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

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141–150 of 208 posts

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

#141
>What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

It's the kind where it's so common you think of one every day.

It's also not that much, 100K USD has never been lower in value, so that trend is moving in your favor too.

That's why they say ideas like this are worthless, but they're wrong.

In perspective, though, when a company pays somebody 50K it really costs the company about 100K anyway, and there are companies all over the place where that's what they pay people who are not expected to produce anything at all. We all know how many bullshit jobs there really are.

So there's lots of people every day who have ideas more wortwhile than their actual job.

Every once in a while it's a million dollar idea but it can be kind of hard to tell and usually slips under the radar.

Since it requires a different type of action to get the ball rolling either way, 10X remains just as far out-of-reach as an uneconomical venture.

Now the 100K amount is a good example benchmark, but you can also think about things like 250K etc.

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

#142
Retro-themed hipster mini-golf, with glowing balls, good food and an alcoholic Icee machine. Ideally called Astro-golf, with a bunch of old rocket-ships and space stuff scavenged from a long defunct mini-golf or similar amusement park from the 50s-70s.

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

#143
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 t…

Curious about your products, mind to share just one, perhaps one in which the secret isn't such an advantage?

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Curious about your products, mind to share just one, perhaps one in which the secret isn't such an advantage?

In the crypto space the long tail of projects suffer from lack of devs and there is always a need for new tools. Often the DAOs running the treasury can vote to provide you money to build it.

In the traditional space I had a fairly profitable tool that was for a puzzle-like F2P game (think similar to Words with Friends) that ranked highly on Google. That was ad supported but the hardcore players of the game would use it. I wound up selling it for $5k on an app flipper website when the traffic started to decline as the game got older.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s work life balance anyway? I don’t really want a job where I work for 8 hours (plus 1.5h getting up and ready for work, plus 1h break) and then have 4 hours of life in the evening. I once had such a job and it was horrible: I worked as an amazon warehouse associate, basically just receiving packages, sorting items, putting a barcode with asin on it, done. Loop this for 8 hours plus some additional pressure from…

Why not have both? Earlier in my career, I was very invested in my job as well and didn't mind working 12h+ as I was learning a lot. And I think this mindset really helps to progress quickly. But at some point, it just became unsustainable. I still love my job but also my personal life outside of work.

[deleted]

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You say that, but the nice thing about an app is that they don't go to sleep.

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

#148

I work in the trucking and consumer banking industry industry. A $100K idea is buying your own truck and becoming a trucker, shipping goods from one state to another. This is a billion dollar industry right now and is booming like crazy.

tangential question, does buying an electric truck seem like it would make sense due to lower fuel costs?

Depends on the range, as long as its within 260 miles or so for anything available on the market right now. Tesla claiming up to 500 miles in the future but who knows if they are actually working on that given Musk's current distraction.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can easily clear $100k just keeping your head down in a big company." But when having to choose between 100k and keeping your head down and 100k and keeping your head high, I know what I would choose. Of course the latter comes with more initial stress and risk so you have to know what you want.

I hear what you are saying, but the stress and how a given individual handles it is not a small factor. In fact, I am slowly starting to discover, it appears to be one of the bigger ones. Running your own business is stressful. It requires a level of organization apart from the skills you need to make a viable and successful product. It is not a common combination. I guess I would not automatically equate "keeping he…

"I guess I would not automatically equate "keeping head up high" = running your own business."

Oh, for sure not. Depending on your customers and your money flow, it can also mean keeping your head very low to not loose the last contracts. And there are probably some companies, where you can keep your head high or are even encouraged to do so and no sociopath from management bites your head off for it, but values your opinion.

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

#150
post #42

There's always room at the bottom in logistics and scheduling. Find a local business that currently depends on guesswork, intuition and experience in managing their inventory or supplies or other shipments. Every bakery and independent pizza shop has point-of-sale software now, but how many have back-end software that reads the sales figures and can tell them to order [sugar, flour, cheese] before they run out? Even…

> Every bakery and independent pizza shop has point-of-sale software now, but how many have back-end software that reads the sales figures and can tell them to order [sugar, flour, cheese] before they run out? Huh, I basically just spent my entire week working on this for our bakery (and the last 6 months on other software and systems like recipe management, team messaging, online sales, social marketing and more). W…

Can you share more about what you've built? I've got a bakery in Chicago and I'd love to learn more about the things you're building. Contact info in my profile.
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