Ask IH: successful indie hackers, how did you find your niche?

I actually found my niche by accident. I was working on a project in my previous company that I was really passionate about, and I realized that there was a need for it in the market. That's why we started vidon.ai.

I personally faced the issue myself of wanting to get quick advice on a topic/need that I was stuck on - I didn't want to rely on "someone who knows someone" nor did I want to bother people by asking if I could "pick their brain". But, I also didn't have the budgets to hire consultants or contract-based employees for just brainstorming.

I think we all have a fair share of expertise across our experiences and I'd rather pay someone a small fee to grab a "virtual coffee" with them rather than spend hours watching videos or reading blogs to understand how to solve my issue. People who have been there and done that have a lot more to share from real experiences.

imo stumbling across it might be the best way to go - building stuff that you are passionate about / that you enjoy making / that solves a problem you have will make the rest a lot easier & you'll be less likely to give up when things get hard!

For my app, I actually had the problem myself so I solved it for myself with a bit of code. Then later I hacked out a web app to see if anyone else wanted it.