Ask HN: For 10 years I've been trying various projects, still clueless
1. My country is too small and market is small. You can do something here, but everything is so limited that it's terrible. 3.5M people and then when you target certain people who wants your product or service or app or website, you get super small amount of people
2. The Balkans (group of countries around my country where people speak the same language) is a better story, but every nation is so isolated. I asked yourself, how often do I use products/app/websites from the other countries and vice versa? Very rarely. Every country is in its own bubble.
3. European market. Every country has its own language, culture, mentality, etc. it's hard to get into those countries especially if you don't know the lang.
4. The US market is great because it's unified, it's easier to go viral, the language is the same, purchasing power is great, but it's a bit of a problem because me as an European don't know their habits and thinking, I have no connections or friends there, I don't know where and how to start. The market is saturated, something is happening there all the time, and now you have to break through with something new.
5. The UK is ok market, they are more related and similar to the USA. For example OnlyFans is from the UK, MillionDollarHomePage the same etc.
I had quite a lot of partners, it didn't really work out. But I think it's me, I think I function better alone. Everything I tried failed, and I tried exactly in those countries that I mentioned. Worst of all, I wasn't persistent enough.
I have the feeling like I'm trying impossible. I had no money or capital, everything I did I relied on word of mouth, but that's shit. Without good capital that will support the marketing, it's all a shot in a dark.
Sounds like I'm complaining here or trying to find excuses but I'm not, I'm still trying to make it. I'm just confused, I don't know what to pursue, where to try, which market to try
42 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 97.4 ms ] threadMimic - if you know what TikTok has duets now, Mimic was supposed to be that before TikTok existed where you imitate a person, mimicking person. The problem was marketing, no budget and no idea how to market.
xoxoSnap - what OnlyFans is now, xoxoSnap used to be where these models could sell their content, but without a subscription. I gave up without a reason, but I had interested models. This was the worst decision I made with my projects.
SMS Schedule - enable people to automatically send some SMS at a certain time, such as for someone's birthday or Christmas, so that you never forget to congratulate someone. I didn't feel like it would be used.
Gay sex site - Current gay dating is all about sex but covered as dating. So I wanted to make it what it actually is, about sex. Mostly profiles are empty without pics so I wanted to tackle that problem. The problem is again location, need to get people from one city otherwise website makes no sense.
JustBelievers - OnlyFans for believers. Type to subscribe to a priest or pastor who preaches. Nobody was interested
Timechat - a chat application that forces you to answer as soon as possible, otherwise you lose points and fall in the ranking. I didn't do it because I didn't know how to promote it
PhantomChat - a chat that has no history, there is already a bunch of it
CryptoAdults - OnlyFans with crypto. Not working because crypto isn't really used and it's complicated for people
A website selling fetish stuff like farts in a bottle, panties, piss and so on. I didn't make it because I want to find supply before I look for demand. So I need to connect with women who want to sell those things. But then again why would they do it through my site when they can do it via IG or Twitter
All these ideas just show how immature you are.
My advice is to find real problem that people have in that region and try to solve it.
There are wider circles for this kind of thing and it can span countries starting from your region (maybe).
Perhaps look into how people trade and talk about fresh goods daily (vegetables, meat, fish, farm goods), land and houses (real estate deals, land release data from local government), stock and investments (daily public releases from whatever stock exchanges serve your nexus of countries).
That adds to your challenges as you might not know anything about these markets, you are still left with the challenge of finding sufficient core subscribers and promoting for expansion, but it might be the kind of poke in the eye that makes you look about with a different mindset at the wants and needs of those with money doing deals on a daily basis.
However, all of them seem to be social apps, though. Have you thought of making apps for individuals? What I mean is trying to identify a pain point that many people face and creating an app around that?
Just my two cents. All the best!
I think if you focus on the issues facing every day people and try to solve them you'll find a good niche.
I'm in Norway atm, i found an app that collates all the supermarket pamphlets in a nice layout. It's very useful due to the remoteness of sum parts of Norway.
There's an app in Australia called fuelspy that's widely used to find the cheapest petrol/ notify when best time to buy.
These are all small shops creating and maintaining these apps/websites.
Also have you considered freelancing instead of building these apps?
Blitzer seems simplifier. You pick a city, a local one would be easier. You join local groups, connect with local media, setup local events, talk to people locally. Put up fliers with qr codes.
Maybe you have a big prize somewhere in the city gl and you get everyone excited to look for it in some geo search game.
Follow that and you will succeed. My guess is you don't want to do that. That's not fun, or technical. That's what it takes to succeed.. and it can work in any industry from selling t-shirts to rocket fuel.
Most people want to come up with a unique idea or twist, create the site/application and expect everyone to come because of the quality of the idea. This rarely works unless your product is 100x better than what exists and even then you still need to get lucky go viral. Meanwhile everyone thinks your idea is great and is now copying it.
Your comment here tells me you understand this: "But then again why would they do it through my site when they can do it via IG or Twitter"
Why would anyone try to sell farts through you? Have you build up a fart audience? That's your first step. Find a way to get people who like farts to visit your fart content farm. Once you built that you can approach fart suppliers directly or buy thier farts and resell at a higher price.
Spend 99% of your time creating a community. 1% of your time coding.
