at which services are
most widely bought. Then build a saas solving one of those problems.

~~~
stevematzal
I checked out your project and it looks pretty good, I like the fact that
ideas also have an estimated value attached to them. Would you mind if I
included some of your ideas in my own project - Idea Miner
([https://ideaminr.com](https://ideaminr.com))? Of course, I will mention the
source.

~~~
EvanKRob
very cool but my eyes!

How can someone follow this list? I'd be interested in following and possibly
knowing which are new when I come back.

~~~
stevematzal
Fixed the color scheme. For sites like ProductHunt and BetaList the
information is updated daily, for sites with less activity such as
IndieHackers the information can be a few days old. For now you can bookmark
the website and check it out daily until I add some social media, a newsletter
and all of that stuff.

------
mikekchar
After many decades of coming up with ideas, I have discovered something. Every
single one of my good ideas have been ideas that somebody else also had. It
shouldn't be surprising because there are something like 7.7 billion people in
the world. If you have a good idea that _nobody else had_ , then that's a 1 in
7.7 billion idea ;-) Having realised this, I now use the fact that the idea is
already known to be a good test of how good the idea is. If the idea has
already been _tried_ then I get an even _better_ idea of how good it was.

Here's the thing: the world is not short on good ideas. Actually, you don't
even need to have one to be successful. You just need to be able to recognise
a good idea. The rest is _execution_. You execute better, you will win bigger.

Here's another cool thing I learned in decades of looking at the technology
world: name one dominant company whose product was the first to market in its
field. _I literally can 't find one_! They probably exist (and this is HN, so
there will be someone coming along shortly to point it out to me ;-), but the
most important thing to realise is that most (by an incredible margin)
successful projects became successful be learning from the previous king in
its area. Word processor, spreadsheet, OS, game (of any genre), source control
service, etc, etc, etc.

Don't be afraid not to innovate. Learn how to deliver. Learn how to
distinguish between good and bad. Learn how to optimise the good. Learn how to
please unhappy customers of existing products. Learn how to do all that while
making money, not spending it.

Or the other way is just to close your eyes and pretend you invented it. If
you become dominant, nobody will realise you weren't the first ;-)

------
jonnyrockit
I was lucky and found a small little gem on 1kprojects.com that turned itself
into a nice little profitable side-project in 5 weeks (not linking to it
because i don't want to seem like I'm advertising). Making half my monthly
salary at my day job from it.

Sometimes it's just the simplest, least technical and gimmicky things that
make money.

~~~
RickS
To the extent you're willing to comment, I'd be interested in knowing about
your criteria for selecting such a project.

\- was the domain related to your expertise, or in a niche that was new to
you?

\- what made this project stand out from others / appear to have potential?

\- was codebase quality a factor in purchase?

\- do you inherit things other than software from the seller? EG customers,
marketing channels, analytics, etc?

\- what was the value-add that made it work under your stewardship but not the
seller's Sales / marketing / dev / featureset / etc

\- Are you interested in doing this repeatedly?

~~~
jonnyrockit
To answer your questions:

\- Yes, the domain area was something that I was interested in already, but
not necessarily practised. \- Quite honest, I chose it purely on price and the
design of the items bought. The dev put in effort to get everything designed
nicely. \- No, not at the time. It was a rails project so quality was not
considered since its too easy to add on/rewrite where needed \- Got customer
lists, source code + design source, social media pages, analytics, payment
profiles, domain. \- I had a network locally that I knew I could sell to. I
sold hard and 3 big agencies are now using it at a decent monthly fee. \-
Definitely! I'm scouring 1k daily now and have found a few other gems.

~~~
sireat
"I had a network locally that I knew I could sell to"

I suspect this is the key to success in most smaller startups. Instead of
focusing on getting 0.01% of a global market go for 10% of very local/focused
market.

A prepopulated sales channel goes a long way.

