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Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#91

Post by severine »

NateEag wrote: post #58
severine wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice list! There are at least four Android GPS trackers in F-Droid: OpenTracks, RunnerUp, OSMTracker and TinyTravelTracker, maybe there's one less app you need to build! https://github.com/OpenTracksApp/OpenTracks https://github.com/jonasoreland/runnerup https://github.com/labexp/osmtracker-android/wiki https://github.com/redfish64/TinyTravelTracker

Thanks for the links! Some of these I'd seen before and I actually used OSMTracker to generate GPS traces of my walks for a while. OpenTracks looks like it might be closest to what I'd like. What I really want, though, is something that aggregates the data from a collection of GPS tracks to give me the big picture - basically a static site generator that takes a directory of GPS tracks as input. I've got a few tiny s…

Thank you. For heart rate I got just one hit, ZephyrLogger, which seems abandoned and tied to a particular device or brand, but that may be of some interest too:

https://f-droid.org/es/packages/org.mcxa.zephyrlogger/

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#92

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

cdiamand wrote: post #47

I tried to tackle this problem, or atleast the problem of helping people find ideas. I built http://oppsdaily.com and http://oppslist.com . They're both now sunset and I'm no longer sending emails out or updating the platform. I will say that ideas are generally far less valuable than a first customer. My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. That…

Those sites do exist in a way, but you have to do the customer acquisition work yourself.

There are many technical forums where people ask "how do I do X" or "can anyone help me with Y?" There's often opportunity there to provide a paid solution. Sometimes it's explicitly asked for, other times you have to find out if the poster is open to paying for a solution.

I've been doing this for a while and I generally pick up a few small projects each month, but it takes some time before you get good at seeing which ones are real opportunities and which are just people looking for DIY guidance.

I suspect that if a free site to do this were to emerge, it would quickly end up with the same issues as eLance, Freelancer.com and the rest: race to the bottom on price.

To more specifically address the OP's question: in the past I tried using RentACoder for product ideas by datamining the job postings to see if there was enough overlap in requests that would indicate a product need. Never came up with anything concrete that I wanted to work on :-(

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#93

Post by cdiamand »

kevan wrote: post #89
cdiamand wrote: post #47

I tried to tackle this problem, or atleast the problem of helping people find ideas. I built http://oppsdaily.com and http://oppslist.com . They're both now sunset and I'm no longer sending emails out or updating the platform. I will say that ideas are generally far less valuable than a first customer. My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. That…

>I will say that ideas are generally far less valuable than a first customer. My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. DemandRush[1] had this model. You'd post ideas along with how much you were willing to pay for it. It looks like the website[2] was shut down sometime in 2019. [1] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/demandrush [1] https://www.demand…

Yep! That was the one. I even had a phone call with the developer. Really great guy!

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#94

Post by cdiamand »

wpietri wrote: post #88
cdiamand wrote: post #47

I tried to tackle this problem, or atleast the problem of helping people find ideas. I built http://oppsdaily.com and http://oppslist.com . They're both now sunset and I'm no longer sending emails out or updating the platform. I will say that ideas are generally far less valuable than a first customer. My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. That…

I'm curious: who, if anybody, was your first customer for the opps* projects? I'm a person with a big idea surplus, so I'm sure you had the supply end nailed. But who's on the demand end? This may be more related to my personality, but I just don't know anybody who ever is in the state of, "Gosh, I want to do something but have no idea what".

The folks on hacker news are always looking for ideas to turn into a project. I had a few folks actually build the ideas that came through on the newsletter. That was really rewarding to see.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#95

Post by kamranahmedse »

I am not aware of such platform but you can just create a GitHub repository and dump your ideas there.

