Ask HN: New web service idea that you would pay for?
Thread for ideas of a new web service or app solution, priced on a subscription model.
Which of your needs don't have a good solution yet?
For what app or web service are you ready to pay about 5-10$/month?
90 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadAlthough it doesn't have a kanban board (at this stage), our goal is of course to offer a good solution for everything related to planning and scheduling.
We're strongly considering e2e encryption, but we're not 100% sure yet, because other features like CALDAV integration and server-side search are not compatible with e2e. The app runs entirely locally and syncs in the background (via CRDT), so it's super responsive.
The product isn't exactly what I'm looking for. I have a web based, more visual application in mind.
Imagine a product that deals with domains. You might want to show icons next to each domain in your product. You can build this yourself, as many do, but I think there is room for a "gravatar" style API that does this
https://clearbit.com/blog/logo
Privacy in social media is a feature that is bound to self-discipline of the service provider
A company could provide terms of service and perhaps an explicit creative works agreement defining the exact uses for which the company will use the data (to display on the website, to comply with legal requirements, etc).
It would still ultimately rely on a whistleblower or voluntary auditing, but the combination of clear damages and a not-open-ended terms of use would keep the company lawyers invested in keeping the company honest perhaps.
What I hate about FB or Instagram is the "look how great my life is" aspect.
Note that I specify provider above. Twitter is somewhat useful, but that is despite of, not because of the interaction design of it.
Edit: IIRC app.net was a bit overpriced and had some weird limitations too, although the latter might just be me remembering that they copied all the design mistakes of Twitter for no good reason.
Edit2: If anyone is in doubt at all: Twitter is popular because of the network effect. Everything else has been solved better by one or more competitors.
Nothing wrong with outsourcing ideas, but if you don't have itches to scratch, perhaps there are various qualities you should be improving before implementing a random idea from an internet forum?
For example I always write down my MVP ideas, and keep them indefinitely. This also requires being observant and proactive about the world around you.
Today I'm paying $20 for Marginalia while I wait for Kagi (and because I love Marginalia and the ideas behind it).
I'd probably pay for a "cloud provider with seatbelts" too for learning/testing (e.g. "GCP"/"AWS"/"Azure" but without the possibility to empty my bank account. Bonus if it let me attempt that without doing it and immediately tell me I messed up, etc.)
Edit: there are probably a number of other things I would buy if I could buy them in the form of tokens, not a monthly subscription. I have serious subscription fatigue so I try to only pay subscribtions for stuff that I love or need.)
Just knowing that there is one Swede with one tower PC doing what almost everyone on HN thinks needs redundant datacenters, sysadmin teams, ux teams and what not gives me some hope for the future of the web.
Oh, another reason: every time I use it, either searching for something or using the explore function it proves that the old web isn't dead.
And sometimes it gives very good results that I wouldn't have found otherwise (ln topics like linux, git etc).
Unless someone sends me a ton of money, I just don't have the budget to be more than that. I also think the "better google" space is getting a bit crowded anyway, I think there's probably more interesting niches to be carved out in the general space of discovery.
But don't underestimate the value of proving that it is possible to create a delightful (fast, less patronizing, less spamful, surfaces more real content) search engine without having a FAANG budget or backing from a national state or someone with a FAANG budget.
Edit: also don't underestimate how cool it is. ;-)
It's not that I don't have developer friends, it's moreso that I respect their time and would rather not bother them for tech problems related to my business. I would love to pay for help, but at the same time my friends would never accept my money, so you can see my dilemma. I've used codementor.io in the past but there's a lot of friction in terms of finding a developer/posting a "job", scheduling a time with them, and so on. I'd like to just field these questions into a discord group, feel zero guilt/shame about it, and feel like someone smart will be able to help me within a reasonable time frame.
Of course, whoever figures this out would need to figure out how to balance the costs and the scope of the problems (i.e. I obviously wouldn't be able to have someone just rewrite my entire app), but for example here are some things that I've recently had questions about that I would love to have solved for me that vary in difficulty:
- What CSS do I need to write for me to get these boxes to look this way given that the widths/heights can be variable? (css questions)
- Figuring out what is going on with node-sass and later versions of Webpacker preventing me from compiling assets. (js problems)
- I have no idea how to do this query in an effective manner, here is my data model, can someone help me write an ActiveRecord or SQL query for this? (DB-related questions)
- We have a massive performance bottleneck in this part of the app, here is the business context of why we did it this way, but also why it ended up being really bloated, I'd like some help talking through a better way of fetching and serializing this data for the frontend. (performance problems)
- Our site is going down intermittently and nginx is giving me weird errors (devops problems).