------
brianbreslin
@adamfaliq here are my bulletpoint suggestions: \- find something people are
doing in excel over and over, make it a saas (search google keywords for excel
templates) \- find something that currently costs people time to do (some form
of shopify work?) and automate it or make it a profit center for someone \-
pick an existing marketplace (salesforce, shopify, magento, etc) and build
something there so you're spending less on marketing and know there is a built
in audience used to paying for things

at its core it is a matter of can you save people money? time? or can you make
them more money? those are the reasons people pay for things. Also competing
on price alone is a fools errand.

feel free to email me for more help, i literally do this for a living (helping
students generate and grow their businesses at a university).

------
halfjoking
The quickest way to build an impressive SaaS project in 2019:

1\. Find a cool machine learning project with preferably pre-trained models so
you don't have to do much cleaning/moving data.

2\. Get those models doing inference on a server and expose it as an API.

3\. ??? (marketing/sales/business stuff)

4\. Profit

~~~
mrfusion
Any examples?

~~~
halfjoking
There are probably a bunch on ProductHunt.

For example [https://remove.bg](https://remove.bg) got a lot of upvotes - it
probably uses this on the backend:

[https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/research/de...](https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/research/deeplab)

~~~
mrfusion
So who would pay for that? I can’t imagine there’s much demand for an app to
remove image backgrounds?

~~~
albertgoeswoof
they’re selling API access, so someone who needs to do this en masse, eg if
you had an app that needs avatars with a clear face pic, dating apps, etc.
Perhaps researchers looking to analyse facial features who want to skip this
step, law enforcement looking to clean up a bunch of selfies, media/tv
companies building copy for ads, a photoshop plugin builder etc.

Building your own deep learning model is expensive and resource intensive, if
it’s a solved problem it’s a great thing to outsource.

~~~
misiti3780
you still need to run that tensorflow model on a monster server to see
performance - no ? That can be quite expensive.

------
krschacht
Find a popular service (Salesforce, Wufoo, Asana, Xero, Gmail, etc) and scour
the forums for things people repeatedly request to be added. Pick a popular
request that you have reason to believe won’t be added as a feature soon (e.g.
company said so, it’s been years of waiting, it’s outside of obvious product
expansion, etc). Go build it as an add-on (chrome extension, api, etc). Market
it on the forums. You can even reach out to people and ask in advance if they
would pay. Show them screenshot mockups and state a price.

------
thakobyan
I was in a similar situation as you except I have a full-time job. I started
[https://cronhub.io](https://cronhub.io) a year ago and it's currently a
profitable side-business.

You don't need to focus on the idea too much. I think it's important but
seeing other companies solving the same problem should not discourage you to
come up with your own solution.

Take a look at these products for inspiration
([https://www.indiehackers.com/products](https://www.indiehackers.com/products))
and some of them solve a similar problem but they still co-exist.

~~~
bbx
Thanks for using Bulma ;-)

~~~
thakobyan
Thanks for making it :)

------
throwaway-1283
Indie Hackers is a good resource
[https://indiehackers.com](https://indiehackers.com)

The lowest effort/highest reward ones I have seen are curated subscription
email groups e.g. a vetted list of high quality freelancer jobs for
freelancers.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I have seen more success from freelancers -> very profitable side projects
than any other form. It makes sense: you're being paid real money to provide a
custom solution to a problem, so if you can make a generalizable version of
that solution you can at least feel confident that you're solving a problem
people will throw money at to fix.

The most common thing I've seen is that freelancers will (as the situation
calls for it) strike a deal with their client to carve out a feature as an
independent SAAS, bill the customer a much reduced rate for that "set" of work
and bring them on as the first "customer" of the SAAS so there's some social
proof.