Mimic - not sure how would this app work when you are fighting for attention with behemoths like tiktok, youtube, instagram etc. Also no clear business model so the project is already set for failure.
xoxoSnap - unironically one of your strongest chances to succeed. You are making an app in an industry that already has established business model. There are paying customers! And you said you had models interested in your app! There can be more than one baker in town. Onlyfans takes 20%? Well we are only going to take 10%. They run skeleton support crew? Well, we will offer 24/7 support in multiple languages, etc. etc. Yea you won't print money like OnlyFans does, but if you give good enough offer to users (models) you might eat a piece of OnlyFans's pie, and the pie is BIG!
SMS schedule - this one actually sounds the most useful app out of all the ones you mentioned and to you it's the opposite LOL. I assume you are from Bosnia, based on what you wrote. Well, there is a startup from your neighbouring country called Infobip. What do they do? They are B2B company that help companies send bulk sms, scheduled SMS, etc etc. They are multi-billion company so clearly there is a market for SMS services. If you approach it from B2C way, you could have a similar service that you already described and you could expand it so much more. Example: send bulk sms to all your friends 1 hour before you are supposed to meet, as a reminder. Self-reminders, don't forget about X thing you have scheduled. I'm not super deep into SMS myself but I know that a lot of people prefer SMS over pretty much any other form of communication/apps so there is market out there 100% and it's quite unexplored in a world where every company is obsessed with capturing users into some kind of app.
Gay sex site - not really a tech problem, you need read some research on how modern relationships work and read couple of sociology books to tackle this problem. There is a whole science on this, not only on relationships/sex but also how people perceive their own actions and why sometimes we lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better. Like saying, you are only dating app to get into a relationship but really you are just looking for sex. If you get a deep understanding on this you will also find ways on how to market your app to potential users and find where your competitors are lacking (Match Group).
JustBelievers - Not really sure what the obsession is with the OnlyFans (in the spirit of a pastor I will tell you that you maybe need some deep introspection on what attracts you so much to the OnlyFans and the sex industry). Drop the OnlyFans angle and you might have a good product, the priests and pastors are already figuring that they need to keep up with technology if they want to retain their followers. Have you talked to your local priest/pastor? Have you gave him an option to test it out? Because for example, our local priest is young and very much into social media. He posts daily on Facebook and Instagram. He probably ma...
B2C is another beast and indeed needs tons of capital.
Having great ideas, being able to code, understanding markets, understanding promotions and advertising, knowing how to craft and ship a product to your market is all well and good, however, look at the 'success' stories in detail, not to detract from the hard work and oft deserved success, on the whole there are some supporting factors that enabled the business, networks, grants, money, connections, wealthy family or friends or all the above.
I'm saying this not because I am mean, but to share that your experience is perhaps not so different to others around the world.
'I think I function better alone' I'd say this is going to need addressing, I work great when I am on my own... however, to get paid... at the bare minimum I need to function with a client, so there's 2 of us. Don't base future opportunity on previous partners, finding a partner is very hard, but in your situation, sounds like it might be a good plan, perhaps you could just make a few notes to yourself about previous partners, strengths and weaknesses, try and identify some core principles that you'd need a partner to fulfil.
To find that partner you are going to need to get out there, I would suggest that a partner from a non-technical area who has good knowledge of a business or user need, perhaps some experience in running a small business and demonstrated skills at networking and making new connections.
Re-reading your story, perhaps 1) reveals opportunity, perhaps there is a hyper-niche market you could address locally, perhaps one known to rely on your local language, unsupported by tools aimed at other markets, where the market would be accessible and your local knowledge an asset. If you could find 20 customers paying $300 a month would $72,000 a year enable you to grow?
It happens all the time. Even when I had a partner with their own project. They start super motivated and within a month they drop and stop contacting me, so I have to contact them to work on their own project. Either they don't have time so I do all the work
My current employer is originally from the UK, but they started in the US. That included a corp in Delaware alongside the main office in the UK. The product is B2B and it worked quite well in the US, but expanding to European customers in the recent years has been more complex. Luckily since it's a B2B product, the language differences are less pronounced. The product itself is only provided in English and luckily we have European CS colleagues so we can offer support in other languages as well. I think the main challenge in this space was that in the US there was only 2-3 big players who we partnered with initially. In Europe, each country has 5 of them and each of them work slightly differently. The company never needed outside investment, we kept lean for a very long time and we were profitable very early on.
My recommendation - focus on US, English-speaking customers first. If you can, do B2B and provide excellent customer support. B2B customers have different expectations, but they are also easier to deal with from my experience. If you can, try to bootstrap and become profitable as soon as possible.
I'm not a salesman either, but I think it's easier to persuade 1 business person to spend $400/mo on your solution rather than persuading 100 individuals to pay you $4/mo. Individuals (even I'm like this) tend to have high, almost unreasonable, standards for the quality of service you get for $4 per month. Comparatively I think for a lot of business, $400 a month is nothing.
Well, if the product is web based, the answer would be "am I likely to know?".
As to your market, you are well placed to do business in the Balkans in a way that a US start up is not - the opposite is not so true. Your appreciation of varying conditions in other countries is also to your advantage. If you make progress you will be less likely to have big companies trying to stifle you.
> Worst of all, I wasn't persistent enough.
You need to overcome that! I had big plans for a subscription based product. But early on I realised that growth was likely linear and cancellations would be proportional. As a mathematician I could see that would tend to a limit. But I persevered, and even though I was right I got a decent income from it until I retired. Modest growth beats none at all.
I spent 10 years of weekend and evenings before my product sales could support me comfortably full time. That was a single project.
When you’re small/starting out, your only competitive advantage is persistence and patience.
If you somehow MUST be the next tech billionaire, move to Silicon Valley and try there. Or buy lottery tickets.