The best of the entrepreneur Reddit this week.
- Who has an interesting small business that makes profit each month? What's your story?
- Do not offer discounts to your customers, offer them awards, prizes instead, they will appreciate it more
- A side app changed my life
- What are some things you can rent out to make money in 2022?
- AI just replaced my business
- Is Freemium really doable for an early stage startup?
- Who has an interesting small business that makes profit each month? What's your story?
- Do not offer discounts to your customers, offer them awards, prizes instead, they will appreciate it more
- A side app changed my life
- What are some things you can rent out to make money in 2022?
- AI just replaced my business
- Is Freemium really doable for an early stage startup?
👍16❤2
Common reasons why startups fail by the version of failory.com:
- Marketing mistakes were by far the most common, and they were generally speaking the most deadly with 69% of all mentioned marketing mistakes being fatal. In fact, the fatal marketing mistakes were more numerous than all other fatal mistakes combined (56% vs 44%), as can be seen in the pie chart below. By far the most common reason for shutdown was lack of product-market-fit which constituted more than half of the marketing mistakes, but more on that below.
- Team problems – friction, lack of experience, lack of motivation, etc., were the second most common. They were some of the least-deadly percentage-wise (only 39% of all mentioned team problems being fatal), but because they are abundant they were still the second most common reason for shutdown.
- Financial problems and mistakes were the third most common. That said, bearing in mind more than 50% of the projects didn’t have any budget to begin with and more than 75% of the projects were self-funded, it’s a surprise that only 16% of the projects point at financial problems as the major reason for failure.
- Tech problems were extremely rare, which is surprising considering almost all projects in the data have a technical side to them. The most common remark was that too much time and effort was spent on tech that proved to be useless in the long run. The most common answer to “a thing you would do differently next time” by far was “I’d talk to customers and validate my assumptions before writing a single line of code”. That said, a big % of tech problems were fatal: e.g. relying on a 3rd party API that changes can ruin a business overnight.
- Operational problems were quite rare and not that deadly, but it’s important to mention that most interviewees ran software projects, so operational problems (e.g. suppliers, distribution) are not as common as in brick-and-mortar and physical product projects by definition.
- Legal problems were rarest, mentioned only four times, but two of those four proved to be lethal. For most early-stage startups the legal side is a non-factor. Yet, there are still industries where you can’t afford to ignore it (food, finance, etc.).
- Marketing mistakes were by far the most common, and they were generally speaking the most deadly with 69% of all mentioned marketing mistakes being fatal. In fact, the fatal marketing mistakes were more numerous than all other fatal mistakes combined (56% vs 44%), as can be seen in the pie chart below. By far the most common reason for shutdown was lack of product-market-fit which constituted more than half of the marketing mistakes, but more on that below.
- Team problems – friction, lack of experience, lack of motivation, etc., were the second most common. They were some of the least-deadly percentage-wise (only 39% of all mentioned team problems being fatal), but because they are abundant they were still the second most common reason for shutdown.
- Financial problems and mistakes were the third most common. That said, bearing in mind more than 50% of the projects didn’t have any budget to begin with and more than 75% of the projects were self-funded, it’s a surprise that only 16% of the projects point at financial problems as the major reason for failure.
- Tech problems were extremely rare, which is surprising considering almost all projects in the data have a technical side to them. The most common remark was that too much time and effort was spent on tech that proved to be useless in the long run. The most common answer to “a thing you would do differently next time” by far was “I’d talk to customers and validate my assumptions before writing a single line of code”. That said, a big % of tech problems were fatal: e.g. relying on a 3rd party API that changes can ruin a business overnight.
- Operational problems were quite rare and not that deadly, but it’s important to mention that most interviewees ran software projects, so operational problems (e.g. suppliers, distribution) are not as common as in brick-and-mortar and physical product projects by definition.
- Legal problems were rarest, mentioned only four times, but two of those four proved to be lethal. For most early-stage startups the legal side is a non-factor. Yet, there are still industries where you can’t afford to ignore it (food, finance, etc.).