~~~
bitL
All freelancers should learn how to quickly assemble a simple SaaS (e.g.
Bootstrap + Flask + Stripe) and then quickly implement a version of whatever
they were doing in their paid projects (making sure it's legal ofc) and expose
it as an SaaS using their SaaS template. They can even form a separate
Delaware LLC for each of them, once the SaaS is built they can just try to
sell it; lots of money there as well as not many people can build a company
from the scratch.

~~~
gspetr
The "Stripe Delaware LLC" scheme comes with quite a few pitfalls:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18870886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18870886)

------
elorant
There are tons of problems that haven't been solved. Best way to identify one
is to get involved with small companies and find their pain points. Especially
ones not directly involved in technology. Think about commerce shops for
example. Or art shops. Or food shops. You have to gain experience from the
inside to come up with an idea, or if that's not possible just go ahead and
ask them directly to name a few of their issues.

I did a consulting gig for an art gallery a couple years ago and I came up
with a dozen ideas by watching how they operated. I'm sure the same applies
for a gazillion of markets out there, ones where technology isn't that
dominant.

Side note. You may want to take a look at the famous "passive income" threads
in here. There are hundreds of ideas and projects in them that could inspire
you to build something new. Just make a search for "passive" on the search box
at the bottom and good reading.

------
rc_kas
Thats hard to answer. And to be honest, if I had any good ideas, I would
probably work on them myself.

Sometimes you just have to compete against existing ideas and try to do better
than them.

------
mrskitch
I, honestly, picked a library that I was passionate about (puppeteer) and
sorted by either most commented or most reacted. This plus the fact that I was
having hosting issues with Headless Chrome. browserless.io came quickly after.

------
hogu
I know this sounds dumb, but I found this to be very useful

[https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-
becomi...](https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becoming-an-
idea-machine/)

It's an entertaining read, but the premise is

\- idea generation is a skill \- you need to practice \- come up with 10
garbage ideas per day (and occasionally one or two are good)

~~~
verulito
this!

------
philbo
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html)

~~~
dilippkumar
+1

Follow up reading: Peter Thiel’s “Zero to One”

[https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-
Future/dp/080...](https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-
Future/dp/0804139296)

------
rorygibson
I did a joke side project that encouraged users to pay $1 for a ridiculous
startup idea ("Uber for firemen" or "Disrupt the cat grooming industry")

It made me $25 - but gave me the next idea. It had turned out to be more
annoying than I imagined to put a payment button on a website (unless I wanted
to use PayPal. I didn't - I use Stripe).

Without running a back-end, like an ecommerce app or a home-rolled Heroku app
or something - for token exchange, you can't use Stripe. I don't mind building
that kind of thing, but I figured other people must.

So I built Trolley [1] - it's a popup payments widget / cart, using Stripe,
that works just by pasting in a snippet of HTML.

4 months later and I've got a few hundred users, I've started marketing it
specifically to JAMstack and static site people, and I'm enjoying making it,
very much.

[1] - [https://trolley.link](https://trolley.link)

------
ken
You'd be surprised how many problems are 'solved' but only barely. I use
software that I hear people complain about every day. They have pretty sales
webpages but the software itself is buggy, slow, hard to use, and support is
unresponsive. Just make something 10% better and you would make a killing.

I'm avoiding mentioning a product or category not just to avoid throwing
someone under the bus, but because I can think of many examples of this. None
of the software (or any other kind of product) that I use today was the
_first_ of their kind. They learned the lessons from the earlier versions, and
did it better.

Even if every problem you can think of has been solved (and I'm skeptical of
that), I'm sure you don't think that all existing software is already perfect.
Pick something that's terrible, and do it better.

~~~
vaib
Would you be willing to give a few examples of such products if I messaged you
separately?

------
Xolo
Let dissect this a little,

1\. List 3-5 things that you enjoy doing routinely 2\. Now imagine how you can
improve some of its aspects 3\. What would that ideal world look like? 4\.
Everything can be improved!

Mine \- Meditation \- When I was starting guided meditation options were
limited, still are to an extent. Some are expensive and some are limited with
options. It does not have to be a solo journey like mine and many others'
were. If I did not have anything to work on I'd create a database of guided
meditation tools resources, there are 1000's on youtube. I'd categorise them
by mood, skills-level etc... Have a basic social aspect to it by adding a
community that share the passion and I then can introduce paid features such
as Journaling etc. By leveraging the free database of contents out there one
would have a decent competitive advantage. Just a thought...

------
ElijahLynn
I thought about this a while ago. And while I have about 5 really solid ideas
already I want to make time to execute... if I didn't here is what I would do.

