Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

I am also on the same boat. Based on my learnings and experience from running failed startups, here's a system I am experimenting.

Step 1: Observation

There are oppurtunities around you; some people are good at finding them and exploiting it to build profitable ventures.

The intended outcome is to find a problem people are struggling with and help them solve it.

Here's how I find problems.

1. Most Voted "Ask HN" Queries: I have already noted your question as a story idea for my medium blog. Since this is something, people need help in figuring out.

2. Comments Most Voted HN Posts : Not all posts have comments where people talk about their problem, but some post has insightful data.

3. Comments on Top-Listed Products on Product Hunt : Find out the top listed products on product hunt. Go to the comment section and check out for the 'cons'.

4. Conversations : Go out and talk to people who have a different perception of the world. Try putting yourself into their shoes. Then try to if you can bring a solution to their problems with the knowledge you have.

5. App Store Reviews / Amazon Reviews: These reviews contain problems with current product users have.

Step 2. Study

Now that you have got the puzzle, you need to find a cheap and efficient way to solve it.

I mostly try to see how people in a different field solve this problem. Later, try to see if their solution can fit into the issue I selected.

I also find solutions in books, research papers, hackathon projects, etc.

For now, you only need to find a theoretical way to solve the problem.

Step 3: Shadow Testing & Writing

Make a landing page about your ideal solution. Make sure you include good graphics such that your product looks ready.

The landing page also won't be enough to attract people. Write about your learnings on Medium or your blog. At the end of your blog add a signup link to your landing page.

If you are new to copywriting, please read the book "How to Write A Good Advertisement" by Victor O. Schwab.

If people can relate to the problem, you would be receiving signups. Ask them to join a slack or a telegram or a WhatsApp group.

Step 3. Validating with the Early Adopters

These people are a boon. They have extended me so much help in my earlier startup. They do this because they would like to see their problem solved.

Start having a conversation with them, build prototypes. Incorporate their feedbacks. Make sure what they are willing to pay exceeds the production cost so that you can make profits.

I hope this helps.

After many decades of coming up with ideas, I have discovered something. Every single one of my good ideas have been ideas that somebody else also had. It shouldn't be surprising because there are something like 7.7 billion people in the world. If you have a good idea that nobody else had, then that's a 1 in 7.7 billion idea ;-) Having realised this, I now use the fact that the idea is already known to be a good test of how good the idea is. If the idea has already been tried then I get an even better idea of how good it was.

Here's the thing: the world is not short on good ideas. Actually, you don't even need to have one to be successful. You just need to be able to recognise a good idea. The rest is execution. You execute better, you will win bigger.

Here's another cool thing I learned in decades of looking at the technology world: name one dominant company whose product was the first to market in its field. I literally can't find one! They probably exist (and this is HN, so there will be someone coming along shortly to point it out to me ;-), but the most important thing to realise is that most (by an incredible margin) successful projects became successful be learning from the previous king in its area. Word processor, spreadsheet, OS, game (of any genre), source control service, etc, etc, etc.

Don't be afraid not to innovate. Learn how to deliver. Learn how to distinguish between good and bad. Learn how to optimise the good. Learn how to please unhappy customers of existing products. Learn how to do all that while making money, not spending it.

Or the other way is just to close your eyes and pretend you invented it. If you become dominant, nobody will realise you weren't the first ;-)

I suppose that finding problems is not difficult. The most difficult is to find an audience that has the same problem and sell your product. As Lead Startup Methodology tells us that we need to check our hypotheses after that create a solution. A lot of startups die because founders don't catch an audience.

And if you create a solution, it doesn't mean that you will get revenues so fast. The best choice is to find a remote/local job at startups. If you're in London, I think it's not a big deal.

Or just having some projects on side. You will earn more incomes than you can do with a startup.

I use for searching projects Periodix [1] and Facebook groups. There are a lot of projects of startups. ALso, I saw the website that oriented on Positive Impact Projects Jobs [2]

1 - https://periodix.net/ ↗ 2 - https://positiveimpacttechjobs.com/ ↗ 3 - List of Remote Jobs in Different Companies https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv0BjsWBR7JntDJqRM6_hyjbE/edit?usp=sharing ↗

Here are two ideas for desktop apps that I think would be worthwhile:

1) A data copy app. I often need to copy data from one place to another (eg. copy data from MS Access to a MySQL server, export data from PostgreSQL to CSV, fetch data from some REST API and insert it into PostgreSQL). There tools for some of those jobs (eg. CSV import / export from PostgreSQL is solved). But there are a lot of jobs where I end up needing to write a custom Python script just to batch import some data from somewhere. It would be lovely if I just had a GUI app that was built for moving data from A to B.

2) A simple reporting tool for PostgreSQL. Often I just want to create a quick report from some data in a database (eg. how many users have already updated to the latest version?), but I don't want to start learning something like Tableau. I wish there was something more lightweight and affordable for creating just an occasional graph or summary table.

Both of these could start out very simple (do just one little thing) and expand from there, so I think they would be suitable for a side project.

I also think those two ideas have a lot of potential to make money. It's a huge market, and there's plenty of money to be made if you focus on smaller customers or niches that are not interesing for the big players.

I have read books and blogs suggesting that the best problem is the one that I have faced before.

I agree with this advice, but my problem is that most problems I have faced are software development problems. I have tons of great ideas for software development tools that would be super cool. However, there is no market for selling software development tools, because everyone is used to getting them for free from open source projects subsidized by large companies.

Nobody wants to pay for software development tools. Even worse, software development tools tend to be local programs instead of cloud software, and licensing/DRM for local programs is a nightmare for everybody involved. Either you just accept that the majority of people will pirate your software, or you go crazy implementing invasive DRM schemes that hurt your paying customers and still don't work.

I think this is actually a big problem in our industry. Our tools suck because there is no strong profit motive to produce improved tools. We have to muddle through with whatever big companies see fit to subsidize in their open source programs.