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Ask HN: What are some of the simplest software businesses that exist?

73 points by polalavik ↗ HN
For example park.io was born out of a simple script that looked for available domains (https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-automating-tasks-helped-me-grow-revenue-to-over-125k-mo-73da9c0b51)

66 comments

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GFischer
There are a lot of websites that I'm not sure if they count as businesses but are reasonably simple:

  - code prettifiers,
  - converting from X to PDF, 
  - converting image formats, 
  - YouTube downloaders, 
  - TimeZone converters,
  - Online calculators,
  - SQL formatters
And so many more...
eterm
Converting X to PDF is far from simple ( I wish it was! ).
gremlinsinc
It's actually not always hard (depending on use case and what 'x' is) if you use an existing api or something that has already been developed...why re-invent the wheel?

wkhtmltopdf is pretty easy to use... there's some other tools...

schoen
I think eterm's point is not that there aren't readily-available tools to do it, but that it's hard to do in full generality without loss of information.
gremlinsinc
my point was if you just wanted a simple 'online tool' to slap some ads on, or have a fancier upgrade, it's probably doable without a ton of effort..obviously some integrations will be harder than others...
maxxxxx
From my experience almost nothing around PDF is simple once you scratch the surface...
config_yml
simplepdf did a great job, good example of doing something simple that’s actually not that simple
sudhirj
Simple != Easy.

Think the question isn't what's easy money - you can have really simple ideas or products that just do one thing, but they're not necessarily easy to do.

akx
I've been working on an omniglot code prettifier ( https://nicen.pw/ ), but I'm not sure how I could ever make it a business. :D
gbear605
It's not what I'd personally do, but the traditional solution is advertising.
elago
I give a lot of page views to those ad-heavy online unit conversion calculators that are quite simple. While the page itself really just implements basic arithmetic, I have no idea how hard it is to get the 1st result from the search engine when you google "Convert 130 inch ounce to newton meters"
cimmanom
Are you asking about simple software? Or simple business models? Or something else?
polalavik
simple software that solved a common problem and has a pretty straightforward business model.
axaxs
Probably craigslist, if you count that. It seems ultra low maintenance, and makes good money.
hskalee123
The backend doesn't seem that simple to me. Maybe it's just me.
axaxs
It's written in a standard Perl LAMP stack, and to my knowledge hasn't changed much since inception. It's not as simple as a converter script, sure, but by today's standards it's extremely simple.
kodablah
https://www.statuspage.io/ (implementation may no longer be simple, but surely it was initially)
stingraycharles
Wasn’t that initially written for some kind of weekend “start your own startup” hackathon?
1_800_UNICORN
I had a job offer from the StatusPage guys a few years ago that I turned down (shortly before their acquisition by Atlassian, d'oh!). The feature set is relatively simple, but the underlying software is very complex. They need to be reliable enough and robust enough to work when other major sites go down, which is no easy feat. I'm sure that like most products they started simple, but to scale to any large meaningful customers they had to put a lot of complex engineering in place.
ninjakeyboard
I think many saas solutions that exposes functionality of some command line tool. Eg video encoding, as mentioned html->pdf, barcode generation, even just storing and retrieving assets.
brailsafe
It depends. Usually, at some level you're going to find some crazy complexity. I think just about every flight hacking/booking website is simple in the sense that it just uses one API for data, but then there's complexity in the UI and behind the API they're using. Likewise, prpviding just an API to some otherwise unavailable data might be anywhere from simple to inifitely complex.
is_true
With your reply in mind I think that we should be talking of barriers of entry, not easy to write. Last time I checked a flight API costed 7500K USD monthly.
OliverLassen
What about sites which allows users to create their own blogs. That seem pretty simple, but the content is the hard part.
OliverLassen
Actually it is hard to tell. Every application is simple from start, but then expand.

You could say Instagram is simple - create a user, upload a picture which people can see if they choose to add you as a friend. Simple at first, but then the application evolves to filters and sophticated algorithms for finding best content

hopesthoughts
They can be simple like write.as or complex like wordpress.com, Blogger etc. Simple as in the just write kind of thing, and complex as in there are probably too many extra features.
wilsonnb3
A lot of WordPress plugins that cost money are very simple.
et-al
Doodle.com is super simple and super useful when coordinating with more than four people.
apapli
I’d say a lot of enterprise software fits into this category.... just that they are very evolved now so pack a lot more functionality in than what they started with.

Ie CRMs and ERPs were really just basic CRUD applications when they started.

