Having trouble finding good ideas
Hi there!
I've worked as a developer/software engineer for a good few years now, and I'm sort of hitting the point where I'd like to have a side project. Problem is, I come up with tons of ideas just to find that someone else is already doing it, which kind of kills any motivation I have.
What are some good, simple ways to validate ideas and keep yourself motivated?
Anyone care to share their experience?
I agree with the other poster. If your idea is so novel that there are no other competitors, people are not going to know what to make of it, and it will be harder to market. Why not target a problem that you can build a better solution for?
Here are a few well known examples:
Slack - a chat app that focuses on enterprise productivity. 1000s of chat apps prior to and after Slack, they have become the most well known one for 'companies'.
Zoom - are you kidding me, another video conference tool? That space is sooo crowded.. Even worse, you need to download something to use it? They have become well known because they have very high video quality.
Google - When they were looking for initial investors they were told: 'There is no future in search!'. Why would you need another search engine when Jeeves has it all figured out? They made a better search engine and the rest is history.
Space X - NASA has it covered!
If the majority of people decided not to act because 'someone else is already doing it', we would not have Android, Chrome, Facebook, Gmail, and basically all other apps. These things are iterations of things that came before, 99.98% of all apps fall into this category.
Find a problem that you want to solve, and execute better than the next guy! :)
Very inspirational!
That's a really nice way of looking at it! Maybe I'll run with my latest idea and see how it pans out :)
you’re spending too much time looking at/for competition and not enough time just executing.
there will ALWAYS be someone in your market... unless you are a “category creator”... but it doesn’t sound like that’s where your target is right now.
just execute. build it. you’ll learn a fuckton in the process. you might even make some money too!
Thanks for the advice. Maybe that's what I need to do - just build something, run with it and see what happens.
I guess at the end of the day if it doesn't work out, I can just treat it as a learning experience and move on to the next thing.
trust me. after years (decades) of building shit that never really worked... it was the process of shipping something into a real customer's hands that was the ultimate prize.
keep shipping. this is how you win. don't get stuck in your head!
i'm here to help. lmk what i can do for you!
Are you an introvert? Do you go out? Meet people? look at their problem? you know in India hotels still use pen and paper to write orders, where some use a distinct CRM. someone saw the problem first hand, they acknowledged it first hand. If something is already taken by a few its worth working if there is an edge. if you build a thing that everyone is making, you shld be the PAIN-IN-THE-NECK so the apt focus is in you & chances are you are acquired.
Hope this helps.
Why would it kill your motivation?
You had an idea, and the idea is already being put into practice, meaning the idea had merit and value. If you can frequently come up with great ideas that have already been done, you are on the right track!
The next step in your journey is to assess some of the ideas that are already being implemented and then see how you can improve and add value to the original idea.