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Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

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Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#1

Post by adamfaliq »

Hi there HNers,

Last summer I worked on a startup as lead developer. I learnt about running a startup and talking to users while working there. I have now quit working there to focus on my studies (second year university in London).

I would like to work on a side project that eventually would lead to some revenues this summer. My question is, how did you find problem(s) to solve ?

I have read books and blogs suggesting that the best problem is the one that I have faced before. I find it difficult to do this when almost every problem that I found, there has always been existing solution or the solution can be solved with some quick searches.

Any idea or thought is really appreciated. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#3

Post by sigfubar »

If you ever find yourself thinking "If only there were a product that solves my problem XYZ? I'd pay money for that!", then you already know what to build.

If you haven't had such thoughts yet, I'm sure others around you could make suggestions. You'll make even more money by building for a niche market that has been overlooked or underserved by technology companies. The more specific the market, the better, as these tend to be quite sticky.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#4

Post by michaelbuckbee »

throwaway-1283 wrote: post #2

Indie Hackers is a good resource https://indiehackers.com The lowest effort/highest reward ones I have seen are curated subscription email groups e.g. a vetted list of high quality freelancer jobs for freelancers.

I have seen more success from freelancers -> very profitable side projects than any other form. It makes sense: you're being paid real money to provide a custom solution to a problem, so if you can make a generalizable version of that solution you can at least feel confident that you're solving a problem people will throw money at to fix.

The most common thing I've seen is that freelancers will (as the situation calls for it) strike a deal with their client to carve out a feature as an independent SAAS, bill the customer a much reduced rate for that "set" of work and bring them on as the first "customer" of the SAAS so there's some social proof.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#5

Post by Varcht »

sigfubar wrote: post #3

If you ever find yourself thinking "If only there were a product that solves my problem XYZ? I'd pay money for that!", then you already know what to build. If you haven't had such thoughts yet, I'm sure others around you could make suggestions. You'll make even more money by building for a niche market that has been overlooked or underserved by technology companies. The more specific the market, the better, as these…

Don't forget to do some research to see if it already exists, often it does.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#6

Post by ageitgey »

The world is full of people in your situation who's main area of interest and experience is primarily in software development or start-ups. Because of this, almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times. There's tons of competition even for really bad ideas - just look at how many start-ups in SF tried to offer "laundry as a service"!

The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that are totally unrelated to your experience. The world is full of profitable niche industries that need custom solutions that software developers have no idea exist. The business and industrial world largely still runs on excel spreadsheets, emails and word docs. Those are all areas ripe for new products and many of the top companies in those niche areas have no idea how to apply technology to solve their problems more efficiently.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#7

Post by fermienrico »

sigfubar wrote: post #3

If you ever find yourself thinking "If only there were a product that solves my problem XYZ? I'd pay money for that!", then you already know what to build. If you haven't had such thoughts yet, I'm sure others around you could make suggestions. You'll make even more money by building for a niche market that has been overlooked or underserved by technology companies. The more specific the market, the better, as these…

Your advise is good but often leads to products without real problems.

You don’t have to find a novel problem. Find a product that already exists and out-do them. If you can criticize a product, you can make a better version of it and create value for your customers.

Finding a novel problem also works but less often than going after an existing known problem with some unoptimized solutions out there.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#8

Post by halfjoking »

The quickest way to build an impressive SaaS project in 2019:

1. Find a cool machine learning project with preferably pre-trained models so you don't have to do much cleaning/moving data.

2. Get those models doing inference on a server and expose it as an API.

3. ??? (marketing/sales/business stuff)

4. Profit

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