Who is stuck on deciding on what to build?
Are you stuck on deciding what to build?
Maybe as a community we can help each other out 💪
Tell us:
- who you are
- what stage you are at
- why you feel stuck
- and any vision you may have
And hopefully other indie hackers can come jump in with some ideas to help you out.
Hi Rosie,
TBH, I do feel like being stuck on having too many ideas
I am open for feedback, and I think writing about it is already a great help!
I happened to me too. I think it’s best to grow your product from the most basic MVP. Don’t think about all the cool stuff that you’ll add later, or if you do, at least add it to a todo list for a future release.
Luckily you have plenty of ideas. Pick the one that you’ll love to bring to life.
Easier said than done, but I agree: it’s the type of mindset that I probably need! Thanks
PREACH! I've lost track of how many projects I've started(some of which I managed to push really far). I've recruited freelancers, asked people for help BUT ultimately these days whatever you end up building ends up being a bite bigger than any human being can chew alone. Last year I started what appeared to be a small project and potentially very profitable(still would be as a matter of fact):
And that's before taking into account the legal side of things (accounting taxation and all that, even if I personally have those sorted). In reality you end up building a ton of things but at one point you inevitably take a step back to look at the bigger picture and you realize how much you have ahead of you, in addition dozens of small nitty-gritty edges you need to polish in it's current state. For me this is the point where everything starts going south. Looking at my git repos, there are at least 5 very big projects that are abandoned at this exact stage.
I completely agree. At the beginning it's very easy to have the motivation to start working on a project but, like in running, you get to a wall where everything seems overwhelming. Getting users/customers as quickly as possible can help cheer you on, but it's important to remember it's just one small step at a time.
Thanks, this is very relatable to me! Perhaps its an idea to group similar minded people and work on small ideas in groups and keep each other focussed on the right goals. If you ever feel like discussing some possibilities, feel free to reach out on Twitter or LinkedIn. Anyways, never give up!
Might not be a bad idea to try and find some more people to team up I suppose. My linkedin is buried god knows where but let's try something else: https://join.slack.com/t/axegon/shared_invite/zt-m9r5b2id-NmAXTaBkkcX_~q9IQduEIg
Same for me.. I've managed to create a mass of Dropbox Paper docs to get everything down. I find that helps.
Also - there's nothing wrong with doing a bit on each one at a time until one of them grabs you.
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m working on some of my ideas!
Hi Thomas, lets keep in touch. I am in the same position and have more experience is sales & marketing. I have sent you a connection request on linkedin.
Same here! I have ideas all the item. Good ideas actually worth pursuing, on the other hand... Usually if I have a new idea and can't immediately disqualify it, I'll go ahead and start researching it. See if the idea has already been done (if so, how it's been done, how much competition etc), what kind of domain names are available, all that jazz.
Usually it only takes an hour or two to find a reason why I either can't or just don't want to pursue the idea. At least in my case, most new ideas don't pass this test and that keeps my list of ideas that I actually want to pursue down to an almost manageable level.
Hi there!
• We are loopit(https://loopit.dev/), and I am Louis😃
• We are at our early stage, we want to solve the problem for planning travel trip or come up travel idea is difficult, we just launched our second landing page
• We want people to feel the experience of someone directly tell you where to go, but it seems no one wants to take a try.
• We envision a future where you can enjoy travel much easier, where you don't need to worry about planning anymore, and just focus on the travel experience. We believe that everyone should be able to enjoy trips, effortlessly.
I'm a 71 y/o business owner who has been starting, building and running my own businesses for the last 40 years. Over the years I written several books about what I've learned about startup, marketing, and planning to share with others in an effort to help them avoid the mistakes and shorten the trial and error learning process all of us who start our own businesses go through. I have also been writing answers to business-related question on the Quora platform since 2014 and have over 2.5K answers on my profile.
I also started a Facebook group about 6 moths ago and now have 470 members. I post some of my Quora answers and articles from other publications several times each week.
My challenge is I get NO response nor any interest for my publications which range from $27. - $15. I have offered individual live video workshops with the workbooks for these same low prices. I get NO feedback and no purchase. Is there no interest in leaning this subject? Does everybody believe they know how to start their own business and need no help from someone who has learned how to make my own living? Is anybody willing to provide me with some perspective on this situation.
I think that there is so much information about this subject out on the internet that it is very difficult to get though. It is not necessary that people don't want to learn about your strategies and experiences. Rather, they are deciding between hundreds of different content proposals.
Hi Rosie,
What @ThomasVanBroekhoven said below is true. This what most of software developers feel most of the time. It happens to me too. I am full of of ideas but at the same time I feel overwhelmed by the amount of task and effort it's gonna take.
Strange to see that a lot of developers struggle with the same dilemmas. See my comment on @axegon, if you feel like teaming up or chatting about it, let me know!
Hi Rosie,
This is going to be a great thread!
My names Gav - I'm a 30 year old self taught dev. Started during the pandemic because I wanted more from life and have fallen in love with building projects
I have a lot of ideas (unfortunately). I've created a spreadsheet to organize my ideas based on difficulty, potential financial upside, and core requirements.
Similar to others, I fear that I'll pick the "wrong" idea. Due to being a relatively new dev, I'm not the quickest at rolling out projects. My brain skews towards wanting the "quick and easy" victories as opposed to the longer grind potentially higher upside projects.
My long term vision is to be in a position where I can run an innovation hub for young entrepreneurs. I want to help guide them and push them in the right direction. I love working through ideas with people.
Thank you in advance for all the help!
I am very stuck but I think there is an opportunity here. It would be great to have any opinions/ insights. I can give more details.
