Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 92 posts

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#81

Post by JohnFen »

altdataseller wrote: post #51
mamcx wrote: post #31

> but everything I create or try to do seems like there are already dozens of other solutions doing the same thing The major lesson I have after +20 years doing this: WHO CARES. This concern is valid for a huge company or anybody that wanna get like 70% of the whole market. For solo/small teams? Think of yourself as a street cart vendor that sells hamburgers, and is located on the front of mac donalds. They still sel…

Exactly, if you are waiting to make something that very very few ppl are doing, you will be waiting a lifetime. That or the market is extremely small to be profitable.

As my old business mentor often said: if nobody else is doing a thing, there's very likely a reason why. Learn what that reason is before you start doing it.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#82

Post by JohnFen »

ericmcer wrote: post #23
brotchie wrote: post #14

One sample point of one person's experience: Product's built based on brainstorming: NEVER worked. Product built around solution to actual problems I've experienced: Always worked, BUT may not have a large enough TAM. The best way to actually find problems to solve is to replicate something else (as a learning process to actually find the real product you need to build), or talk to people who have problems: e.g. Try…

That does seem like the best way to go about it, but I have family who are doctors and they frequently talk about how tired they are of tech guys who read "The Mom Test" who now skulk around asking probing questions about pain points in a doctors daily work. It just seems like any time there is a repeatable process for doing something, people will latch onto it and then do it until it is totally exhausted. Tech Entre…

> they frequently talk about how tired they are of tech guys who read "The Mom Test" who now skulk around asking probing questions about pain points in a doctors daily work.

Those tech guys are doing it wrong. If you want to address a particular market, the way you learn about the pain points in that area isn't to annoy the people working in it. It's to work in it yourself long enough to understand first hand.

I'm certainly not saying to avoid asking people for their expert advice, I'm saying that interviewing people is better done once you have enough baseline experience to know what questions you should be asking.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#83

Post by JohnFen »

gwbas1c wrote: post #12

Understand that being a successful solopreneurs (or entrepreneur for that matter) isn't just about "coding a thing." When I started educating myself about how to be a solopreneur, I realized that I'd be lucky if I spent 50% of my time coding; and would more likely spend 1/3rd of my time coding. A couple of things to consider: - Business is more about execution than being the first to market with an idea. Marketing, c…

> Business is more about execution than being the first to market with an idea.

It took me far too long to learn how deep this truth runs. There's a reason for the saying "the pioneers get all the arrows". From a purely business point of view, you don't want to be first to market. The real sweet spot is to be second or third, learning from the mistakes of the first.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#84

Post by JohnFen »

mherrmann wrote: post #30
rglover wrote: post #25

Just fill needs that you have. Don't like how something existing works? Fix it. Think you can offer a better version of an existing idea? Go for it. Also: ideas are far less important than execution [1]. That's why it's best to work on problems you actually care about. If you don't, you'll end up cutting corners or burning out well in advance of success. [1] https://sive.rs/multiply

I agree with the first half, but strongly disagree with the second half of what you wrote. Ideas matter immensely. If you work on the wrong thing, perfect execution is not going to get you anywhere. If you work on the right thing, then even with mediocre execution will bring you at least some success.

> Ideas matter immensely. If you work on the wrong thing, perfect execution is not going to get you anywhere.

Ideas do matter, but they're also a dime a dozen. Also, a mediocre idea executed well is far better than a fantastic idea executed poorly.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#85

Post by JohnFen »

yu3zhou4 wrote: post #33

I have another problem: ideas are cheap, coding is relatively easy, but talking to customers, marketing and sales in general are difficult as hell. Tried to find a sales co-founder on yc matching but gave up after two unsuccessful early stage startups. Did any of you have a similar problem? How did you solve it and become successful solopreneur?

> Did any of you have a similar problem?

Yes.

> How did you solve it and become successful solopreneur?

I took a hard, cold look at myself and assessed what I was good at and what I wasn't. I found others to help me with the stuff I wasn't good at. One of the major things is marketing and glad-handing. I fixed that by getting a partner who excelled at that sort of thing.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#86

Post by conductr »

michaelteter wrote: post #76
coffeeaddict1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this analogy is that in the case of software, you basically have teleportation so you can go to any dry cleaner you want instantaneously.

Except that you often don’t know the alternative. You might suspect it must exist, but finding things on the internet is increasingly difficult. Same is actually true with the dry cleaners. Maybe there’s one on the back of your block that’s the same distance from your door as the one you go to, but you never walked around to that side before. As far as you know, you are already using the closest one.

Any time I buy software I start by reviewing the top ~5 vendors that are easy to find. So I know the alternatives and just need to decide which one I think will work best for my needs. It's extremely rare that I encounter something novel and incorporate it into my life be it personal/business. Once I use something, I might be more aware of what friction I am encountering and I might review the available solutions again to see if one of them solves it more elegantly. In any case, I compare alternatives that are readily available. Sometimes I ask around or stumble on conversation that surfaces a new product that has a different approach to the same old problems and I feel like "they get me". Those products tend to catch fire.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#88

Post by jmstfv »

in 2021, after selling my unsuccessful saas business, i began searching for the next thing. as a result of my research, i noticed several things:

* Notion.so had a growing user base, and customers loved it

* More and more people (and businesses) were storing important info in their workspaces

* Notion users were publicly complaining about the lack of a decent backup option (i.e. they cared enough to complain)

* Notion announced that they would be launching an API soon

Basically, there was untapped demand and no competition whatsoever. I was undecided between 2 ideas, so I built 2 landing pages and started talking about both. I noticed that one of them received more attention than the other. As soon as I gained the early access to the API, I started building.

The rest is history.

Re: Ask HN: Solopreneurs, how did you come up with your idea?

#89

Post by kulandai »

I am doing freelance web development. One of the most repetitive tasks was building forms. Over the past decade, I’ve created countless forms, often tedious and time-consuming. From that experience, I developed a product to streamline form creation. Now, I’m focused on marketing it at an early stage.

What I’ve learned is that marketability is often more critical than the idea itself. If you’re working on an incremental improvement to an existing solution, start by defining your niche and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Consider your approach to reach these customers: Are you part of a community with shared pain points? Does this group struggle with specific issues your product could solve?

The customer and how you’ll connect with them should always come first.

Post reply on HN