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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?

#71

Post by _gabe_ »

phphphphp wrote: post #32
omeysalvi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to take it home with you. Consistent schedule This is not always guaranteed and you may not have a choice regarding this once you pass a certain stage in your career. It also depends on your industry and the part of the world you live and work in. Work life balance is notoriously non-existent for a vast portion of the world's IT workers.

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…

I was just talking to my friend about this the other day. Screw getting promoted. I want to sit tight at my mid level position and make sure that I get my job done stress free. The company's success doesn't hinge on me worrying about my job after 5PM, and I highly doubt it hinges on any of the employees working/worrying past normal working hours. Honestly, how much does it benefit the company if you work your butt off every night? It's probably a drop in the bucket, it's just not worth it.

In other words, I see my company spend millions a month on AWS fees. If they wanna bump my salary considerably, then I would consider putting in more hours. But until that day comes, work life balance is my number one priority.

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

#72

Post by ergonaught »

raunometsa wrote: post #50
ergonaught wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In response to someone who is explicitly uninterested in billion and million dollars ideas, you share a site about people making roughly 20 million a year? I’m not singling you out, since this happens allllllll the time, but I truly wish you or anyone could articulate why you thought it would be helpful to share something that was by definition unhelpful or “off topic”. Truly breaks my brain trying to fathom this beh…

Sorry, I should have said collectively . 200 devs are making collectively $1.6M per month (most doing < $5k/mo)

Thank you!

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

#73

Post by arcturus17 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #22
3pt14159 wrote: post #16

Call around 100 high net worth individuals. Tell them you're looking to build an app to help them manage all aspects off their life. Relationship with spouse, how to handle vices, deal flow, whatever. The point is that there are a lot of high net worth people that want something to simplify their life. For example, "when I get in the car and it is after 6pm but before 9pm and the car is headed west on the 401, text m…

This is actually a job - a personal assistant - and almost anyone who can afford $8k per month for one already has 2 [=

Yea they’d likely do a better bloody job than an app too…

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

#74

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

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…

There was a time when I questioned decisions like Amazon hiring[1] 50k tech workers along with Google, FB and other tech giants, because I did not understand their value to the company, when it seemed like they do not absolutely 'need' that level of tech workers.

Now I think I do:

1. Those engineers will less likely to upend the apple cart by inventing something that could disrupt business 2. Those engineers will be kept away from competition, where they could do something to help competition

Those tech workers are sufficiently happy that leaving is typically not an optimal choice.

FWIW, I am just typing aloud. So please correct me if you see a flaw in that reasoning.

[1]https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-amazon-ceo-unve...

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

#75

Post by svantana »

smallerfish wrote: post #58
LadyCailin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://github.com/juce-framework/JUCE

Or even better: https://github.com/iPlug2/iPlug2. Similar to JUCE but with a permissive license.

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

#76

Post by hnfong »

komadori wrote: post #53
hnfong wrote: post #34

I'm involved in maintaining a dictionary website for Cantonese. We're not strapped for cash since expenses are minimal, but if we did put up ads there (according to Google's estimate) the yearly revenue might be in the say 10+k range. So the business itself at "10 P/E" would be a roughly 100k dollar business. (FWIW, I believe the estimate is probably higher than the would-be real numbers, but then we haven't finished…

What's the website? I can only think of CantoDict.

Didn't post a link since it's not supposed to be an ad, but since somebody asked...

- https://words.hk - if you haven't heard of this yet, probably because the site is in Cantonese (yeah, this is a novel thing, a Cantonese-Cantonese dictionary...)

- https://cantowords.com - This is an English version recently launched this year. The page rank or whatever SEO thing isn't up to speed yet, so there's not a lot of page views for this one yet.

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

#78

Post by leros »

My favorite $100k idea to share is starting a landscaping business. The startup cost is small, you grow through hustle and good work, and the ability to expand to multiple employees/crews is there as you expand.

I think it's something just about anyone can do as it doesn't require special training.

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

#80

Post by monero-xmr »

pjc50 wrote: post #23

I think unfortunately here is exactly the wrong place to ask: we're in the center, and close to the pure-tech world. The small business ideas left are, almost by definition, in communities that aren't quite so online and well-connected.

There are plenty of good ideas in pure tech. I believe they are mostly in the small niche communities that are online that just aren’t well known - build something that a small die hard group will pay for. I’m more a fan of subscription money / fee-for-service than ad money which is inconsistent and requires lots of eyeballs.

I own a handful of profitable small online businesses and I’m building another in my spare time. You can tell by my user name where a lot of opportunity for small time programmers are (crypto in general really) but HN is ideologically opposed to that industry despite the profit opportunities being massive.

And finally I don’t want to reveal any here because I believe Peter Thiel when he writes that “every business has a secret”. On the surface level they are selling XYZ but the reason they win in a competitive market is only known to those running it.

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