I would go out and take part time jobs in all sorts of industries. Go be a
landscaper for 2 weeks. Ride shotgun in a trucking rig for 2 weeks. Tag along
with a surgeon for a day or two. I think that I would leave with a ton of
ideas.

There is (was at least) even a website where you can pay others to apprentice
them for a "day in the life", some are talented, some are celebrities.

Think of when kids play, if there are toys everywhere they will end up
combining the ideas in different ways. But if the toys are boxed up and put
away in between different experiences, they might never put toy A and toy B
together, draining them of potential creativity.

The noise equals creative opportunity. Get some more noise!

------
mark242
1\. Go to your nearest finance department, either in the company you're
working for or a relative's company, whatever.

2\. Find a specific task that they're using Excel to accomplish.

3\. Make a web app that reduces their clicks and typing into Excel.

4\. Charge whatever you want-- they will pay.

------
AimForTheBushes
> I would like to work on a side project that eventually would lead to some
> revenues this summer. My question is, how did you find problem(s) to solve ?

Maybe you should work on a project that has no chance to produce revenue but
is fun or interesting. Then when the idea comes for something that is
profitable, run with it.

You could try to sit down and come up with an idea but I bet most of them will
feel forced. You could spark a blunt and come up with tons ideas only to find
out later that the dots don't connect.

I think most, if not all, ideas are derivatives of experiences. So just build
something and once the right thing comes along I think you'll notice.

------
lordnacho
Open a fried chicken shop. Like Texas Fried Chicken.

Ok not literally. But the analogy is suitable. I'm suggesting you try learning
about an established business model, on a small scale, so that you learn some
things about business in general. How to do accounts, pay your VAT and tax,
buy supplies, advertise, ship, and so on.

So something like a webshop that sells your favourite widget might be suitable
since you're a software guy. You can easily look at how the pages are set up,
how payments are hooked in, how to do a landing page, and so on. The
advertising side is a deep dive as well, but well supported by your background
in coding.

------
analog31
In my view, some possible sources of ideas are sports and hobbies. People will
often spend money on something that might improve their enjoyment of those
activities. You're tapping into a different budget than the usual business
clients, and if it's a non-tech hobby, it's not already flooded with people
who can develop and execute solutions.

I hit on a solution to a problem while engaged on web forums related to my
hobby. Now I sell a little gadget on the side. The people on the forum, with
whom I was already on good terms, provided my initial sales and word-of-mouth.

------
lexda15
I suppose that finding problems is not difficult. The most difficult is to
find an audience that has the same problem and sell your product. As Lead
Startup Methodology tells us that we need to check our hypotheses after that
create a solution. A lot of startups die because founders don't catch an
audience.

And if you create a solution, it doesn't mean that you will get revenues so
fast. The best choice is to find a remote/local job at startups. If you're in
London, I think it's not a big deal.

Or just having some projects on side. You will earn more incomes than you can
do with a startup.

I use for searching projects Periodix [1] and Facebook groups. There are a lot
of projects of startups. ALso, I saw the website that oriented on Positive
Impact Projects Jobs [2]

1 - [https://periodix.net/](https://periodix.net/) 2 -
[https://positiveimpacttechjobs.com/](https://positiveimpacttechjobs.com/) 3 -
List of Remote Jobs in Different Companies
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv0BjsWBR7JntDJqRM6_hyjbE/edit?usp=sharing)

------
jakobegger
Here are two ideas for desktop apps that I think would be worthwhile:

1) A data copy app. I often need to copy data from one place to another (eg.
copy data from MS Access to a MySQL server, export data from PostgreSQL to
CSV, fetch data from some REST API and insert it into PostgreSQL). There tools
for some of those jobs (eg. CSV import / export from PostgreSQL is solved).
But there are a lot of jobs where I end up needing to write a custom Python
script just to batch import some data from somewhere. It would be lovely if I
just had a GUI app that was built for moving data from A to B.

