1001 SaaS Product Ideas

Clickbait

1001 ideas short of the mark haha.

Next time I see an article by yongfook I’m going to think its also clickbait 🤷‍♂️

I thought folks here might find this useful - just some thoughts on ideation of API services, if you're a technical solo founder (like me).

expectation: a book or a list of ideas.
reality: an article

Aside from the title, I think the whole premise is flawed. Building your startup around an API sounds great in theory, but in practice you have three problems: first, there's very little moat, and Amazon (or other tech giant) can easily release something that wipes out your business model. This is especially dangerous if your API is built around the services of a single company - this happened the other week when someone built an API in front of Substack, only for Substack to do exactly the same thing soon after for very little effort (it's their platform, after all) . This is the "startup that's really just a feature" trap.

Secondly, as a developer, I am conservative about what third-party services I am going to integrate into my product. I cannot afford to depend on a third party API that may be unreliable, or that won't be around in six months. I'll either use a reliable service from Amazon, Twilio etc that's not going to disappear any time soon, or just build it myself.

Third, something I see too much of on this site: developers building solutions aimed at other developers. You are really focusing on a very saturated market - the reason why there are so many job boards, project management tools, todo lists, and yes, APIs aimed at developers is because founders are not getting out of their comfort zone and talking to people outside their industry. I believe there are many niches and verticals underserved by incumbent solutions, if they are served at all, and we are ignoring many potentially great ideas by being focused too much on the software developer industry.

A final point: I think some of the wishful thinking in the piece is "you don't need to know UX". APIs are UX. An API needs an intuitive design, as much as any UI. It also requires excellent documentation - you can't just rely on autogenerated swagger docs or whatever for something you are going to sell to people. Learning how to design good UX and write clear documentation is not about fussing over fonts and margins, it's learning how to empathize with your users and build things they enjoy using with minimum effort, and a skill any sole founder needs to learn.

I was expecting 1001 SaaS product ideas... sad :/

Day by day more number of posts are taking us out of indiehackers. IH is becoming link submitting site.

haha what a clickbait

It is not a clickbait, he meant 9 ideas in binary (1001) :genius:

Looks hype!

I forgot I had a Pinterest account there for a minute.