👍31❤7
What is a minimal viable product(MVP)?
So, you have this idea that sparked a lot of interest in you. It may or may not do the same for the other people you're gonna show your project. That's why people do MVPs. To test something quickly: build and get feedback to understand whether to proceed further. You may love the idea but no one else does so.
*Why it's minimal?* Imagine the idea you love and want to build. How many days you should spend creating a working prototype? Let's calculate: 4 features, plus 3 integrations, and a possibility to pay in all countries, and one more feature to show cool analytics, and awesome UI, and..., and... Hmm, it'd take you 9 months. Fine! You've built it in 13 months(some unexpected adjustments here and there). You released it to an alpha test and it occurred no one is interested.
You may say it's due to a lack of sufficient market research. You're right, let's do the research then. You did it and figured out that your target customers are private teachers in small schools. You talked to many of them and asked about the problem you try to solve. You did all the right things. Then, it's time to build something, right? So you've decided that in this case, it'll be fine to spend 13 months building a solution. You built it, showed it to the target potential customers and it turned out your solution doesn't address the problem they have. They would solve it differently! Fine, you collected the feedback and rectified your MVP in 2 months. Then, you repeated the release-get feedback cycle a few times spending a year overall to get a few people who want to use your solution. So, it's 2+ years just to build an MVP that people can use?
The main point in the MVP concept is to iterate fast. You build something fast, show it to your potential users, collect feedback on what's wrong, adjust the solution. Do this multiple times and you get a few users. Then more until a product-market fit where your problem is scalability.
So, you have this idea that sparked a lot of interest in you. It may or may not do the same for the other people you're gonna show your project. That's why people do MVPs. To test something quickly: build and get feedback to understand whether to proceed further. You may love the idea but no one else does so.
*Why it's minimal?* Imagine the idea you love and want to build. How many days you should spend creating a working prototype? Let's calculate: 4 features, plus 3 integrations, and a possibility to pay in all countries, and one more feature to show cool analytics, and awesome UI, and..., and... Hmm, it'd take you 9 months. Fine! You've built it in 13 months(some unexpected adjustments here and there). You released it to an alpha test and it occurred no one is interested.
You may say it's due to a lack of sufficient market research. You're right, let's do the research then. You did it and figured out that your target customers are private teachers in small schools. You talked to many of them and asked about the problem you try to solve. You did all the right things. Then, it's time to build something, right? So you've decided that in this case, it'll be fine to spend 13 months building a solution. You built it, showed it to the target potential customers and it turned out your solution doesn't address the problem they have. They would solve it differently! Fine, you collected the feedback and rectified your MVP in 2 months. Then, you repeated the release-get feedback cycle a few times spending a year overall to get a few people who want to use your solution. So, it's 2+ years just to build an MVP that people can use?
The main point in the MVP concept is to iterate fast. You build something fast, show it to your potential users, collect feedback on what's wrong, adjust the solution. Do this multiple times and you get a few users. Then more until a product-market fit where your problem is scalability.
👍28❤11
Here's an article devoted to the story of the Liqvid startup.
Liqvid offers a solution that will suit both large and small businesses — a cheap subscription-based software that doesn’t require preliminary training and allows businesses use digital signage the way they want - quickly, remotely and efficiently.
The history of the startup began in 2018, when Max brought a product prototype to Alex — they started to sell it immediately focusing just on corporate clients and digital media networks. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they changed this focus to small businesses
Liqvid’s first international clients forced the company to adapt its platform to new markets. In the fall of 2021, Liqvid switched to free distribution of the platform — a Freemium model with a paid extended — Premium version. Also, they launched the second product — a TV screen subscription for businesses.
Now Liqvid has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Spain.
Liqvid offers a solution that will suit both large and small businesses — a cheap subscription-based software that doesn’t require preliminary training and allows businesses use digital signage the way they want - quickly, remotely and efficiently.
The history of the startup began in 2018, when Max brought a product prototype to Alex — they started to sell it immediately focusing just on corporate clients and digital media networks. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they changed this focus to small businesses
Liqvid’s first international clients forced the company to adapt its platform to new markets. In the fall of 2021, Liqvid switched to free distribution of the platform — a Freemium model with a paid extended — Premium version. Also, they launched the second product — a TV screen subscription for businesses.
