What's even harder is product-market fit. How do you even begin testing the market hypothesis?
Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#12Coincidentally, I've been thinking about this as well recently. Especially your second major question:
> If you completely don't have an idea, but want to work on one, how do you look for ideas?
(But also the one before.)
My line of thinking was there oughta be a community online where people can pitch their ideas and get opinions on it or look for collaborators, also cross-discipline. Like "hey I have this cool idea for an, idk, gardening app but I don't know how to code, wanna help?" or "I'm working on this thing, any ideas to make it better", etc.
From what I've seen, there are some forums like that on Reddit but they look more focused on momentary thoughts and whacky ideas rather than projects people are actually attempting. And it doesn't help that Reddit is mostly focused on recent posts (like HN or Twitter), so your post would only really be "active" for a few days.
GitHub could work like that in theory. You can push an empty repository with your idea in a README and people can use discussions to, well, discuss it. Tags could help others discover ideas to work on. But I haven't really seen anyone use GitHub like that, especially not people who aren't involved with IT in any way.
I guess what I would like to have is some kind of "Product Hunt but there is no product yet" (and with more useful discussions). Is anyone aware of anything like that? Or is this perhaps a niche that's not filled yet?
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#13Every few years Hacker News has a discussion on research ideas. If anyone can find links to past HN idea-lists, that would be great!
"Factor Tables" (AI), "Dynamic Relational", and a stateful GUI markup standard are my pet suggestions. They are based on practical needs I observe, not pie-in-sky. (Desktops aren't going away, so let's stop making them a 2nd class citizen per UI's. Mobile is more "sexy" right now, but desktops get the real work done. Office Space's Milton probably does the real work.)
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#14I have too many project ideas.
What I do is look on forums on popular products and look for needs and wants of the user base.
For example: Look to see what people complain about with shopify and see if there a product you can make to fix those issues. If you do it well, even if it's a niche solution. You can build on it or let it make you an extra $100 - $1000 a month.
Rinse and repeat.
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#15The closest thing to innovation I do is scope expansion. I like to take things that exist, and look for overlaps. If 2 products are 99% the same, even if they conceptually have totally different purposes, that's an opportunity to apply the DRY principle
I also enjoy sci-fi shows and often think "Ok that should really exist by now". Sometimes you see something that really is possible with current tech, but it's mostly just tedious UI work and nobody has actually made it practical yet.
Right now I'm working on open source CCTV software. I am also working on some basic VJ type functionality and adding QR support to an automation system. These are in fact the same project.
Non tech projects are different, but with tech I mostly focus on what existing things are out there.
Then I look for anything vaugely similar and see if it could ve extended to cover the use case.
If I'm absolutely sure a new app is needed, I look at what standards are used in slightly similar things, what tools exist to use those, and go from there.
Basically all my projects have just been FOSS things that already exist in the commercial space. I'm not sure I've ever really done anything innovative. I just use more software tricks to work around and hardware and put more effort into UI.
But ultimately, everything I do has been done a bazillion times. I just kind of pick up where the state of the art left off and add some nice to have features.
I really hate custom code and things I have to maintain by myself, so my first goal is always to make my project fit the larger ecosystem with as little originality as possible.
On a related note, old popular science type magazines have tech from 50 years ago that somehow still doesn't exist. If you want a real world changing project, I see zero reason a consumer level raman spectrometer couldn't be made.
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#16Coincidentally, I've been thinking about this as well recently. Especially your second major question: > If you completely don't have an idea, but want to work on one, how do you look for ideas? (But also the one before.) My line of thinking was there oughta be a community online where people can pitch their ideas and get opinions on it or look for collaborators, also cross-discipline. Like "hey I have this cool idea…
r/programmingbuddies
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#17Coincidentally, I've been thinking about this as well recently. Especially your second major question: > If you completely don't have an idea, but want to work on one, how do you look for ideas? (But also the one before.) My line of thinking was there oughta be a community online where people can pitch their ideas and get opinions on it or look for collaborators, also cross-discipline. Like "hey I have this cool idea…
I’m a big fan of this concept. I’m always coming up with ideas, or more importantly problems I think tech could solve (or solve better). Some of them I might work on myself but most of them I know I’ll never touch them for a multitude reasons like lacking the technical expertise or not knowing the right people to talk to. I’d happily put these online for someone else to solve. In the end it would still be solving my initial problem.
As far as I can tell, nothing like this really exists. A quick search gives r/startup_ideas and a few other low traffic forums.
I think structuring it around the fundamental problem, rather than the solution would provide a nice space for lots of solutions to flourish.
Users could easily like problems that they also have, giving a nice ranking of the ‘most important’ problems, and which would provide a ready list of people to present an MVP to, get feedback from, and you may even find a cofounder amongst them.
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#18Think about the biggest problem (pain point) in your own life. Solve that.
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#19Some things that help me a lot:
- Go walk outside
- Consume media / go to events with topics that are VERY different than my field of expertise
- Do any kind of art
- Play like a kid
- Last but not least, my favorite: Have a lot of bad ideas. https://seths.blog/2018/06/the-two-simple-secrets-to-good-id...
Re: Ask HN: How do you start researching for a project idea?
#20I don't believe I have ever 'looked' for ideas. As far as I can recall, I build stuff to solve a problem I have. There are 2 classes though
1. I have a problem but I think it's just a small thing or very unique to me.
2. I have a problem and I see that other people have the same problem but they have simply learnt to live with it. Or I have this problem and it's driving me crazy ;)
For stuff in group 2, I first try to quickly build something (no matter how hacky) and then as time goes on, I try to expand it/get others to use it (this is how I got my current project). This in turn leads to more feedback which either helps me refine or abandon trying to commercialize it.
I also check out forums for the area that I'm working on and also look at bug trackers if it's public. Those are 2 places to get information on user requirements/pains. For example, my current project is on Google App Engine so I check the Google Groups forum for Google App Engine regularly