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Ask HN: What to work on?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#31

Post by jere »

riffraff wrote: post #24

why did adwords object to the homepage?

They pointed to two explanations:

>Google allows sites that collect personally identifiable information from users as long as this is not the primary purpose of the site.

>Google doesn't allow the promotion of sites that offer incentives in order to collect users' personal information (such as free quiz/survey results, horoscopes, etc.) where collecting this information is the primary purpose of the site.

If offering updates on the project is an "incentive", well, I have no idea how anyone does this. The adwords+landing page concept is so ubiquitous on HN. I've asked here before and gotten no explanation.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#32

Post by jacquesm »

You're doing it wrong. No, seriously. Don't try to 'dream up cool ideas'. Go talk to people, companies. Find out what really frustrates them, see if you share their view of their frustration and/or if you can find a solution that is not entirely obvious and that gives you a way to monetize.

Make sure there is a large enough market before you put much more time in. Then, once you've got a concept that is workable and has a large enough potential market, try to convince your complainer-soon-to-be-customer to become your pilot partner. Then execute on the idea you have, make your first happy customer and then branch out to other people/companies with the same problem.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#33

Post by lprubin »

I recommend working in reverse and picking a target market/niche that you want to serve, and then finding and interviewing people from that industry/market. Ask them what problems they face on a day to day basis. Find out how painful those problems are and find out how they're solving them now. If the problem is painful enough and you can solve it better than how people are already solving it, people might very well pay for it. (Patio says every time you find a problem being solved with passing excel sheets around, a SaaS angel gets its wings).

Then brainstorm a solution to the most painful problem or two that you can solve with software, double back to your interviewees and see if they would pay for it. If a decent percentage are willing to pre-pay for it, you've already got your early adopters waiting for you and you didn't have to write a line of code. If nobody is interested, you may have saved yourself a ton of time and effort and now you can easily move on to researching the next problem/target market.

More info: http://www.smoothconversion.com/blog/why-you-don-t-validate-...

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#34

Post by heyalexej »

saevarom wrote: post #27
heyalexej wrote: post #22

Is 30x500 some sort of framework? As in 30 tiny projects, aiming to generate $500 each? Your problem seems to be a recurring theme here on HN and elsewhere. People building amazing stuff (as in intellectually stimulating, fun to build, difficult to do, impressive etc.) with amazing technology (shiny new languages, stacks etc.), launch it and yet nobody seems to care. Nobody seems to be willing to throw money at an ap…

30x500 is basically a sales course: https://30x500.com/

Oh. That thing. Thanks for digging it up. My brain seems to actively suppress some things. Can't judge the product though. May or may not be helpful for some people who need help or guidance with certain things and I wouldn't go as far as calling it a scam (as people in this thread pointed out). It just may not be the right product for a certain group of people.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#35

Post by jnye131 »

jasonswett wrote: post #6

If you're a solo founder I think the place where the money is is in "boring" B2B products. There's a whole community called the micro-ISV community you might not be aware of that is full of people doing what you seem to want to do. I wrote about the micro-ISV community here: http://www.jasonswett.net/the-whos-who-of-the-micro-isv-worl...

I found the link to bootstrapped forums very helpful, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#36

Post by j_s »

Far more important than ideas is learning to validate them quickly; unfortunately HN is a bad place for validation since few here are your target market.

If you're looking for more ideas, here is some additional reading:

Passive income ideas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868

Startup ideas spreadsheet 2010: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag-R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWRk...

2012 re-discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190974

Further HN discussions of ideas: http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/0/startup%20ideas

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#37

Post by zhte415 »

LongCal seems like quite a nice interface for writing a theme based biography (of self, project, company, etc) with a super nice way of zooming in to detail and out to big picture. I like it. Someone like NYT could well use that type of interface for a long-form article, obituary of someone particularly prominent, a country or government, etc. Coloured themes / tags run on the y axis, time on the x.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#38

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

Think lazy.

The most successful technological innovations throughout history have come from making a manual or longer process automated or to take less time. Start with things in your life that you feel are unnecessarily complicated and map out the possibilities from there.

The other issue is that the techosphere is plagued with solutions that solve the problems of the technocrats that populate it. Start talking to your family and friends outside of our bubble and ask them what is on their wishlist. Find someone in a flyover state that still has a flip phone and has no reason to upgrade to a smart phone because there aren't any solutions to problems they have.

We are in the infancy stages of what computing and wireless technology can accomplish. Those that bring something new to the table have the greatest chance to succeed, and the odds are best when you tap into a market that isn't currently being served.

It isn't sexy, but it is profitable.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#39

Post by mcdougle »

dalacv wrote: post #8

By the way, I would say that despite the amount of work you have put into these ideas (a little or a lot), none of these pages made me want to "sign up". Some honest feedback: LongCal - Though it is a prototype, it is very unclear how I would use such a tool. I use a regular calendar, and it is working for me just fine. uTrim - It's been a while since I was in school, so I can't really say whether this solves a probl…

I could be wrong, but I think uTrim is designed with professors in mind -- namely, the ones that publish their research. They'd be the end users. I honestly don't think students would care enough (maybe grad students who are publishing research).

It seems like the monetization strategy would be to get the university itself to purchase the product (licenses or something) and then that would allow anyone affiliated with that university to publish trustworthy, shortened URLs (to their research, or in their research to whatever resources they used).

At least, that's what makes the most sense to me.

Re: Ask HN: What to work on?

#40

Post by Chromozon »

redmaverick wrote: post #10

I like LongCal. It is pretty good. I would use it. Not sure I would be willing to pay for it though.

I somewhat agree. LongCal seems like a neat little tool, but I would not pay money for it nor would I use it for very long. The defining feature is being able to scroll in and out to see shorter and longer periods of time at a quick glance, but that's about it. You said the emphasis was on long term planning. However, I don't personally do any long term planning further out than a year, and I feel as though most other people are the same way. The only long term things I can think of are planning to take a vacation in two years or saving enough money to buy a house in four years. I don't think a calendar app is going to help with these goals because they are too big to forget. Also, the calendar app market is dominated by big players that provide integration with email, Facebook, etc. It's fine for a learning project, but I'm not sure how you are going to get anyone to switch from using their Google calendar to yours.
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