Now Liqvid has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Spain.
👍16
Highlights on web pages
A browser extension that allows you to highlight a text on a web page, with a possibility to add notes. Then the extension saves the highlights in one place(it may even be Notion), so you can access them. The notes are easily searchable, categorized by a website, and custom tags.
A related idea: if you make your notes public, then other users who use the extension can see what you've highlighted on any website. Like, it is on Medium.
A browser extension that allows you to highlight a text on a web page, with a possibility to add notes. Then the extension saves the highlights in one place(it may even be Notion), so you can access them. The notes are easily searchable, categorized by a website, and custom tags.
A related idea: if you make your notes public, then other users who use the extension can see what you've highlighted on any website. Like, it is on Medium.
👍36❤5
Idea: an assistant that saves your attention
A personal assistant that can filter out spammy or not critical to you messages in various messengers and places to save your focus and time. For example, you may get two messages a week in Telegram from people who sell some stuff you're not interested in. Thus, you spend some time reading such messages, responding, or blocking. So why not streamline the process?
This personal assistant won't be a real person, merely a bot that can do the job. Also, we may introduce this concept not only to messages in messengers but news and other information.
A personal assistant that can filter out spammy or not critical to you messages in various messengers and places to save your focus and time. For example, you may get two messages a week in Telegram from people who sell some stuff you're not interested in. Thus, you spend some time reading such messages, responding, or blocking. So why not streamline the process?
This personal assistant won't be a real person, merely a bot that can do the job. Also, we may introduce this concept not only to messages in messengers but news and other information.
👍24❤1
Idea: Mobile game templates
A platform that provides templates to make a mobile game. By template, I mean an automated flow with pre-defined steps, visual effects, mechanics, but you can change them with your text, graphics, etc.
For instance, there are templates for text-based games where you can create a plot and a player takes particular actions that lead to a specific plotline. Like, an interactive book.
This platform may begin with one template and add other later, if necessary. Even creating games with one template would save developers a lot of time.
A platform that provides templates to make a mobile game. By template, I mean an automated flow with pre-defined steps, visual effects, mechanics, but you can change them with your text, graphics, etc.
For instance, there are templates for text-based games where you can create a plot and a player takes particular actions that lead to a specific plotline. Like, an interactive book.
This platform may begin with one template and add other later, if necessary. Even creating games with one template would save developers a lot of time.
👍22❤1
💡Idea: Kickstarter for cinema
Allows people to vote for movies/cartoons plots, ideas, sketches and donate for it, therefore other people or author can produce a movie. Also, people can subscribe to your movie's page, create logos, trailers, prototypes of characters.
So, you can create a page with your movie's idea, write a plot and wait for other people' feedback. Maybe, you will receive some money or there are will be people who are interested in a idea and going to sponsor/produce a full film.
Monetization: ads, donate fee.
Allows people to vote for movies/cartoons plots, ideas, sketches and donate for it, therefore other people or author can produce a movie. Also, people can subscribe to your movie's page, create logos, trailers, prototypes of characters.
So, you can create a page with your movie's idea, write a plot and wait for other people' feedback. Maybe, you will receive some money or there are will be people who are interested in a idea and going to sponsor/produce a full film.
Monetization: ads, donate fee.
👍31❤1
Idea: "start here" page for the Internet
i.e. a rabbit hole for other rabbit holes
If you read blogs, some of them have "Start here" page for the first-time visitors (an example from David Perell). On it, one can find useful links to make use of the blog to the maximum extent - the most popular articles, the most used terms, links to other metapages and metalists.
Why it's useful? You don't need to read through all the blog to extract the best. You spend 30 minutes instead of a few weeks, for example.
Let's move the idea to the whole Internet perspective. It looks like the first website directories tried to do that. They listed the popular(and not) websites on their directory setting a category / tag to them. In this way, if you know the catalog website, you can find the other websites that are useful to you.
