I'm an experienced (10+) fullstack developer who was recently laid off and find myself at an interesting crossroads. Rather than immediately jumping back into the job search, I'm considering this an opportunity to explore building something on my own or working on exciting ideas that could turn into meaningful products. I am looking for I
ideas for solo products that could be built and launched relatively quickly and problems worth solving that don't require a large team initially.
Also looking for opportunities to collaborate on interesting projects with other developers. Have you built successful solo products? What problems are you seeing in your day-to-day work that could use better solutions? Any advice for someone making this transition?
Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#2I have way more ideas than I have time to build. Maybe we should talk. What is your preferred stack?
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#3Talk to people outside tech. Lots of small problems worth solving, but not in tech. Also, just because it's a problem in someone's day to day won't mean they'll pay to fix it.
Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#4Build only when you have unfair competitive advantage with finding customers for your service.
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#5Talk to people outside tech. Lots of small problems worth solving, but not in tech. Also, just because it's a problem in someone's day to day won't mean they'll pay to fix it. Good luck!
"just because it's a problem in someone's day to day won't mean they'll pay to fix it."
The best way to measure is that they've hacked a solution themselves using inferior tools. This is where the 10x recommendation comes to mind - you can do it cheaper, faster, better.
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#6My preferred method of finding something to build (assuming I don’t already have an idea I’m passionate about) is to pair up with someone who has deep industry knowledge in a non-tech industry (or any industry I’m not well versed in). Take their knowledge with your skill set to create a tool/platform/whatever for the given industry.
I find that vast majority of people, even top people in another field, don’t have a good grasp of what is possible with technology. I don’t say that to make them sound dumb, just they don’t know what they don’t know. You get to be the one who can suggest technologies they can use, either existing things you can glue together and/or custom code to help accomplish a task.
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#7Build only when you have unfair competitive advantage with finding customers for your service.
no one would build anything by this logic
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#8My preferred method of finding something to build (assuming I don’t already have an idea I’m passionate about) is to pair up with someone who has deep industry knowledge in a non-tech industry (or any industry I’m not well versed in). Take their knowledge with your skill set to create a tool/platform/whatever for the given industry. I find that vast majority of people, even top people in another field, don’t have a g…
Good advice but I’ve spend my entire career trying to find those people. Never happened.
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#9How about a dating app for unattractive people? AI could block attractive people from registering.
Re: Ask HN: Recently laid off developer looking for solo product ideas
#10My preferred method of finding something to build (assuming I don’t already have an idea I’m passionate about) is to pair up with someone who has deep industry knowledge in a non-tech industry (or any industry I’m not well versed in). Take their knowledge with your skill set to create a tool/platform/whatever for the given industry. I find that vast majority of people, even top people in another field, don’t have a g…
Good advice but I’ve spend my entire career trying to find those people. Never happened.
They're easy to find. Perhaps your use of my entire career is a tell? You find these people doing non-work/non-tech activities.
Activities clubs are beneficial for this. But surprisingly, attending my kids' school sports events is also awesome. I meet parents from diverse backgrounds, and we instantly have something in common (kids on the same team). I meet a lot of people all over the income spectrum.
I live in a rural area that is quite poor. Over the past couple of years, I've encountered about a dozen parents who look and dress normal, but are wealthy, and they're either in or they run interesting businesses.
They all have super interesting stories and perspectives and you realize a lot of people are successful because they've tried a ton of different things. They don't have high success rates, maybe ~10%, but they're consistent and they're persistent.
(I also talk to the poor parents and hear their stories. I have this weird thing where I try to introduce some of the harder working and ethical poor parents to the richer parents, where there may be some mutually-beneficial opportunities, when they'd otherwise be too adverse to introducing themselves.)