Make something for other developers? The success of FUSIONCHARTS is one of many examples.
Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#32Your life is perfect? Every single object your hand touches and every website you go to each day can be improved. Innovation is a sort of mindset. You're not going out looking for a quick billion dollar idea, you're trying to improve that 5 minute unpleasant experience we all encounter at some point each day.
well said!
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#33Experiences. Try to get involved with people and events of this world.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#34You have pointed yourself what you are lacking. You should be loving programming, not liking it.Be passionate about it. If you love something you would invariably be pulled into doing something with it. You don't have to build something spectacular to show to others. Start small, write small programs that do one specific thing particularly well. For example pick any linux utility commands and try to write it in your choice of language. Just start with whatever idea you have, if you start coding the project, I am sure everything will fall in to place. Like a great man once said "Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it"
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#35What frustrates you ? Why does it ? Why is it that way. Ask the why 5 more times. You'd pretty much get at something to work on.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#36I see ideas in every conversation with everyone I have. I can't help but constantly ask the question of whether there is a better way, whether the existing approach is even the right way, and whether by seeing a similarity in the essence of a problem with something in a different field altogether (than technology) we might find a more interesting and successful solution. Don't listen for problems that you might work…
Very interesting .. I think Facebook Timeline solves this problem to a certain extent (hiding posts that the algorithm deems as unimportant rather than deleting them).
I wonder how you could apply this to twitter. Most tweets don't really generate conversation / retweets (atleast for me), but I still would consider them interesting reading .. say 5 years from now?
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#37You just need to practice. Don't worry about making money in the beginning, just about making something people will like.
I once was at a place where i couldn't really think of anything but i constantly pushed myself and worked hard to try to spot opportunities; which can either be "unmet needs" or more commonly needs that are poorly met.
Anytime you are using an app that makes you do more work than you need to, you have a side-project idea right there.
The key is not to think-up an idea, but to notice opportunities.
Here are some of my ideas that you can play with if you like:
Grouper for Founders - will probably make business networking easier and a bit more fun (Goal: meet 3 founders every week)
A hosted crowd-funding campaign builder - think of selfstarter.us for people who don't know how to code. Like a kickstarter that you can host on your own domain. (apparently crowdtilt is already working on this but that shouldn't stop you or me or anyone)
Blog Comment Platform - disquss is good but there is a lot of room for improvement. Something that works like HN comments would be ideal.
Project Management for Individuals - Basecamp can do this built it was designed for teams i would really love one designed for individuals and i am building one as my side project. You can do this too.
A Blogging platform that provides a pre-existing audience - I had this idea before quora released quora blogs but as quora doesn't allow you to use your own domain name, there is a great opportunity here.
A habit Tracker - most apps that help you keep track of the habits you want to form are decent at best. Make a better one.
Life Tracker - this was inspired by a blog-post by Dustin Curtis (on his original blog dcurt.is) that has since been taken down. It's basically an app that will help you keep track of how much time you have left to live based on your life expectancy, how much you have lived, what you have accomplished and what you still hope to accomplish with the time you have left.
A twitter for video - yes it sounds stupid but keek.com is becoming popular; go figure.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#38Once people find out that you build software, they are (in my experience, at least) all too happy to tell you what kind of app/website you should build. The bad news is that most of the ideas they have are unworkable, unmarketable, or just plain stupid. The good news is that underneath it all, there is often a kernel of a good need that can be solved in a better way than they are expecting and/or applied more general…
I mostly hang on with tech people, be it colleagues or friends. They mostly buld their ideas themselves when they have them. My family mostly talks about other subjects than software when I'm back home.
You should figure out how software can apply to the problems they had no idea software could help with.
Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#39Once people find out that you build software, they are (in my experience, at least) all too happy to tell you what kind of app/website you should build. The bad news is that most of the ideas they have are unworkable, unmarketable, or just plain stupid. The good news is that underneath it all, there is often a kernel of a good need that can be solved in a better way than they are expecting and/or applied more general…
I mostly hang on with tech people, be it colleagues or friends. They mostly buld their ideas themselves when they have them. My family mostly talks about other subjects than software when I'm back home.
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Re: Ask HN: Where do you get ideas to build side-projects?
#40My best advice is to pick a problem or project you're passionate about. My first product started as a side project that grew from 3 things:
1) an increasing love for JavaScript
2) a desire to build really fast web apps
3) I needed a tool for certain aspects of my freelance business
Given those, I decided to make an initial investment of 3 months and build an app to attack those head on. It's 2 years later and I still use the app every day; I even turned it into my company's first product.
So in my case, I fell upon my first idea after 7 years of professional experience. I didn't always love JavaScript, I didn't always care about how fast web apps are (or aren't), and it wasn't until I went freelance that I wanted to build the tool I mentioned.
An idea will come to you, but it may take time to fall upon a problem you decide is worthy to invest in. What I wouldn't do is pick any problem out of a hat and spend some of your life's hours on it. At a minimum, you should have some level of interest in the idea itself.