Ask HN: How to find ideas for SaaS products / B2B web apps?

checkout episode 5 of startups for the rest of us podcast, they address this exact question. http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-5-how...

Talk to people who work in large businesses. Ask them what troubles them. Ask them what their bosses complain about.

Look at successful existing SaaS apps (including 37signals', which are not by any means perfect) and see if you can't make a "quanta" of improvement. Talk to the people who gripe about the product and build what they wish they had.

There are no easy solutions here - just a willingness to ask questions and a quest for making things more useful and convenient.

If your not doing trivial applications like 37signals but rather more niche based applications it can be very hard to find areas to move into unless you have personal experience in that area. Most applications you see from startups are based around managment/collaboration/communication/helpdesk because although these are hard problems to solve it is fairly easy to become at least moderately knowledgeable in these spaces. There are TONS of needs for SaaS products, mostly to dethrone enterprise solutions. SaaS apps could exist for any level of business: accounting, procurement, logistics, managment, etc, etc. Building these and selling them can be very hard however. That is why people say build something for yourself. If you worked in procurement for 10 years I am sure you could make a great SaaS for it and solve many pain points, but you probably haven't.

If you don't have this experience well start asking people who do. There exist many niche blogs on enterprise software. Reading these will give the creative mind tons of ideas. Execution can be hard, and sales can be impossible though.

You say you don't want to up against 37signals, well look at it this way:

If you are going for the enterprise type apps the competition may suck, but it is there, big, and well entrenched.

If you are going for the 37signals type apps/helpdesk the competition is fierce and the apps are well made. You can compete because there is always room for a good product but you better be good.

When it comes to b2b if 37signals is your competition your not really in that bad a place. Many companies compete directly, and succeed in the space.

This all being said, I would look into analytic type software for improving sales/leads/conversions because there are many creative approaches yet to be uncovered and with apps like these the proof is in the pudding, and if the pudding tastes good people will buy.

The best way to find a problem is not to ask for it, but to observe users and see their frustrations yourself. To be specific, look for weird behavior - things that a kid wouldn't understand (software so badly designed, you need to train people to use it OR awkward learned behaviors that exist to get around a non-obvious problem). You might see an employee who sits on a ball instead of a chair, in which case the problem is that chairs are not comfortable and healthy.

If you want more help/tips, contact me at ssebro at stanford dot edu.

Look for places that are using antiquated systems (I know my dentist was still on Window 98 last I noticed), those are potential markets in the waiting.

I've got a SaaS product that I'd like to build, but I'm a pretty novice programmer. This is a new idea that fills a need, but it's kind of a niche market. If you're interested let me know and I'd love to talk more about building it.

For me domain experience counts for a lot - and is crucial at all points in the process... from problem discovery + solution development through to how you go sell and market your service.

What domain experience in the b2b-facing world do you have? Have you worked in a corporate environment and been part of processes that could be made more efficient via technology? Perhaps you have worked in a specific vertical like retail, real estate, accounting etc and can think of pain points there.

Or perhaps you haven't. And that's also my point. If you haven't experience any of these pain points then how can you really put yourself into the place of the user or the person who will decide to purchase your service. How will you even know how to market it - use the correct language, know which places to advertise, how to create word of mouth, etc?

When things are really low and the business is struggling, etc where will you find the passion and the drive to wake up in the morning and still be pumped up about what you are building? How will you keep the fire in the belly burning if you've never had the problems you are building for?

The best way to find a good SaaS service that needs doing is to find something that bothers you, or which you want to have available, and then make it happen. Mine grew out of my hobbies, and was first just a solution to my personal needs. Having a solution in search of a problem is a somewhat silly way to approach it.