Then, search engines improved their algorithms, we've got more and more websites and information. It's difficult and time-consuming to filter it. You still may go to the website catalogs but they for sure won't have all the things you might be interested in. The same applies for search engines - they're useful if you know what you're looking for.
The Internet has a discovery problem: you can search from all the websites well but you can't discover well. There are websites that are news or articles aggregators, like Reddit - there you can find some new information valuable to you, be it memes, cats videos or the articles from an author that suggests the new Universe theory of all.
And people like such discovery / aggregators websites, they like to know there is always something more - funny, useful, new to them. For this purpose, we could create a meta-list of tags / categories of websites. The idea is to provide a beginner or not person a one place where one could start their Internet journey. You put your interests and the system suggests you some new websites. So, it may work as a recommendation system.
But also, it may work as a [meta] catalog - there are tons of links to other links that lead to other websites or threads. For example, I find some article about programming microcontrollers, and I see other links to similar articles and websites - a personal blog of a person who created some microcontroller, the other blog about a person who create a programming language for the microcontroller, a website about niche microcontrollers, a community in <choose your platform> of people who discuss microcontrollers, and so on.
Monetization?
1. You could make it as a newsletter and charge for extra materials, or make a paid option to subscribe - but then you should serve some nichy niche to send really relevant links. You may create 500 such newsletters for various topics. But maybe it's simpler to make it as a website with a different monetization model.
2. If it's a website, you can make people pay for extra functionality.
3. Ads on the website. If the website is free(people won't like to pay for links and discoverability features - think of Google, do you pay for it?), then you can put ads there. Make the website popular and you can live on those ads.
i.e. a rabbit hole for other rabbit holes
If you read blogs, some of them have "Start here" page for the first-time visitors (an example from David Perell). On it, one can find useful links to make use of the blog to the maximum extent - the most popular articles, the most used terms, links to other metapages and metalists.
Why it's useful? You don't need to read through all the blog to extract the best. You spend 30 minutes instead of a few weeks, for example.
Let's move the idea to the whole Internet perspective. It looks like the first website directories tried to do that. They listed the popular(and not) websites on their directory setting a category / tag to them. In this way, if you know the catalog website, you can find the other websites that are useful to you.
Then, search engines improved their algorithms, we've got more and more websites and information. It's difficult and time-consuming to filter it. You still may go to the website catalogs but they for sure won't have all the things you might be interested in. The same applies for search engines - they're useful if you know what you're looking for.
The Internet has a discovery problem: you can search from all the websites well but you can't discover well. There are websites that are news or articles aggregators, like Reddit - there you can find some new information valuable to you, be it memes, cats videos or the articles from an author that suggests the new Universe theory of all.
And people like such discovery / aggregators websites, they like to know there is always something more - funny, useful, new to them. For this purpose, we could create a meta-list of tags / categories of websites. The idea is to provide a beginner or not person a one place where one could start their Internet journey. You put your interests and the system suggests you some new websites. So, it may work as a recommendation system.
But also, it may work as a [meta] catalog - there are tons of links to other links that lead to other websites or threads. For example, I find some article about programming microcontrollers, and I see other links to similar articles and websites - a personal blog of a person who created some microcontroller, the other blog about a person who create a programming language for the microcontroller, a website about niche microcontrollers, a community in <choose your platform> of people who discuss microcontrollers, and so on.
Monetization?
1. You could make it as a newsletter and charge for extra materials, or make a paid option to subscribe - but then you should serve some nichy niche to send really relevant links. You may create 500 such newsletters for various topics. But maybe it's simpler to make it as a website with a different monetization model.
2. If it's a website, you can make people pay for extra functionality.
3. Ads on the website. If the website is free(people won't like to pay for links and discoverability features - think of Google, do you pay for it?), then you can put ads there. Make the website popular and you can live on those ads.
👍22❤1
Idea: sign-up fuck off
A browser extension that pre-fills all the routine data you usually type in to quickly get access to some website. Imagine you look for information, and many websites ask you to sign up to "get more". What if the extension can fill in the information automatically, speeding up this process?
