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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?

#61

Post by jerrre »

LadyCailin wrote: post #11
valdiorn wrote: post #3

My startup ideas :) I've been designing and building audio software and hardware components for musicians since I was a teenager. VST plugins to start, then moved on to digital guitar effects and now Eurorack synth modules. I've also built custom midi controllers, traditional guitar pedals, you name it, I've designed and built it. I have absolutely no doubt that I could build a small, semi-successful company around t…

I’ve always been interested in writing VSTs, but haven’t really known where to start (I also need a motivating idea for one, but I’m sure that would come.) Do you have any resources that you would recommend for an experienced programmer and composer?

Checkout the JUCE framework, it makes a lot of stuff easier

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

#62

Post by blackbear_ »

yen223 wrote: post #43

If your company is paying you $100,000 a year, then whatever it is you're working on this year is worth $100,000 to your company.

Not really, that is just a lower bound. Companies are incentivized to pay the least amount possible for labour regardless of productivity, so long as it profitable. If a company pays somebody 100k a year, it means that (1) the value produced by this person is larger than 100k and (2) the company is confident that they can find somebody else to do the job for 100k in case the worker asks for a raise.

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

#63

Post by z9znz »

mrpadie wrote: post #7
rozenmd wrote: post #6

Uptime monitoring (imho as founder of OnlineOrNot)

This space feels pretty crowded to me. Out of interest, what makes you think there's still money left on the table in this domain, given all the existing products? Or rather, what do you feel all the existing products lack?

This is one of those examples that I liken to the dry cleaning business.

In any given city there may be lots of dry cleaners available. Some will be much better than others (service, performance, etc.). Some will be much cheaper than others. Some may be the perfect combination of all these things.

Unfortunately, we often don't know where the best one is. And perhaps because of another person's suggestion "affiliate marketing", it is now virtually impossible to search online to get actual reviews of things (as there are now more SEO-d review sites which are just thinly veiled affiliate marketing sites).

So we use the service we see nearby or stumble upon. It may not be the best, but we don't really know better.

The same applies to so many things in life, business or otherwise (people, friends, relationships). Thus, yet-another-monitoring-service can succeed if it gets enough customers, even if there are much better services out there.

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

#65

Post by chiefalchemist »

It depends, but it's likely a slight bit too small. If you're single, intend to be, and care bear the risk, it's doable.

Otherwise, if you hit by a bus (as the saying goes) you're screwed. Worse, your customers are left for dead. It's the morals / ethics of the latter that make such a size tough.

You want a size that can support two or three total employees. If you're going to serve customers you want some redundancy. Sure, others don't take such precautions, but that doesn't make it right.

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

#66

Post by phphphphp »

ionwake wrote: post #51
phphphphp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT is very broad, but if we are talking about people who have the skills to build something themselves, then they’re probably not front-line IT support workers, they’re probably software engineers or some other high-demand profession. There are definitely companies with toxic high-stress engineering environments, but workers with valued skills have the employment capital to just… opt out. If all you care about is coa…

How many jobs have you worked in the It field ? Were they mostly in management? I ask because I disagree

individual contributor, not management. 6 companies, Europe and US. If you are in a high demand profession, there is no reason to accept mistreatment: we have the luxury of being able to vote with our feet, use it.

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

#67

Post by z9znz »

gnrlst wrote: post #13

Plugins for various things - browsers (Firefox / Chrome extensions), apps (Figma), and platform providers (Salesforce, Shopify, etc). Find a feature that is needed but not offered, build a plugin for it, sell. Some of these have built-in monetization infrastructure so you don't need to roll your own.

This is probably an underserved area, actually. There are a lot of patterns of behavior we each have which involve our browsers, and there's probably room for some usage optimization extensions.

Do you know of a good site that focuses on browser extension reviews and discussions? I now realize I could probably find things which would improve my life, but I don't feel like doing a random walk through the general extension page of Firefox.

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

#69

Post by somtingserve »

Not in terms of 'bodyshaming', but the lockdown had done something to many people, hint: i saw some 'superfat' (obese)

now i thought 'selfdriving refrigiators' maybe a thing, and yes (with few thousand paying customers a month) it may scale to a million-dollar bizz... ^^

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

#70

Post by julian_t »

shireboy wrote: post #60

I have often thought someone could make solid income going around to storage facilities, garages, attics etc and scanning in old photos and memorabilia. My dad has his mothers’, grandparents, and maybe further back in storage. Doesn’t want to send it off but does want it digitized, but doesn’t have time or equipment to do himself (nor do I). Some of it could probably be sold on eBay. So it sits and collects dust and…

I'm just sorting out my late father's stuff. He was an avid photographer and so I've got hundreds - probably a couple of thousand - 35mm slides, along with a load of printed ephemera. I do have a slide scanner but it only works one at a time, so there's no way I'm going to do all those. There are a couple of places that will do it but prices are prohibitive, so I'd definitely consider a service like this.
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