How to come up with an idea if I have no problems that are relevant to any market?
When asked about how to come up with an idea many say that find a problem of your own and try to solve it.
I don't really find this useful as I really don't have any problem to solve that the app market could benefit from. I am a simple engineer who lives in a small town and maintains a mainstream life.
When I check other's ideas and let's say try to do something better than those, I again fail because most of the cases I really don't know about the business domain.
What to do in this case? Should I just give up on being a creator as I am not visionary enough? If you are in a same boat, how do you find ideas to work on?
Few ideas:
Idea #1 - build something you want and need
Idea#2 - Next big thing will look like a toy - What are people playing with?
Idea #3 - Just copy someone else.
Idea #4 - Read reviews to find holes.
Idea #5 - look at best selling items. How can you make it better, different?
Idea #6 - Find best selling or popular tasks and create a product or service to do that. Idea #7 - Find best selling items on Etsy, how could you mass produce, make it better, make it easier to order
Idea #8 - find what people are already doing and productize it.
Idea #9 - help people make more money
Idea #10 - look at what rich people have, and try to give that to everyone
Idea #11 - ask your friends
Idea #12 - look at what you do in your free time.
Idea #13 - look at lists of ideas others have made
Idea #14 - Look at what was tried in the past
Idea #15 - Look at VC and company request for startups and products
Idea #16 - build something people are searching for
Idea #17 - take something hard and remove steps
I post an idea every day on this Twitter account - https://twitter.com/this_startup
You got this!
Coming out with something completely new is overrated. It is more consistent to look at existing offerings in niches with an established community and decide if you can make a significantly better product by listening to said community. Good luck!
Takes time but hang in there and you will find one. I have been writing at Micro SaaS Ideas to 20K subs and hope that will be helpful.
I had this problem as well, and that the 3 times I came up with ideas by solving problems I had myself, they failed. One thing I've learnt from my experiences is that the market / audience you target is REALLY important, as important as the idea itself in my opinion.
I 100% believe that being part of a community of people who are trying to do (or have successfully) done the thing you want to do is super important as well.
Now, I focus on pursuing ideas that I see that others have been successful with, but offering them to a different niche (joining a vibrant community is a great way to discover new niches).
This was why I built the Business Idea Bank, to act as a source of idea inspiration for things I (and anyone else) can create. Its a database of creators, the products they are building, and the income they are generating.
I also joined a community back in July called Small Bets and it's honestly been the best thing I've done for myself on my journey to becoming a creator - just seeing the different things people are creating gave me the confidence I needed to just start something.
If you are not scratching your own itch, why not scratch another person's itch?
Look around you and into your CV: any specific deep knowledge about a specific job or specific industry that you can tap into?
As an example, I am friends with a few people in medical services. For them IT is as much a secret as practicing medicine is too me. And they have tons of problems I could solve, if I wanted.
You limit yourself by thinking you have to build your ideas yourself.
Instead, if you found a problem, focus on finding others with that same problem (Potential customers) and sell your (future) solution to them. With enough demand, you can get the right people to build the product.
Now your idea can be anything, not just an app.
Want an actionable idea to work on right now? My AI tool can help! It finds problems customers complained about in product reviews. Here's an example
I could suggest trying to focus on your customers problems rather then your own/ You don't have customers? Exactly. Approach it this way.
Pick a niche or industry you have contacts in and preferably some experience or knowledge of.
Identify contacts in that industry you have a good relationship with.
Discuss their business with them, find out THEIR biggest problems. After you do this a couple times look for a trending problem.
When you pick a problem to solve, go back to those same people tell them you are considering solving that problem and ask if they will be your customer if you do.
Keep going until you get a yes.
Now you have a problem to solve and a customer to pay for it when you do. Might even have an investor if you get that far down the road.
If you don't have contacts then focus on getting those contacts. They may be direct or they may be referred or.. sometimes the first call has to be a cold one.
Good luck :)
My startup idea is to build a social voice chat app. Would you be interested in this? See my cofounder post on IndieHackers to know more details about it - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/looking-for-an-ios-developer-for-a-voice-chat-app-352a4d494f