Also, this extension may block all the modals and notifications like "accept cookies?", "allow notifications for our news?", "sign up for our newsletter", etc.
A browser extension that pre-fills all the routine data you usually type in to quickly get access to some website. Imagine you look for information, and many websites ask you to sign up to "get more". What if the extension can fill in the information automatically, speeding up this process?
Also, this extension may block all the modals and notifications like "accept cookies?", "allow notifications for our news?", "sign up for our newsletter", etc.
👍34
💡Idea: Blog articles distribution
It's difficult to get views on a blog that doesn't rank well on search engines. You post an interesting article and no one is reading it. This distribution problem hit authors hard. They decide to stop writing.
How can we improve this? What if we have a platform where an author adds his blog, and the platform shows the articles to relevant people? One may state it's Medium, but no. First of all, you don't own the content there. Plus, Medium doesn't show the relevant content to people. For example, I wrote multiple posts there and got 0 views.
The platform will keep track of new articles in an author's blog by RSS. When a new material releases, the platform shows it to people. If people like it, the platform shows it to more readers.
It's difficult to get views on a blog that doesn't rank well on search engines. You post an interesting article and no one is reading it. This distribution problem hit authors hard. They decide to stop writing.
How can we improve this? What if we have a platform where an author adds his blog, and the platform shows the articles to relevant people? One may state it's Medium, but no. First of all, you don't own the content there. Plus, Medium doesn't show the relevant content to people. For example, I wrote multiple posts there and got 0 views.
The platform will keep track of new articles in an author's blog by RSS. When a new material releases, the platform shows it to people. If people like it, the platform shows it to more readers.
👍26❤2
Link: Ask HN: How to validate a startup idea whilst employed?
Some bits from comments I like:
1. "You can validate the idea using SEO tools, check if the competitors have traffic and do some detective work to see if they are viable companies. Check the SEO space, and see how many people are running ads on the main search terms, how hard is it to rank for the the main keywords. Check if forums exists, and discount coupons for similar products in marketplaces, check for similar products on product hunt and all the other product websites like Appsumo, Capterra, etc." (link)
2. "The book The Mom Test also points out well that lots of people will say your idea is good even when they have no intention of buying." (link)
3. "A lot of times you can validate whether a market exists without writing any code." (link)
4. "does anyone want this?"
Some bits from comments I like:
1. "You can validate the idea using SEO tools, check if the competitors have traffic and do some detective work to see if they are viable companies. Check the SEO space, and see how many people are running ads on the main search terms, how hard is it to rank for the the main keywords. Check if forums exists, and discount coupons for similar products in marketplaces, check for similar products on product hunt and all the other product websites like Appsumo, Capterra, etc." (link)
2. "The book The Mom Test also points out well that lots of people will say your idea is good even when they have no intention of buying." (link)
3. "A lot of times you can validate whether a market exists without writing any code." (link)
4. "does anyone want this?"
👍22❤1
Idea: Video editing tool
Not just an idea, it's a trend. People seek simple video editing software. Of course, there are a lot of them. But you can create an app aimed at niche users. For example, tiktokers. Or, courses tutors, students in Asia, etc. The video tools we have currently are for the wide public and oftentimes they're full of unnecessary things, UI is complex and rendering/preview is slow. Is there a space for improvement? For sure.
You may dive deeper and create something like an app that edits short videos by adding a music track, a few visual effects, it allows uploading directly to TikTok. Aimed at tiktokers from Germany.
Not just an idea, it's a trend. People seek simple video editing software. Of course, there are a lot of them. But you can create an app aimed at niche users. For example, tiktokers. Or, courses tutors, students in Asia, etc. The video tools we have currently are for the wide public and oftentimes they're full of unnecessary things, UI is complex and rendering/preview is slow. Is there a space for improvement? For sure.
You may dive deeper and create something like an app that edits short videos by adding a music track, a few visual effects, it allows uploading directly to TikTok. Aimed at tiktokers from Germany.
