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Ask HN: On Finding Ideas and "Scratching my own itch"

10 points by bodegajed ↗ HN
Hi HN, I'm trying to figure out what Saas I'm going to build on the side. But as a self-funded single founder with no marketing budget, I want to go in a niche where

A) I will be the user and familiar on what the features will be and

B) I will have a chance to at least go level with the competition.

Take a look at list I came up below:

1. Collaboration (Campfire, Huddle)

2. Project Management (Basecamp, Pivotal Tracker, Unfuddle)

3. Time Tracking (Harvest, Simpletimer

4. Invoicing (Freshbooks)

5. Accounting (Freshbooks, Mint)

6. CRM (Highrise, Salesforce)

7. Todo List (Too many)

8. Customer Support/Ticketing Management Systems (Uservoice, Fogcreek)

9. Knowledge Based Site (Uservoice)

10. Online Backup Service. (Dropbox)

I am familiar with these because I am a freelance developer and I have clients. However there are already existing softwares. What do you suggest? I'm afraid if I enter a niche that I'm not familiar with ex. "Invoicing for Architects" I will have no idea and I'll probably have no passion for it.

Edit: Okay maybe not "passion for it" but "familiarity to it" because Saas are really not fun projects are they?

12 comments

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tzaman
Not sure I understand what exactly you want from us?
bodegajed
Sorry, what I was trying to ask is going to an unfamiliar niche be the only solution now since "scratch my own itch" is already crowded?
helen842000
How crowded the market place is depends on the itch that you're trying to scratch!
jbigelow76
"I'm afraid if I enter a niche that I'm not familiar with ex. "Invoicing for Architects" I will have no idea and I'll probably have no passion for it."

Are you passionate about Time Tracking? You seemed to rule that out and others based on a crowded market, not lack of passion (if you really are passionate about time tracking you're a weird dude).

I'd suggest either telling us about what you actually are passionate about and maybe somebody can suggest a way to build an app within that vertical.

OR... make building a successful business your passion regardless of how mundane the pain point is that your SaaS addresses. Even if you do attack a vertical you might not be passionate about how much time will you spend past initial development in the minutiae of the niche? More likely you'll spend time writing code, tweaking landing pages, sales funnels, other marketing, etc... Can you channel your passion into that?

bodegajed
Okay let's take passion out of the way because the reality is Saas products are really boring. Let's just go with familiarity because I'll be the user of my own creation.
pavlov
Finding an idea will involve talking to people who could be your customers.

It's like finding your lost car keys: you'll never find them by sitting down at your desk and writing a list of places where you'd like the keys to be.

taphangum
Probably the best analogy i've heard yet
pkamb
What are your non-tech hobbies and interests?
helen842000
How about building a couple of simple tools for various markets to test the response?

Something that you can put together in a weekend perhaps.

It really comes down to your type of customers. Who would you be happy talking to all day, what industry do you know the most about?

Then if you hit on a demand or a big community you can consider the full blown SaaS

Find a group first and then learn what they need most.

bodegajed
Thanks, this is the probably best advice I got. It looks like entering an unexplored niche might probably the best route right now. My own niche developer/geek is probably not for me. I appreciate it.
pressurefree
if i could program, i would make startup based on the star in every address bar. when you click it, the page is bookmarked as unsorted and it turns yellow. So then if you could get people to export and upload their bookmarks they would have a way to display their favorite bookmarks for the week, they would have a back up, they could tag pages easily (double click the star). this is a good idea because the star is in millions of peoples browsers and never used.
chc
This idea that there can only be one product in an area is wrong. For example, Harvest and SimpleTimer are not the only tools in that area — Amy Hoy's Freckle makes a pretty decent profit in the same area and with superficially the same demographic. As long as you have a unique spin on it that will resonate more with some subset of people and are willing to work your tail off, you've got a shot.