2) A simple reporting tool for PostgreSQL. Often I just want to create a quick
report from some data in a database (eg. how many users have already updated
to the latest version?), but I don't want to start learning something like
Tableau. I wish there was something more lightweight and affordable for
creating just an occasional graph or summary table.

Both of these could start out very simple (do just one little thing) and
expand from there, so I think they would be suitable for a side project.

I also think those two ideas have a lot of potential to make money. It's a
huge market, and there's plenty of money to be made if you focus on smaller
customers or niches that are not interesing for the big players.

~~~
MacroChip
For 1, are you suggesting something like a GUI for a list of data
transformation recipes? I.e. specify an input format and an output format and
press play? How would these recipes be created?

~~~
jakobegger
Yes, that's kind of what I have in mind.

I'm not sure how the GUI for creating recipes would work. It would probably
need to be pretty complex.

I have an idea in my mind where you arange premade blocks on a canvas and
connect them with pipes (a patch based UI like Quartz Composer), but I doubt
that this would really be the best way to do it.

There's also tasks that are one-off (eg. migrate data from one system to
another) and things that need to happen regularly or even continuously.

~~~
infinite8s
Have you seen [https://easymorph.com/](https://easymorph.com/)? The author is
here on HN (dgudkov).

------
sigfubar
If you ever find yourself thinking "If only there were a product that solves
my problem XYZ? I'd pay money for that!", then you already know what to build.

If you haven't had such thoughts yet, I'm sure others around you could make
suggestions. You'll make even more money by building for a niche market that
has been overlooked or underserved by technology companies. The more specific
the market, the better, as these tend to be quite sticky.

~~~
Varcht
Don't forget to do some research to see if it already exists, often it does.

~~~
sosborn
The fact that something already exists doesn't exclude the possibility of
making money off of that idea. In fact, it actually validates the thought that
the idea is viable.

~~~
Varcht
_In fact, it actually validates the thought that the idea is viable._

Not sure you can go that far. The first part of your statement sounds
reasonable though.

------
modeless
> I have read books and blogs suggesting that the best problem is the one that
> I have faced before.

I agree with this advice, but my problem is that most problems I have faced
are software development problems. I have tons of great ideas for software
development tools that would be super cool. However, there is no market for
selling software development tools, because everyone is used to getting them
for free from open source projects subsidized by large companies.

Nobody wants to pay for software development tools. Even worse, software
development tools tend to be local programs instead of cloud software, and
licensing/DRM for local programs is a nightmare for everybody involved. Either
you just accept that the majority of people will pirate your software, or you
go crazy implementing invasive DRM schemes that hurt your paying customers and
still don't work.

I think this is actually a big problem in our industry. Our tools suck because
there is no strong profit motive to produce improved tools. We have to muddle
through with whatever big companies see fit to subsidize in their open source
programs.

~~~
groestl
> Our tools suck because...

Oh, quite the opposite I'd say. Because we are software developers, and we can
fix our problems with software, we accumulated quite a rich toolbox to solve
our problems better. We're quick to dismiss our ecosystem (everything sucks/is
broken), I tend to enjoy such conversations as well, and sure, there are
plenty of broken/unfinished things out there, but in all honesty: what other
subculture has accomplished such complex projects as the Linux kernel or the
GNU toolchain, and gave it away for free? Because a lot of people know that we
all are better off sharing our tools, and copying is essentially free? Isn't
the brokenness often there just because we went too far, too fast?

I think looking somewhere else for a side project is a good idea, exactly
because our own problem space is saturated with good (enough) tools, and
deeply explored. And even if something is missing, someone's itch is bad
enough so they just scratch it themselves and make it open source. But oh boy,
other domain's tools and workflows suck. And often, they don't have the skills
to fix this themselves, so that's where we can be helpful with software.