- Here's a feature we want to implement, what do you think is the best way to execute this in terms of tools, packages, and so on? (general consultative questions)
I know these questions on HN are usually fishing for some 100% automated software solution, but after 5 years of building SaaS, this is the one recurring problem I've had.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not looking to hire a consultant specifically, but rather that I think something like this can be productized if someone were ambitious enough to want to assemble this sort of marketplace.
Unless somebody actually gives you their credit card, what they say they will pay for is largely an imaginary game
(sorry if this comes out too negative)
My wife started a business largely on the support of friends, family and strangers she talked to who said it was a good idea.
Imagine her surprise when literally noone was interested when it came time to buy what she was selling.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667439
[1] http://momtestbook.com/
Everything else I could want hardware-wise already has a startup that I would rather support than compete with.
Read The Mom Test
http://momtestbook.com/
I have no affiliation, it's just a great short read that will answer your questions.
[1] https://nebula.app/
Don't focus on price. Don't focus on other people's ideas. The word "need" is overloaded; too many people will tell you the solution they think they need and not the emotional need itself that is not being met by a solution. Instead, try to understand how other people are suffering, and only then try to come up with ideas for how to alleviate their suffering.
The journey of identifying a shortcoming and attempting to address it is a critical part of the product journey.
If you don’t understand what you are solving chances are you won’t be the best at it.
Part of the insight that good product managers have is that their customer base aren't omniscient gods. They're flawed human beings like the rest of us, with limited experience and perspective. Our customers often don't know what we're capable of building, so why should we let our customers' proposals limit us?
This is why it's most important to focus on customer suffering. The facts of the gap that stands between them and happiness. That is the purest signal.
I actually think it's a pretty good potential application for a GPT-3 style prose-generating AI - I'd happily accept something that was 'readable' (for GPT-3 levels of readable) without human bias, editorialization, and sensationalization. The hard part is getting unbiased facts to turn into articles.
Not for images/videos so much but instead focused on GLTF, Step and other 3d file formats
There is a huge wave of 3d apps/games coming to browsers. WebGPU starting to roll out this year will just further accelerate that trend. Many of them feature user content that will have to be converted and optimized to be used
At https://flux.ai we had to build our own pipeline to optimize geometries, triangle counts, auto correct UVs, convert step and other file formats to gltf.
I wish there would have been a turnkey service to just plug into!
There was something called bossasaservice or something but don't think they were able to keep up with the demand and closed. Also the suggested $10 might be too low a price point for this.
Have you looked into StikK? They provide services like automatically donating to your most hated charity if you don't meet your goals (they provide options like the NRA and Planned Parenthood).
We're very much active! (Though we did add a waitlist so we could onboard people in batches!) We're inviting people every week now though!
Beeminder cofounder here. Can I hear more about why you think this? There are definitely people for whom Beeminder doesn't work at all but you sound like you're making a different claim -- that it may work for a while but then stop working. That's the opposite of our experience. Our churn numbers get really good for those who stick around for a year and anecdotally we have lots of people getting PhD theses written thanks to Beeminder, etc.
But if you've had short-term success with things like Beeminder -- https://blog.beeminder.com/competitors -- and then had it fail, that would be valuable to hear more about.
Oh, and I should mention that Beeminder isn't necessarily entirely automated. If you derail and are about to be charged money but don't agree that it was a legit derailment, you talk to a human about that.
* My phone is broken. I want to buy a new one. I want to find the best one, given it must have at least 48 hour battery life and be able to handle falling to the floor a lot. I don't care about cameras or big screens. Show me what to buy. I don't want the options to be influenced by what other people want out of a phone, like an ultraviolet infrared stereoscopic 3D camera and 0.5g weight, but my parameters.
* I need new hiking shoes. I want something that lasts a while. Which ones do I get?
* I drive a Mazda CX-5 from 2014, maybe time to replace it? I want low mileage and I'm quite tall so I need some leg room. Give me some options. Oh, maybe the answer is I don't need a new car. That's useful to know too.
Currently, this requires a lot of research as most reviews are bought, most product information is unreliable. I'd pay for a service that shows me what is in my best interest as a consumer, not what is in the best interest of the sellers.
Todoist to me is regular (habits) + irregular to-dos (e.g. buy book, follow-up on email, etc.).
Pure habit tracking apps don't work b/c you need build a habit to use the app and with the content always being stale, they have high churn.
I want an app that also lets me track personal OKRs (habits). My goal might be to do 15 pullups and my habit could be to do 5 pullups per day. I want to know how often I skip my daily pull up habit so I can know to make adjustments (e.g. maybe 5 is too many. I should start with 3.).