This is the basic situation:
I own a great domain name in Brazil, and I am not sure what to do with it. It would be equivalent to nfl.com in America. I have a master’s degree in Computer Science but I have not done much in tech terms in the last 20 years. Any opinions?
I think a great starting point is to pick something you can start over a weekend. The hardest part of any project is the first step, however, once you have some momentum it's a lot easier. For example, let's say you had the nfl.com domain and you wanted to do something around the sport. I'd start with a simple blog. Start talking about the topic and building some interest. From there, if you have a tech base idea, start building it in between talking about the sport. That way when you eventually launch your product you'll already have some traffic.
I am a 24 year old women. i have been stuck in the idea phase since a long time now. I have a few ideas but they all feel like they r somehow present in the world. I also dont know if i am too passionate about some ideas. Where do i start?? My vision is to do something which i love and make it atleast a 100k $ per yr business.
My general approach to deciding between ideas is to put them in a spreadsheet and rank them. When you're forced to rank things you'll see fairly quickly which ones you value over the others.
Another tip: write out exactly what you want out of your life. For example: $100k a year, a nice house, ability to work remotely and so on. Whatever it is that you value the most.
After you've created that list of must haves, look at your ideas and figure out which ones have the best chance of bringing you that life. If they don't bring you that life, then those projects get put off to the side. If they can bring you that life, then explore them further and see what it will take to make them happen.
Monetization is one of those big scary concepts that I get stuck with all the time as well. I am constantly asking myself well how do I monetize this? If I can't monetize it then what am I doing?
I challenge you to try and shift your thinking to this instead. Facebook (extreme example I know) didn't have a clear monetization strategy when they started off. Their goal was to grow and build influence. Eventually the money came.
With your idea about filtering misinformation, if you can amass an audience the monetization will come. This can be as simple as running ads. Big picture is if you have influence in a space, the money will follow.
Really interesting to see so many people in the same "too many ideas" boat! At one point I had about 40 entries in my "Ideas" notebook!
Well I WAS in this boat but I realised that I was stuck, or worse, keep getting distracted, because I didn't have a clear goal in mind. Or not knowing which idea to work on, because I lacked the experience to objectively evaluate them.
So what did I do? Just start. Like analysis paralysis, or a writer staring at a blank page, the best way to get unstuck is to just pick one, or just scribble some nonsense. Then the learning begins and all that learning will sharpen your sense of "what to build next".
Every time I work on a product, I learn something, and if it doesn't work out, I take the learnings on to my next product. And each subsequent projects doest better than the previous one.
I now have a checklist of questions I can interrogate my ideas with when I need to pick one to work on. Not all from my own learnings, but also from finally sitting down to research what other successful founders pick ideas!
So basically I think it's really important to just pick one and start, so you can start learning sooner rather than later. Treat each project as a learning experience and don't stress about trying to making it a blockbuster hit!
Hope that helps!
Farez
Really great feedback thank you for sharing!
Hi Rosie & everyone,
Thanks for the post! I'm working on a concept for bringing remote teams closer.
The goal is to build a tool which provides some of the nice things we miss about offices. The tool is slated to offer a few features that together will help people to feel like their colleagues are closer together. Now I'm unsure how to proceed as I'd like to validate the idea before moving ahead too far, so I'm looking at getting design done. Anyone who wants to give advice, chat, or even help, is very welcome! Just let me know!
Hello,
My original goal for my sideproject can best be described as a web based version of Access that is focused on the average office worker. The target user would be someone ( or a group of someones, it is team based) who need to track data that does not really fit into their existing systems. They are probably using Excel for this.
So I created an app that allows anyone, with minimal training and setup, to create a cutstom form using a drag and drop builder. They can then build custom reports and create actions and workflows based on the data submitted with these forms. For the actions, an example would be: When the form is submitted and one of the fields matches this criteria, send an email to this contact group with the contents of the submission as a csv. That is only an example, you can get pretty complex with the actions and filters.
Everything I described above is functional, other than a little bit of cleanup here and there. I am struggling to determine what this should end up as. Is it closer to a Retool that is geared for less technical people? Or will it be more successful living in the project management phase( think kanbans, charts, etc similar to startinfinity.com or Asan).
Thansk for any insight.
Jeff - I've always found that the best way to validate an idea is to go directly to the people you believe will be your primary customer. You need to find out if they share your belief that your idea solves a problem they want solved and that they are willing to pay to have solved.
I am -> I've built this: webdab.com
Now , I don't know what new features to create on top of it.
Very nice and comprehensive!
Hello, I’m Sebastián and I’m stuck.
I built 2 Mac and 1 iOS applications. They drive very few sales. So I’m considering whether to move to SaaS app or stay on the desktop/mobile path.
I feel stuck because I love desktop apps, but I also think that B2B web app would be a better and more profitable future, even if I really don’t like web development much. I just don’t want to spend the next 5 years improving my apps if they’ll only make a little more than now.
What would you recommend? Should I switch to the web and sell to business?
I've seen success and failures in both paths. I would suggest focusing in one product and make it awesome, so awesome your users love it.
Thank you :)
Hi Rosie,
I feel like I am stuck.
Not stuck now, but i was stuck for quite some time. Ultimately i just decided to start with a project for something i daily used on my job (database client). I think you should just start with something, your guts will tell you after a few weeks if it is worth pursuing or not.
Personally, i really enjoy working on my side project, because i use it a lot as a user. It motivates me to keep improving it (I'm launching soon). Trying to force myself to come up with ideas to make them commercially successful really made me unhappy.
cool. What's the app?
It helps with content creation.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago