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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?

#31

Post by afigkka »

in the UK most villages/small towns without a school have very old residents with no real village population replacement (people die of old age and the big old cold houses are bought by increasingly wealthy retirees leaving urban environments). The current residents need increasing amounts of care and infrastructure but there isn't anybody nearby of working age (compounded by the fact that NIMBY policies have driven village houses to unobtainable prices for average families and rentals are usually very rare).

more of a socio-economic observation but it's a problem that needs solving for each village - the current solution is government subsidy from urban areas to pay for care workers and pharmacy to drive around all day in the countryside to see people for a few mins each

I'm thinking if each rich old person in the village paid a subscription for a dedicated local care team who lived together in a nice house in the village (like 30x people paying £1000 a month to support 5 people) then that would be a balance for a very decent care wage + consistent high quality care

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

#32

Post by phphphphp »

omeysalvi wrote: post #14
dismalpedigree wrote: post #10

Work for somebody else. No startup stress. No need to take it home with you. Consistent schedule. You can easily clear $100k just keeping your head down in a big company.

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 coasting at an average salary, you can either refuse to engage with the stressful parts of the job, or get another job. You get fired? Oh well, on to the next job.

I’ve worked in jobs where I had stressed co-workers who felt like the future of the company was on their shoulders… and co-workers, on the same team, who didn’t have a care in the world, because they understood that the success of the company was not linked to how stressed they were or how many hours they worked. Their value to the company was equal, their quality of life was vastly different.

If all you want is $100k/year, and you have the skill set to build your own company, you have the skill set to get a job where you don’t have to break a sweat. There are lots of companies out there who know how to realise >$100k value from an employee in 30 hours of low-stress work per week.

The whole notion of needing a career is self imposed, it’s a choice, if you’re happy making an average salary you don’t need to be in a high stress environment.

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

#33

Post by hutzlibu »

dismalpedigree wrote: post #10

Work for somebody else. No startup stress. No need to take it home with you. Consistent schedule. You can easily clear $100k just keeping your head down in a big company.

"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.

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

#34

Post by hnfong »

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 the dictionary itself yet.)

I think there's a lot of small-medium sized websites that fall into such a category.

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

#35

Post by helsinkiandrew »

The best of these would be something related to a lifestyle business you are interested in as a hobby or would do for fun anyway. So if it doesn't generate a lot of income you are still having fun - importing/selling wine, something to do with antique motorbikes etc.

Your question implies you are looking for tech ideas and your skills are in building software or services. The other side is applying high tech to areas of business that aren't very high tech at the moment - think about all the small or local businesses that still thrive that can barely get a website together and couldn't afford to hire a decent developer or even have the skills to manage a software project - if tech can improve that business you can differentiate yourself.

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

#37

Post by raunometsa »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #26
raunometsa wrote: post #20

Not looking to promote my site here but I will do it anyway because it may be useful for you: https://microfounder.com There are currently 200 founders making $1.6M per month with their solo startups.

Question: How can your platform help me besides rendering me in awe of other founders?

One thing is motivation – to show that it's possible and many solo devs are running profitable interent startups.

But also, you can read Q&A-s with the founders about how they started, got their first customers, etc.

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

#38

Post by motohagiography »

There was one I looked into building to solve a problem, which was gasket printing. If you are having motorcycle or other engine repair done, waiting for a gasket can take a week or sometimes more depending on supplier location, and it's something printed from gasket paper.

A website where you can print aftermarket gaskets on demand, and even do it with CAD files or derive them from edge detection in photos would make its money by shipping faster than OEMs, and without worrying about inventory. Retooling an existing custom sticker printing business would do it. Unit margins are like 100x the cost of the paper, and shipping cost margin is the other one.

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

#39

Post by rozenmd »

mrpadie wrote: post #7
rozenmd wrote: post #6

Uptime monitoring (imho as founder of OnlineOrNot)

This space feels pretty crowded to me. Out of interest, what makes you think there's still money left on the table in this domain, given all the existing products? Or rather, what do you feel all the existing products lack?

To be clear, a 100k business only requires 170 customers paying $49 a month.

There's always underserved customers that are somehow dissatisfied.

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