~~~
perfunctory
> Linux kernel

Wouldn't it actually be a good example of "whatever big companies see fit to
subsidize in their open source programs"?

~~~
groestl
True, at least for modern kernel development. But I'm also not really arguing
against that, I'm arguing against the notion that this model of development
(open source combined with corporate sponsorship) is responsible for a lack of
resources which causes our tools to suck. Or even that our tools suck in the
first place, taking into account the complexity and non-linearity of the
systems we build. Our tools work really well, considering, and it might even
be the reason why software eats the world right now.

------
muzani
One approach is to find something badly done and do it well. My first
successful startup was an app that had 20k downloads, with a Facebook
community of 200k members, all very active. The creator of the app wasn't
focused on making it a startup; they just showcased a minimum effort HTML5
app. I created a nice proper app, and did some e-commerce around the theme
(healthy food).

A second approach is to travel. You'd be surprised how different things are in
other countries. I got the idea of selling coffee from Australia, where great
coffee is common and Starbucks was "tourist level". Australia also has a lot
of mental health apps, which I'm working on now.

My first app was also heavily localised for non-urban Malaysians. There are
plenty of keto recipe alternatives for Western food e.g. bacon and eggs. But
Malaysia it's a lot harder because the culture is heavily rice based, so a
keto recipe app is much more valuable.

So, you can also do subsets of a problem. Like Facebook and Harvard, Amazon
and books, Apple and MP3 players.

------
bikamonki
Dont try to actually invent anything. Go B2B, find opportunities to
automate/innovate an existing process/service, sell it as a monthly service
(recurrent revenue is key), keep your costs ultra low (your time and infra).
If one company buys it, two or more will.

------
joepour
I wrote a short article on how I find ideas: [https://tinytracker.co/blog/how-
to-find-profitable-business-...](https://tinytracker.co/blog/how-to-find-
profitable-business-ideas) Hope this helps :)

------
newusertoday
copy already successful idea so that you don't have to look for product-market
fit. Improve it in some dimension i.e. better customer care, lower price,
additional feature etc.

If you already have money there are other strategies that you can use to
generate extra revenue.

------
achempion
I think no one can tell you what to do if you want to make a profitable
enterprise from it. My hypothesis is you can earn from any thing if you are
willing to put enough effort.

The way to not stop working on idea is to choose something you really care
about and what can motivate you to pursue your goal even if you can't see any
returns from it.

For me it was a pain to learn English and to remember all new fancy words I
met reading books. As I'm a software engineer my software standards are quite
hight and it was hard to find what I want, so I had decided to build my own
solution ([https://vocab10k.com](https://vocab10k.com)). Also, you can pick
any stack you want :)

------
digitalnomd
I've found that the best problems to solve are the ones you're most interested
in. What do you wish existed? What do you wish were better? Don't worry about
making money at first. Just find something that you're passionate about
creating.

------
caviv
Although I do think there are problems with no solution yet, I agree they are
hard to find. I do think though that there are many problems with incomplete
solutions. So even if it looks like there are others solving the problem don't
be afraid to create your own solution which might be better.

We have started Make My Day
[https://www.makemydayapp.com](https://www.makemydayapp.com) as an app for
scheduling tasks and drives and found ourselves in the Electric Vehicle market
giving a different approach to a solution that was already excited - we
believe we give a much holistic solution.

------
bargl
My best idea to help came from when I was working at a Auto Body shop and I
was able to help them optimize their books. They used to dread doing a simple
export from Excel into a Tax software system (I forget which one) but I
converted it to some weird proprietary format and they could import it.

It's not what I'd (personally) start a startup on, but the idea is there. I
was also super green and coding in VB so I'm glad I let that miss. If you can
get in with a small business owner and see where they're spending repeated
human cycles for data entry, you can potentially have an idea.

~~~
LyndsySimon
The problem with this is scaling - I've done similar things, but never
invested the time necessary to wrap it in a nice UI and monetize it. The
degree of customization necessary for each customer usually ends up being
pretty high.

