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Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

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Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#131

Post by colechristensen »

esperent wrote: post #55
dsr_ wrote: post #42

There's always room at the bottom in logistics and scheduling. Find a local business that currently depends on guesswork, intuition and experience in managing their inventory or supplies or other shipments. Every bakery and independent pizza shop has point-of-sale software now, but how many have back-end software that reads the sales figures and can tell them to order [sugar, flour, cheese] before they run out? Even…

> Every bakery and independent pizza shop has point-of-sale software now, but how many have back-end software that reads the sales figures and can tell them to order [sugar, flour, cheese] before they run out? Huh, I basically just spent my entire week working on this for our bakery (and the last 6 months on other software and systems like recipe management, team messaging, online sales, social marketing and more). W…

Does it need to be solved? There’s usually just a person or two handling ordering and they usually know the business better than software is going to.

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#132

Post by rdtwo »

Some ideas I had:

Launching boats as a service. I pick up your boat, launch it and all you have to do is get in. Comes with a matching extraction and cleaning service.

Online dating management service. Have a process takes photos, creates the profile and then a recurring subscription to have a person do messaging for you and arrange dates. Hire college gals to generate the initial leads.

A service to tack all the local kids classes and events, keep track of sign up dates and such. Have a super premium service that signs people up automatically when the spots open.

Extra Garbage pickup as a service. While everyone is required to have basic garbage service you can easily undercut the garbage company for anything non standard or extra.

Rental service for high quality tools. Let people rent festool, sawstop, and other high end items.

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#133

Post by rdtwo »

dsr_ wrote: post #42

There's always room at the bottom in logistics and scheduling. Find a local business that currently depends on guesswork, intuition and experience in managing their inventory or supplies or other shipments. Every bakery and independent pizza shop has point-of-sale software now, but how many have back-end software that reads the sales figures and can tell them to order [sugar, flour, cheese] before they run out? Even…

A lot this business is penny wise dollar foolish. So it might be hard to get them cover your expenses.

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#134

Post by bityard »

hamilyon2 wrote: post #21

Win a government contract is the easiest and most straightforward one I can think of. Support some legacy codebase, take care of big company stuck with old software, help them transition or offer infinite support.

This is something that would be right up my alley but I am under the impression that government contracts (in the US at least) are not easy to land because the barrier to entry is high and the competition is fierce. The process is so bureaucratic that most of the business effort is landing the contract in the first place, producing the thing under contract is almost an afterthought in comparison, and that part is often sub-contracted out. This is part of the reason we hear stories about millions of dollars and months of effort being spent on 30% of a CRUD website that a talented full-stack developer could have whipped out in under a week.

And in the IT space, your competition is companies like Lockheed Martin... Although you might have a leg up if your company is veteran-, woman-, or minority owned, see Offices of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization.

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#135

Post by bmitc »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #105

I work on 2 $100k ideas Bear Blog ( https://bearblog.dev ) JustSketchMe ( https://justsketch.me ) Both are profitable enough to keep me quite comfortable while being niche enough to not appeal to any company with VC funding.

How do you make money with Bear Blog? Are you able to give any details about the finances (i.e., revenue and how much time you work on it after the initial development)? How do people find the solution?

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#136

Post by gofreddygo »

For months now, I've been thinking and backing off from building a virtual queue for small shops (think barbers, food stalls at events, anything where people queue up)

Scan a qr code, get in line. Or via a url or app.

Sounds simple enough, useful enough. Friends easily pointed out issues with how this could go wrong and with very little extra time after work, I dropped it.

Comments on this thread just stirred it all up.

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#137

Post by ac29 »

hnfong wrote: post #34

I'm involved in maintaining a dictionary website for Cantonese. We're not strapped for cash since expenses are minimal, but if we did put up ads there (according to Google's estimate) the yearly revenue might be in the say 10+k range. So the business itself at "10 P/E" would be a roughly 100k dollar business. (FWIW, I believe the estimate is probably higher than the would-be real numbers, but then we haven't finished…

> the yearly revenue might be in the say 10+k range. So the business itself at "10 P/E" would be a roughly 100k dollar business

That would be P/S (price to sales), not P/E (price to earnings/profits). Not sure about web stuff, but for other small businesses no one would pay anywhere close to 10x P/S (or P/E for that matter but profits are more valuable than revenue).

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#139

Post by leros »

tdiggity wrote: post #112
leros wrote: post #78

My favorite $100k idea to share is starting a landscaping business. The startup cost is small, you grow through hustle and good work, and the ability to expand to multiple employees/crews is there as you expand. I think it's something just about anyone can do as it doesn't require special training.

This idea is a good one for local, but can be crowded. Search Reddit for starting a maid service or lawn service for templates and experiences. And google “maid/lawn service ” for your city and adjacent ones and you might find people using that playbook.

It's a good model for someone with minimal skills and/or capital who is willing to hustle. If you have work, then go do it, if you don't have work, be going door to door handing out flyers and talking to potential customers.

Re: Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

#140

Post by autotune »

hindsightbias wrote: post #109
autotune wrote: post #104

I work in the trucking and consumer banking industry industry. A $100K idea is buying your own truck and becoming a trucker, shipping goods from one state to another. This is a billion dollar industry right now and is booming like crazy.

I watch a few of those YT channels and it seems like a race to the bottom. Truckers in debt and driving at prices just to make payments, brokers taking advantage of everybody and every truck built in the last decade with all sorts of electrical and emissions issues. Now, if I had a $1B to disrupt that industry with some Uber model…

Any videos you specifically recommend? Would be interested in learning about it more on the practical side, my org just does invoice factoring to help truckers get paid more quickly.
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