Not to belittle them, as there are years (Millenia perhaps?) of programming time that has gone into them since they started so they are far more extensive than when they started.

maxxxxx
Most Enterprise software turns into incredibly complex beasts once you have a few customers and years of usage. Definitely not simple by any measure.
icedchai
It starts off simple. Then someone wants to customize things. Then someone else wants to customize things a bit differently, on and on. That field you give everyone by default and made mandatory? Turns on 1 huge customer doesn't actually want it. That needs to be configurable, too. Pretty soon everything almost is configurable and it's 1000x more complex...
BLanen
Don't forget building it in a way to allow the user(ie, expensive consultants why you may be supplying yourself or grant certificates too) to customize it themselves!
HeyLaughingBoy
Most of the really simple businesses are going to be B2B in very niche markets, so you're not likely to hear about them.

e.g., somewhere there may be a website that converts RS274 commands to an obsolete CNC command protocol so they can use their decades old machinery with modern CAM software. It has real value to a small number of users and it's the kind of thing you can write in an afternoon, but outside a small community, you're not likely to know about it.

Yeah, I know that's a bad example, but it's the first thing that came to mind :-)

hiccuphippo
Pinboard's business model is pretty simple. Monthly charge for usage of their service. And the service itself is pretty simple, bookmark storage with tags.
kej
*annual charge
kettenken
Pingdom.com?

At least it was pretty simple when it started. I think "ping my server from several locations and alert me when stuff doesn't work" is simple and they charge $10+/mo for that.

barbarr
jscrambler.com. Sell the fact that you can do something that can already be done, slap on some business talk, and you've got $2m in venture funding.
bakli
I made https://monitorcertificates.com from this simple script - https://hackernoon.com/monitor-your-https-certificate-expiry...

It reminds you when your certificates are due for renewal, or if they have been configured incorrectly.

barbarr
The way you sell it seems pretty effective. Do you have any "big boy" clients yet?
bakli
No, mostly devs who have been burned by bad certs, and devs who's boss bought a certificate and now doesn't remind devs when they get a "reminder" to renew.
underyx
I suspect that OP owns park.io and created this post just to covertly market that website. Signs that point to this:

- it's a completely unnotable example compared to more well-known companies in the comments

- No one else thought to include further promo material like OP's linked interview for the service they answered

- OP's post history contains several failed attempts to promote 5things.xyz with HN submissions (demonstrating a tendency to self-promote)

- After these failed attempts OP made their only meaningful-looking contribution to the HN community by posting 'Ask HN: What are your favorite tech sites besides HN?'

- However, the aforementioned 5things.xyz is a competitor in this space

- And of course, this last post had a commenter answering 5things.xyz in the thread, with the user being registered the same day only to make that one comment, and even being given a random fake-sounding username: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=syrup89

- However, this shill comment was mostly ignored by everyone, and this failure apparently prompted OP to include their promoted answer in the body of their Ask HN post instead this time

Edit: My comment got downvoted twice within one minute of posting (:

qaq
I agree with you def. looks like marketing for park.io
lossolo
I lately noticed a lot of threads similar to these with a lot of meaningless comments like for example "What a great product!", "WoW! Finally! Waited for this so long", "Perfect product, will be using!" from accounts that were made 30 days ago or 3 days ago, or same time as thread were created.
aunty_helen
That's just the Eternal September.

Whilst I appreciate the OPs diligence, I would actually tend to disagree. The user may have seen it mentioned on indie hacker, which would be a plausible place to encounter 'a simple script that looked for available domains'

underyx
While possible, my 3rd to 7th bullet points, a lack of any other activity from OP, and the instant downvote brigading still make me nearly certain that this was all a scheme to promote this one site.
axaxs
Good analysis. I gave benefit of the doubt, as the domains are registered and built differently (one with humbly, on aws, the latter on wix). It could just be that the poster had attempted to copy something simple unsuccessfully, and looking for new ideas.
polalavik
I really don't, but good armchair analysis my guy. I was just reading indie hacker and was wondering what else is out there like this in terms of simplicity. Also my website is far from a competitor to park.io its just a personal EE blog with stuff I like and Matlab I write.
ca98am79
Hi, I am the founder of park.io and did not post this, but feel free to ask me any questions
ArtWomb
Reminds me of Jeff Atwood's "Code: It's Trivial" post:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-trivial/

The model I really dig right now is "unlimited subscription for creative work." Such as manypixels.co, for graphic design and illustrations. Or even the Podscriptor transcription service ($10 per episode in 24 hr).

And though you can probably edit such a service down to a minimal quantum creative task. There's no shortcut to getting web-scale distribution.

Best of luck ;)

a_d
The first version of some astonishingly successful businesses were quite simple. Including and certainly not limited to: AirBnB, Groupon, Facebook, Zenefits, ZenPayroll (now Gusto), YouTube, Twitter etc were quite simple.

Ironically, their success over the last 10-15 years, has made starting a software businesses relatively simple. My bet is that in the next 10-15 years the value is increasingly going to come from harder to start businesses.

antisthenes
Sublime Text comes to mind.

It's probably not the simplest one, and the ecosystem around it is quite extensive, but at its core, the principle is very simple.

germainelol
But how many people click the button to buy a license? :D
qop
Twilio, craigslist, twitter, wikipedia, are all pretty simple from the top view.