My project that comes to mind is when I helped a NAPA parts store retrofit a
new cash register into their inventory system. Their inventory system was
running on AS/400, and their old register that failed was a beast that let
them enter a part number for each item, then communicated with the AS/400 over
a proprietary protocol to get the price. When the transaction was completed it
decremented the stock. It took me about sixty hours to reverse engineer the
protocol from the failed register, then another forty or so to write a Python
web service that communicated with it and exposed an API and ran their dot-
matrix receipt printer. I farmed out creating a web UI to someone on Upwork
and left them with a documented solution that let them use off-the-shelf
hardware to talk to a small server that then spoke AS/400\. I've since
replaced the server with a Raspberry Pi, but otherwise it's been in place
since 2003. The front-end was originally a touch-screen Windows CE client I
snagged at a freight auction, and the last time I stopped by (a couple of
years ago) they'd replaced that with an Android tablet on a pedestal and
another tablet that they could carry around.

That sort of thing obviously has value to a lot of businesses, but each one is
going to have a unique setup. There probably aren't a lot of parts houses out
there that bought that particular vendor's inventory system in the 80s/90s,
haven't upgraded, want to keep using the same backend, and are willing to
upgrade their registers to something modern. I'd go so far as to say it's
probably a unique situation.

------
arisAlexis
Let me tell you what usually doesn't work unless you have excellent non-tech
skills: having an awesome idea and coding it to perfection and launching it. I
tried this many times and failed because I didn't polish it with the right
marketing and didn't interview potential clients and all these things
developers don't do.

In other words you need a co-founder and this is the trickiest part of all.
Where and how to find him/her how to motivate when they usually have high
paying jobs etc

------
SmushyTaco
You could make a simple but useful app and bundle ads with it to gain profit
from that and have an in-app purchase to remove ads for even more profit. Like
for example: You could make a calculator that appeals to people taking
geometry like a Pythagorean Theorem calculator that shows the answer and work.
Your best bet is to pick something easy that appeals to a group of people.

------
airstrike
Think about which experiences in your life (or other people's lives) have key
pain points that we wish didn't exist. Then think hard about ways to overcome
those.

Alternatively, think about trade-offs that you or people in general feel
forced to make, and try to build something that offers a compromise, a third
alternative that previously didn't exist. That's innovation.

------
equasar
Chart library for JavaScript that is:

\- Well documented

\- Dev friendly

\- High performant

\- Framework-agnostic

\- Written in modern JavaScript and well architected so it can be tree-shaked
and prevent a huge bundle size

\- TypeScript support

\- Well priced

\- Open source

The only decent one that I could find is
[https://github.com/amcharts/amcharts4](https://github.com/amcharts/amcharts4)
but is lacking from good tree-shaking support and performance

~~~
cvrjk
Highcharts too? I checked if they had tree shaking, but apparently not
[https://github.com/highcharts/highcharts/issues/8667](https://github.com/highcharts/highcharts/issues/8667)

------
MandieD
Talk to your parents and their friends about their work, especially if they
run small businesses, and what they wish they could do on their
phones/tablets, or were easier to do in Excel. If nothing else, it will
improve your customer-facing and requirements-gathering skills while
broadening your understanding of non-startup businesses.

------
isaacaderogba
May not be exactly what you're looking for, but I find being exposed to
abstract ideas quite helpful. An easy way to bring this sort of novelty into
your life could be to watch a ~10 minute Ted Talk daily.

Ideally, you would then become more responsive to problems and have a wider
solution set that perhaps doesn't just involve software.

------
ElijahLynn
What is the name of the book/project that someone made to show one how to
create a profitable side business without hiring anyone, AND who published
their monthly income and list of projects? The guy who mentioned hiring a
server guy every now and then.

The beginning of the book was free to read and garbled the letters as you
moved along.

~~~
ElijahLynn
Ah I remember now, it is the guy (Pieter Levels) who built Nomad List which
started from a spreadsheet and probably more well known by the HN community,
[https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/) (and
[https://remoteok.io/open](https://remoteok.io/open)).

His recommendation is to build like 20 apps, not just one. And to do it all
yourself, with little extra help.

The book is [https://makebook.io](https://makebook.io). Sales data here
[https://makebook.io/open](https://makebook.io/open).

More links:

[https://nomadlist.com/help](https://nomadlist.com/help)

[https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number-
one/](https://levels.io/product-hunt-hacker-news-number-one/)

[https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/956176482958639105](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/956176482958639105)

------
DVassallo
You try it. Make sure that its failure won't ruin you. Then keep tweaking and
trying.

