Unbundle BuiltWith and get 1000+ product ideas

One of the companies we featured in our ideas database is BuiltWith.

BuiltWith is making over a million in revenue per month. Here's a screenshot from our ideas database so you get an idea:

BuiltWith is a bunch of micro-products bundled together

Let me explain.

A week ago, I wrote a post on social media scheduling tools.

The key building blocks of a social media scheduling tool are the social media platform it supports. X, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, you name it.

The maximum number of those "key building blocks" that a social media scheduling tool can support is probably no more than 10.

Because there are no more than 10 big social media platforms.

So if you were to create distinct products from a product like Buffer, for example, you'd probably create:

• A separate product for scheduling on Instagram
• A separate product for scheduling on X
• A separate product for scheduling on [insert a popular social media platform here]

Let's apply the same logic to BuiltWith.

Unlike social media tools, a tool like BuiltWith has thousands of different key building blocks.

BuiltWith is a SaaS that allows you to analyze the technologies that "powers" a website.

The keyword here is "technologies". Each "technology" is a key building block, in the same way as each "social media platform" is a key building block for our previous examples.

According to BuiltWith, they track over 2500 eCommerce technologies across over 26 million eCommerce websites. And that's just for e-commerce.

For a social media scheduling tool, you could create a maximum of maybe 10 individual products. But if you take a product like BuiltWith, you could create over 2500 potential products. Let me explain.

Each technology = different product idea with a different audience

Let's take Shopify as an example.

Why would someone care to look for websites that are powered by Shopify?

• They might be a marketing agency targeting e-commerce site owners
• They might want to advertise a Shopify app
• They might want to advertise a theme made for Shopify
  ...etc.

Now, let's take websites that run on Google Analytics.

Why would someone be interested in targeting/contacting people with websites that run Google Analytics?

• They might be provide custom marketing analytics
• They might be have an alternative analytics software
• They might have a software that connects Google Analytics to other popular software

My point is that the audience for each technology is vastly different from the audience for other technologies.

Each technology represents a distinct market segment with its own unique needs and opportunities.

People who are looking for Shopify store owners are (often) quite different from the people who are looking for Google Analytics site owners.

So here's the micro-product idea for you:

Take a technology and create a cheaper micro-product around it

BuiltWith is quite expensive. These are their monthly plans:

You could take one (or two, or three technologies) and try to sell them an (updated) list of sites that use that technology to a specific target audience. Here are a few ideas:

• Sites using Wordpress - sell this list to Wordpress plugin developers, theme creators, web agencies

• Sites using Stripe - sell this to payment solution providers, fintech startups.

• Sites using Zendesk - sell this to customer service SaaS providers, customer experience consultants, agencies that provide customer support staff, etc.

AI to the rescue: To get an idea of whom you could sell to, you could use a prompt and input it into ChatGPT/Claude: "I'm trying to sell a list of websites that run on [technology]. What is the potential target audience interested in such a list?"

So the key idea here is to "unbundle" BuiltWith; make each technology list a separate product.

Taking a step further

You could also create a small SaaS where people pay a small amount each month (or a year) and provide them with an updated list (the list could be updated monthly/weekly/daily).

For example, Wordpress plugin developers can go to that website and get a constantly-refreshed list of new websites that just started running on Wordpress

How to get technology lists for cheaper

BuiltWith charges close to $300/mo for getting access to 2 technologies.

A (far) more developer-friendly site is PublicWWW. They're a "source code search engine" where you can input a "signature" (each technology uses a different HTML/headers/CSS so you can recognize when a site is using it) and get a list of websites that use that signature. Here are a few examples.

The important thing is, unlike BuiltWith, they don't charge you by the number of technologies you export.

Another (albeit more expensive) alternative to PublicWWW is NerdyData. They also don't charge by the # of technologies you export.

Both of these companies go one level lower to what BuiltWith is doing:

• BuiltWith already figured out the signatures and sells you a ready-made list of sites that use those signatures (i.e. technologies)

• These "source code" search engines allow you to figure out the signatures on your own (which is not hard at all) and come up with your own lists.

If you want to go one level lower, you also have open source libraries like WhatWeb.

WhatWeb is essentially a self-hosted version of BuiltWith. They support over 1500 "plugins" (i.e. signatures) that identify the technologies different sites are using.

Monitor trendy technologies (and be the first to sell a list of sites using them)

There's always a new technology on the block. BuiltWith has a trends page where you could identify some of these technologies.

The advantage of targeting a new technology: New technology means a new supply of websites using that technology. That means new demand for people who are looking to target sites using that technology (either competitors of that technology, products/services in an adjacent niche, etc.)

Hope you found this post to be useful!