Alot of people especially new developers are looking for project ideas; you can just put your ideas there and share the repository in /r/learnprogramming or similar subreddits.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#96

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

stanmancan wrote: post #77
cdiamand wrote: post #47

I tried to tackle this problem, or atleast the problem of helping people find ideas. I built http://oppsdaily.com and http://oppslist.com . They're both now sunset and I'm no longer sending emails out or updating the platform. I will say that ideas are generally far less valuable than a first customer. My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. That…

Sharing idea's are pretty useless in general, if you're not excited enough to work on your own idea, why would someone else be excited to work on it? I'm curious if people posting things they NEED would be more functional, along with a bounty. Other people who also want it can contribute to the bounty. Anyone can work on the idea's and the bounty is awarded to whoever solves it first/best. (I think you would need som…

I have more ideas than I have time to implement, so I focus on the ones that are most interesting/doable/potentially profitable.

The bounty idea is a good one, but again, I think it will rapidly become a race to the bottom on price. As soon as the bounty gets to the point where someone in e.g., Eastern Europe thinks it's good money, they'll bid on it even though a dev in SF thinks it's pocket change. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that in a lot of cases it will happen as soon as the bounty hits $100.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#97

Post by sailfast »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #96
stanmancan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing idea's are pretty useless in general, if you're not excited enough to work on your own idea, why would someone else be excited to work on it? I'm curious if people posting things they NEED would be more functional, along with a bounty. Other people who also want it can contribute to the bounty. Anyone can work on the idea's and the bounty is awarded to whoever solves it first/best. (I think you would need som…

I have more ideas than I have time to implement, so I focus on the ones that are most interesting/doable/potentially profitable. The bounty idea is a good one, but again, I think it will rapidly become a race to the bottom on price. As soon as the bounty gets to the point where someone in e.g., Eastern Europe thinks it's good money, they'll bid on it even though a dev in SF thinks it's pocket change. I'll bet dollars…

Wouldn't that be an excellent outcome for the person with the idea?

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#98

Post by cdiamand »

otras wrote: post #87
cdiamand wrote: post #47

I tried to tackle this problem, or atleast the problem of helping people find ideas. I built http://oppsdaily.com and http://oppslist.com . They're both now sunset and I'm no longer sending emails out or updating the platform. I will say that ideas are generally far less valuable than a first customer. My readers told me time and time again that they wanted to be connected to someone who would pay for the idea. That…

I subscribed to oppsdaily for roughly two years. Thank you for running it! While my stars never aligned to work on any of them, it was great to see real problems that were out there.

Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed it :)

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#99

Post by bgdam »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #96
stanmancan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing idea's are pretty useless in general, if you're not excited enough to work on your own idea, why would someone else be excited to work on it? I'm curious if people posting things they NEED would be more functional, along with a bounty. Other people who also want it can contribute to the bounty. Anyone can work on the idea's and the bounty is awarded to whoever solves it first/best. (I think you would need som…

I have more ideas than I have time to implement, so I focus on the ones that are most interesting/doable/potentially profitable. The bounty idea is a good one, but again, I think it will rapidly become a race to the bottom on price. As soon as the bounty gets to the point where someone in e.g., Eastern Europe thinks it's good money, they'll bid on it even though a dev in SF thinks it's pocket change. I'll bet dollars…

Wouldn't this be a win-win-win situation for everyone? The guy with the idea gets it built, the guy in eastern Europe, earns some decent money, and the guy in San Francisco didn't waste his time for chump change.

Re: Ask HN: Is there a platform for sharing ideas that people want to “give away”?

#100

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

sailfast wrote: post #97
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have more ideas than I have time to implement, so I focus on the ones that are most interesting/doable/potentially profitable. The bounty idea is a good one, but again, I think it will rapidly become a race to the bottom on price. As soon as the bounty gets to the point where someone in e.g., Eastern Europe thinks it's good money, they'll bid on it even though a dev in SF thinks it's pocket change. I'll bet dollars…

Wouldn't that be an excellent outcome for the person with the idea?

Absolutely. But OP is focused on getting good projects for the developers and usually the devs saying they can't find customers are in locations where the COL is too high for this to be profitable for them.

One to get around this problem is to focus on only doing the same kind of work and getting better at doing it quickly so it becomes profitable to you, or doing it in a more Productized Service fashion. But that's a solution to a different problem, not what the OP was asking about.

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