👍19
Idea: Community for tech travelers
"During college, I took a year off to work on an e-commerce startup with a friend. We made a number of classic first-time entrepreneur mistakes, and after a year we decided to shut down the company. I went back to school, finished my degree, and started interviewing for jobs at different startups.
The whole experience left me feeling pretty burnt out on tech. While working on the startup, I'd lost touch with the intrinsic joy of building things for their own sake, and I'd been focusing on work to the point where I was neglecting my personal health.
I felt like getting back into the startup world would just continue that trend, and after spending some time reflecting I realized that what I really wanted to do was travel for an extended period and work on just-for-fun side projects.
So that's what I did. I picked up some freelance web development work and I emailed a bunch of hotels in Central America to see if they'd give me room and board in exchange for web and marketing help. I heard back from a hotel in Costa Rica, and I started working with them to promote yoga retreats during the country's low season.
However, right after we started the project, someone stole their yoga instructor's laptop, and she decided to leave Costa Rica for her native England. All of a sudden, there was no more work for me to do, and it looked like I was going to have to cut my stay there short.
I still wanted to hang out in Costa Rica, so I pitched the hotel owner on bringing a group of developers to his hotel for a "programming retreat." Occupancy rates are low in hotels during the off-season, and the idea was that we could fill his hotel for a few months when it would otherwise be empty. We threw together a landing page and started taking sign-ups. Around this time, my co-founder Alexey came on board.
It turned out there was quite a bit of interest in what we were doing — 30 people came on our first trip, and Hacker Paradise was born! People had such a great time that we decided to keep doing it, and to turn it into a sustainable business. We also decided to open up the community to designers, entrepreneurs, and other non-technical creative types."
"During college, I took a year off to work on an e-commerce startup with a friend. We made a number of classic first-time entrepreneur mistakes, and after a year we decided to shut down the company. I went back to school, finished my degree, and started interviewing for jobs at different startups.
The whole experience left me feeling pretty burnt out on tech. While working on the startup, I'd lost touch with the intrinsic joy of building things for their own sake, and I'd been focusing on work to the point where I was neglecting my personal health.
I felt like getting back into the startup world would just continue that trend, and after spending some time reflecting I realized that what I really wanted to do was travel for an extended period and work on just-for-fun side projects.
So that's what I did. I picked up some freelance web development work and I emailed a bunch of hotels in Central America to see if they'd give me room and board in exchange for web and marketing help. I heard back from a hotel in Costa Rica, and I started working with them to promote yoga retreats during the country's low season.
However, right after we started the project, someone stole their yoga instructor's laptop, and she decided to leave Costa Rica for her native England. All of a sudden, there was no more work for me to do, and it looked like I was going to have to cut my stay there short.
I still wanted to hang out in Costa Rica, so I pitched the hotel owner on bringing a group of developers to his hotel for a "programming retreat." Occupancy rates are low in hotels during the off-season, and the idea was that we could fill his hotel for a few months when it would otherwise be empty. We threw together a landing page and started taking sign-ups. Around this time, my co-founder Alexey came on board.
It turned out there was quite a bit of interest in what we were doing — 30 people came on our first trip, and Hacker Paradise was born! People had such a great time that we decided to keep doing it, and to turn it into a sustainable business. We also decided to open up the community to designers, entrepreneurs, and other non-technical creative types."
👍36❤9👎1
Idea: Game Server Hosting
"I've always liked "___ hosting" as a business idea. I've often noticed that behind most popular open-source projects there's a multi-million-dollar business whose plan is simply to buy or rent some servers, host that open-source software, and offer a web-based control panel for the customer. Think Git, Apache, Sendmail, MySQL, ElasticSearch, and similar services. It's an easy idea to come up with, an easy product to build, and customers are easy to find, since you can just advertise wherever people gather to discuss open-source projects.
Sometimes the potential profit is huge. Companies whose business model is 'download Apache for free, set it up, and run it on commodity hardware' are now known as web hosting companies, and they're a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Game server hosting is much smaller. The total addressable market is maybe $50 million per year, but that niche size presents an opportunity. Since VCs will never fund a company with so little unicorn potential, and many potential founders would never bother starting one, the whole field has very few competitors — and many of them are less than competent.
