😣 F*ck it, I'm building it anyway.
I've tried to launch some projects which I gave up at some points after few months of development because I was trying to do "ideas".
I'm a software developper, currently not working so I can build my products 🤞
I try to answer to needs people can have, but can't find none, I can't look at my family because everybody's unemployed so they don't have much trouble. And my friends are almost only in techs' and we know that developpers are not good buyers
So, I try to look at my own needs. Problem is that most of my interests are driven by good technology and programming. So this complicated 😕
Anyway, I have this thing that I would like. It would be a service where people would create playlists of articles related to a certain subject and you can follow when new articles comes out. It would be like a RSS reader, but the principle of playlists is very appealing to me.
And I can even split this project in two :
👉 I can have my playlist service which aggregates feeds
👉 I can create a service to fetch easily feeds or create them when they don't exsits, I know that some of this exists, but they can be too manual or missing API IMHO.
This would be a project for ME, but the trouble with that is when I will have something good, I will not have ANY clue on where to promote it. It's way too general.
What do you think ? Is it stupid ? Should I try this ?
It's the second post for today where people asking if they should try to build something or not.
So, in my opinion, if you use the should word, don't build it. Because if your motivation is "shouldness" not your passion for something, you will fail (they say if you ask if you should marry that girl, don't marry her). Yeah, I know, there is a theory that passion is not good and people should do only what can bring money, but the theory was born 20 years ago when there were not so f#cking hords of competitors. Now, to win, you have to have a passion for something, you should be sick with the idea, I believe, you really must marry it, else you will not have enough strenght.
Good luck with your idea(s)!
Damn. This hits hard. While I think you're onto something, I also don't think we should discourage tiny steps. Our ideas inherently stem from our passions.
You've got a point ! But as I @ulesta said in his comment, the worst case is that I am the only user and I get to learn stuff. I would be a little bit sad because, yet, I don't have generated a single dollar, but anyway this sound like a fun project to me !
Thank you for taking the time 😄
You know what. You may generate some dollars if you push yourself far enough. But to do it you will have to get out of your comfort zone, learn some stuff, and do something you've never done before. And if you have enough passion you will spread it, trust me!
I saw pretty ugly products that their founders created for themselves, but they managed to turn them into real businesses because they were so crazy about the idea and found the same crazy fans :) So, even if you don't think about making money right now, it's still possible I believe.
Very inspiring, thank you @Zencentric
Thanks, my pleasure.
The truth is I'm fighting against the same problems, so when I articulate possible solutions I can help myself too :)
Look at it this way. If you build it, the worse case scenario is that you have 1 customer: yourself.
If you believe that the idea will be useful for yourself, chances are, there are many others like you who may need it as well.
Call me an optimist, but I don't think there aren't any drawbacks to trying this out. Yes, you will spend time. In the end, that time was mostly spent learning and iterating. So you can't look back and say I've wasted time on this, because ultimately you grew and learned from the experience.
I absolutely agree with you.
The only trouble is that I (and I think, a lot of us) already have some projects, and now is the time to step up and provide a service to others.
But this one appeals to me, even though I don't have any targeted clients, I think it could be interresting .
Hey Sorasful,
To your point about not being able to find people's needs, check out this article I wrote about finding SaaS ideas: https://tomzaragoza.com/how-to-find-saas-ideas
It has a few tactics you can use to directly find needs of people, which in turn become the "product ideas" you are looking for.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Wow, thank you ! I will definitely read this !
Bam! no problem. Good luck!
I read it, man this is so cool ! Thank you very much for writing/sharing this. I hope you do more of those, great stuff !
Appreciate it, hope it was helpful!!
I also did some screencasts using these techniques where we find actual ideas. I'm going to jump back into making more soon:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/saas-idea-discovery-screencasts-part-1-53331967e5
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/saas-idea-discovery-screencast-part-2-fddeb71664
Enjoy!
Nice, I get to see it in action.
Have you ever thought of getting the process automated ?
Edit: "Grading eggs, oh boy" 😆
Heh, who woulda known there's software for it!
Haven't thought much about that. Personally, I find there's something fun about going through the process yourself, and it tends to be a non-linear discovery process!
I am very interested in the subject of finding articles (reading material) or entertainment (videos) that I would like. The trick is to make it work, at a personal level. There are some ML tricks for this, but a project like this will need 2 things to succeed - invested efforts and user community.
Hit me, if you want, for some brainstorming.
The idea would be that people create playlists of content they look for a subject, for example a playlist related to ML stuff, another for Rust or another for Marketing ...
But I would gladly brainstorm with you if you have suggestions :)
Playlists are needed on the "client" side (and will be provided by the users), but you still need to provide the "supply" side - the articles and which one you chose to provide is the hard part - here ML (or some algo) can be used to bubble the quality ones on top.
To make things clearer - in this case "articles" and "news" overlap somewhat. Think of all of the algorithms that Google, Facebook, etc. are working on and running, in order to make the news they show "better".
Oh okay I think I get what you're saying. But "clients" would supply also their most liked feeds and the order would be from the older to more recent (even though I can add filters to order by most liked article and stuff).
I like what you can do with ML, but it adds a big complexity to the project and I don't know a lot about this subject haha (I need to learn this 😄)
Well, that's where I can help you, even though I am not a ML expert, I picked some algorithms along the way.
If you want this to grow big(er) you need to be able to cross-pollinate between users; luckily this could be done after they provide their own "supply".
Yes you should try, while you build your product, you will find another problems you can fix
I think I would do this as a side project, it's something that I like doing (I think it's because it's the beginning tho haha).
Thank you for your input.
Had a similar idea but with a twist. Working title is WebReads. The idea is pretty simple. Record yourself reading articles from around the web, and publish those "reads". Then have a feed where you can see articles read by other people. (could also be paraphrased), anyway, people would have a profile and you could follow them so essentially you'd build up this feed of articles read by people who read things you tend to find interesting. Then you could just hit play and listen to all the stuff that you normally don't have time to read: listen to webreads while driving, or working out, etc.
I kinda shelved the idea so feel free to work on it. I have lots of designs and a significant portion of the product built. I sort of got to a point where I didn't really feel confident in a way to monetize and really didn't see enough interest (no apps doing this -- other than apple news+ which was a bit of validation but also not sure.)
I've sort of moved on to a new idea with a more clear business model that also has more application. I think that's sort of the journey of being an entrepreneur. I hope you find something you settle your heart on. Still battle with this myself.
Interresting idea, thank you. But this is not the direction I want to take, I want to keep the reading part present. I'm glad you found a new idea that should work better.
Thank you for sharing 😄
I'll add that the big not-sures for me where:
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Hmm, it's interresting !
But doing this, you have to manually add each article you like to your playlist and eventually articles will become obsoletes. This is why I prefered to create a playlist with feeds. Instead of having articles, you get the sources of where people read their stuff, updated frequently !
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I really need to think about this. It's true that you can follow people with their "best" reads, but once they decide to stop feeding with their articles, you have no more content to provide users 🤔
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