Don't listen to any other advice :)

~~~
ElijahLynn
Truth. The key metric here is "what does failure cost"? If it is low, then it
is an easier decision to make!

Most of the time failure nets a great learning experience regardless of other
outcomes.

------
Smithalicious
Find something that you know is profitable and do a better job at it. Ignore
any intuition that says that you could never compete with an existing service
and that it would be better to come up with an original idea; not only are
original ideas very hard to come by, but most ideas are also just bad.

------
wenbin
Projects evolve. It's pretty hard to just come up with a world changing idea
and it just works.

Typically you start with something small (or even silly), then it may evolve
into something else (potentially big). Prepare to work on it for many months
(oftentimes many years) without seeing any traction.

------
usgroup
Do the world a huge service and build a competitor to upwork.com that does the
same thing for modest fees.

------
chimen
Find a market where the leading product could be/should be better. If you can
do it (pulling a Shia LaBeouf)...just do it! Most of the ideas I've had were
already developed by others so you better get used to it and not wait until
you find a "virgin" niche.

------
andrethegiant
What were some of the inefficiencies / pain points at your last startup? Try
to focus on a product that could improve some of the road blocks (either
technical or processes) that you encountered while working at your last gig.

------
slig
See also this thread from 4 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18047553)

------
edwinwee
You might want to consider applying for Pioneer—you can get a grant for your
project: [https://pioneer.app/](https://pioneer.app/)

------
orasis
If you want profitable you need two things:

\- Strong margins \- Big market

Only then will you be able to afford to get your offering in front of the
customers who might buy it.

------
ElijahLynn
Remember that ideas are abundant, solid user experiences and then lastly
execution is the key.

------
jackallis
ahhhhh. I need to learn how to code in python first. All these ideas i have in
my head need an outlet.

------
febin
I am also on the same boat. Based on my learnings and experience from running
failed startups, here's a system I am experimenting.

Step 1: Observation

There are oppurtunities around you; some people are good at finding them and
exploiting it to build profitable ventures.

The intended outcome is to find a problem people are struggling with and help
them solve it.

Here's how I find problems.

1\. Most Voted "Ask HN" Queries: I have already noted your question as a story
idea for my medium blog. Since this is something, people need help in figuring
out.

2\. Comments Most Voted HN Posts : Not all posts have comments where people
talk about their problem, but some post has insightful data.

3\. Comments on Top-Listed Products on Product Hunt : Find out the top listed
products on product hunt. Go to the comment section and check out for the
'cons'.

4\. Conversations : Go out and talk to people who have a different perception
of the world. Try putting yourself into their shoes. Then try to if you can
bring a solution to their problems with the knowledge you have.

5\. App Store Reviews / Amazon Reviews: These reviews contain problems with
current product users have.

Step 2. Study

Now that you have got the puzzle, you need to find a cheap and efficient way
to solve it.

I mostly try to see how people in a different field solve this problem. Later,
try to see if their solution can fit into the issue I selected.

I also find solutions in books, research papers, hackathon projects, etc.

For now, you only need to find a theoretical way to solve the problem.

Step 3: Shadow Testing & Writing

Make a landing page about your ideal solution. Make sure you include good
graphics such that your product looks ready.

The landing page also won't be enough to attract people. Write about your
learnings on Medium or your blog. At the end of your blog add a signup link to
your landing page.

If you are new to copywriting, please read the book "How to Write A Good
Advertisement" by Victor O. Schwab.

If people can relate to the problem, you would be receiving signups. Ask them
to join a slack or a telegram or a WhatsApp group.

Step 3. Validating with the Early Adopters

These people are a boon. They have extended me so much help in my earlier
startup. They do this because they would like to see their problem solved.

Start having a conversation with them, build prototypes. Incorporate their
feedbacks. Make sure what they are willing to pay exceeds the production cost
so that you can make profits.

I hope this helps.

------
purplezooey
some guy made a lot of money with poofychairs.com

