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18 Comments

Side project idea validation

Hi, I have this plan to create 2-3 side projects till the end of January. The first thing I wanted to build is an intelligent SaaS search - something I miss every time I search for a tool on the internet.

Scenario:

  1. You want to create a survey, landing page or looking for a CDN - any tool needed when launching the app.
  2. Usually, you type "survey tools" or "free survey tool" in Google.
  3. Basing on the results you check for every app pricing and feature list.
  • you check just few values on the feature lists: such as number of possible responses, access to results in free account etc.
  1. You also check articles such as "10 best tools for survey" that probably is listed somewhere hight in Google.
  2. You compare pricings and choose the best option.

Solution:
I would like to create a simple search that would ask for your need "survey app" / "analytics tool" and based on that it suggests 3-4 more popular filters basing on the chosen scenario. For "Analytics tools" that would be:

  • show me only free
  • show me apps with trial period
  • number of page views
  • privacy-focused

When clicked SEARCH it shows you all apps in the database supporting more than X page views on a free account and meeting other checked criteria.

I would like to just treat it as a community project, nothing really serious, no monetization.

Tell me your suggestions: how do you find the idea, what app's you've recently looked for etc.

  1. 1

    Oh yes, I need this! Not a simple search, but the ability to filter by specific criteria, especially price - free or less than $20 per month, for example.
    I would also need a way to determine if I can trust given provider - how long it's been on the market, or maybe just user rating and reviews, although only if you could protect it from fake reviews.

    1. 1

      Actually for rating and reviews there already exist g2.com, but they lack advanced filtering.

      1. 1

        There also is other webpage similar called Trustpilot.
        I would create something super simple, definitely without ratings and reviews. Actually without any user login at all. But good to know this website - I can always consider linking them.
        But just out of curiosty I checked one provider that for sure should have tons of negative comments: GoDaddy. But it has suspiciously well reviews..

        1. 1

          I've just discovered that capterra.com has a pricing filter and a features filter with options depending on selected category. For example, check out the survey software: https://www.capterra.com/survey-software Is this closer to what you want to build?

          1. 1

            This is cool! I actually start thinking that I may not need to create my own tool. They miss a bit some UI things I would like to have - crucial numbers and features seen directly in the app box. But I must say this is more-less what I was looking for!

        2. 1

          Trustpilot is like for everything while G2 is focused on software and business services.

          Sure, just the ability to filter by pricing and usage limits would be valuable.

          You're right that the high rating for GoDaddy looks suspicious.

  2. 1

    I like the idea. I also use ProductHunt and https://alternativeto.net/ sometimes to search for SaaS products.

    I used custom google search to build a search tool for finding talents https://talentsearch.cc/ — custom google search is easy to start and powerful if you are looking for something you can use to quickly prototype it.

  3. 1

    Also if you have any good proposition for name I would be glad to brainstorm

  4. 1

    How about just a few posts in a standard blog system with a table comparison? (Possibly interactive)..

    1. 1

      Good idea for mvp. But still I think that would not differs much from bunch of PH, BetaList copies - basically you need to click a lot to find anything. For instance you have to do some manual search to find proper blog post which depicts different types of apps.
      Also comparison of different apps and features and pricing would be problematic as you need to have try dimensions to cover that.

      1. 2

        IMHO you'r over optimising, a thing I tend to do as well.
        This might save me a couple of minutes on something I do like a couple of times a year.
        And the alternative cost is to remember your site and have trust in your site that is superior to my trust in random google sites by a margin... and count on it being up to date...
        I'm not saying it's not useful, I just think the value created is very very low.
        And for example you'd probably have very low SEO value with a system like that.
        If you need to market it and make some profit.. I personally wouldn't take that bet.

        1. 1

          Thanks for honest reply. Yep I think you're right I'm over-optimizing.

          Why I don't want to do it as a blog? Because that would resemble hundreds of other lists of apps out there + would be the same time-consuming for me. I submitted my previous projects to several app directories and most of them are useless because of lack of structure.
          On the other hand when launching my other side-project few days ago I constantly kept looking for new stuff in this way:

          1. I have some budget for a tool - either 0 or few $ depending on a tool
          2. have some requirements that I would like to filter: for survey app wanted to support more than 50 responses and be free. For landing page app I wanted it to support custom domain and be free. Etc etc.
            If you have a plain directory / blog it's the same as googling, then going for the pricing page. I would like to just have a smart search for that.

          When it comes to profit - definitely not the aim. I would treat it completely as a side project to develop skills in a new tech-stack.

          1. 1

            Honestly the process that's good enough for most people is get a list of a few options, look at the offical pages, choose one. That isn't a big pain cause it happens to infrequent for a person and the breath and width of things is just huge. And also the recency of thing is important..

            I'd encourage you to find something more valuable to work on, I have a feeling you'r not the one to lack ideas.

            1. 1

              Well, your arguments are reasonable but I just see on my example that it looks different. When working with a team on my other tool Filly we often have this kind of task in Trello such as "Create gifs for article etc." If this brand new kind of task (eg. first gif ever) then first card in Trello is "Find a tool for gif that is.." For the past 3 months, we have like a dozen of tasks like this. And none of those tasks have ended in 2 minutes. Majority of them were like 1-hour research because:

              1. apps have misleading pricing or are hiding some crucial things
              2. most of apps from 1 google page have very restricted free plans - depending on the app type.

              For instance, we searched for approx 15 different survey tools and still got stuck to google forms because other had some limitations. Actually survey tool was a reason I wanted to build. I wasted like 2 hours to get back to google forms. First I spent more than 1 hour researching options and then signed up to one service, created survey and at the very end of the process it told me that in the free version I have insights in only 20 responses. Damn! I went to other options from the list? And guess what? It was the same.

              Perhaps this is an extreme example but I would do it mostly for people like serial indie founders here. Without bigger expectations. Just for fun.

              I'm really glad to hear the voice of reason but in this case, I'm gonna build that anyway because it's super small app. Ideal to build in 2-3 evenings and filling it with data we'll be anyway by-product of my daily job.

              1. 1

                How much is your time worth?

                1. 1

                  According to me a lot, that's why I focusing on things I can utilize in wy work or the other way around.

                  1. That's why I don't want to start another "Tutorial Trello board"
                  2. Do things in 100% mvp manner because it would lack this learning process I am aiming - doing blog has nothing to do with writing code with new tech stack..
                  3. Do things from random ideas generator that I don't feel
                  1. 1

                    Well how much $/hour?
                    It's a good question to answer for yourself I believe.

                    After you have a fixed $ amount in your head...

                    Would looking at a tool that would move you forward, but costs 20$/month, is it worth the time to go and look for another one that would be free? say you want to look at the year and then it's actually 140$..
                    Is it worth your time to look at the next tool?
                    How much time should you spend looking?...

                    Or would looking at that 1st and 2nd one and then a 3rd you get you to think, maybe someone pre-compared them for me, on the exact things I care about, let me look for that...

                    anyway, don't be Don Quixote, I'm just the wind, if you know your path, go for it.

                    If you'r still reading..
                    do you really want me to play devils advocate? just

                    1. 1

                      I wouldn't recalculate everything on $/hour.
                      If you want to drag time/value discussion more I can easily explain way.

                      Making side project like this opens gives other opportunities that would be not possible with other more-business-niche specific:
                      With app like this, you can easily test PH launch because this is a kind of app that may have be appreciated there.

                      Just from curiosity could you give me two examples of ideas you would personally recommend for a side project ? Even from your own bucket listen - I'm not gonna code them anyway.

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