My skills and experience are perfect for building a hosting company. I've been making web apps since middle school. My only non-self-employed job was the year I spent at Dreamhost right out of college (2009-2010). Because of that, and my own decade-plus of tinkering, I know a great deal about Linux servers and networks. I know how to get racks full of servers at below-market rates, how to manage those servers, and how to create a web app that the customer will use to control their game — a perfect combination!
My plan was always to expand to many different games, but starting with a single game made sense. It would let me test out the business model, iron out all the businessy stuff, and get some practice with promotion before I had to worry about answering support tickets for issues with dozens of games.
I chose to start with Ark: Survival Evolved because of how much growth potential I saw. Prior to launching, I researched the growth trends of a variety of games through SteamSpy and Google Trends, and Ark was the clear winner."
"I've always liked "___ hosting" as a business idea. I've often noticed that behind most popular open-source projects there's a multi-million-dollar business whose plan is simply to buy or rent some servers, host that open-source software, and offer a web-based control panel for the customer. Think Git, Apache, Sendmail, MySQL, ElasticSearch, and similar services. It's an easy idea to come up with, an easy product to build, and customers are easy to find, since you can just advertise wherever people gather to discuss open-source projects.
Sometimes the potential profit is huge. Companies whose business model is 'download Apache for free, set it up, and run it on commodity hardware' are now known as web hosting companies, and they're a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Game server hosting is much smaller. The total addressable market is maybe $50 million per year, but that niche size presents an opportunity. Since VCs will never fund a company with so little unicorn potential, and many potential founders would never bother starting one, the whole field has very few competitors — and many of them are less than competent.
My skills and experience are perfect for building a hosting company. I've been making web apps since middle school. My only non-self-employed job was the year I spent at Dreamhost right out of college (2009-2010). Because of that, and my own decade-plus of tinkering, I know a great deal about Linux servers and networks. I know how to get racks full of servers at below-market rates, how to manage those servers, and how to create a web app that the customer will use to control their game — a perfect combination!
My plan was always to expand to many different games, but starting with a single game made sense. It would let me test out the business model, iron out all the businessy stuff, and get some practice with promotion before I had to worry about answering support tickets for issues with dozens of games.
I chose to start with Ark: Survival Evolved because of how much growth potential I saw. Prior to launching, I researched the growth trends of a variety of games through SteamSpy and Google Trends, and Ark was the clear winner."
👍20❤4
idea: Professional eBay Listing Creator
"Prior to starting CrazyLister, Victor (my co-founder and our CEO) and I were eBay sellers ourselves. We started selling on eBay without any prior experience, and within 3 years we reached $4.5M in sales. The vast majority of our success as eBay sellers comes from having very high conversion rates thanks to the emphasis we put on professional design.
After winning a couple of eBay awards for the highest conversion rates, we started getting a lot of requests from companies who wanted us to do for them what we did for ourselves. We saw this as an opportunity to expand our business and started consulting for these companies.
However, after working with a few dozen customers we realized that this was not the type of business we wanted to grow into. We didn't want to be another consulting company, because it wasn't scalable in our eyes. What we needed was to provide all the knowledge we'd accumulated during these years to benefit as many sellers as possible without having to consult them one-on-one.
We knew very well that one of the biggest pains for eBay sellers is the listing design creation process which, to put it mildly, isn't a very positive experience. Moreover, eBay didn't provide a good solution — if you needed a professional design for your listings, you had to pay a lot of money to graphic designers unless you were extremely computer savvy and knew both HTML and design principles.
We poured all our knowledge about eBay sales conversion optimization into one super easy-to-use solution, and that's how CrazyLister was born. We hired a developer, and the first lines of code were written in 2013."
"Prior to starting CrazyLister, Victor (my co-founder and our CEO) and I were eBay sellers ourselves. We started selling on eBay without any prior experience, and within 3 years we reached $4.5M in sales. The vast majority of our success as eBay sellers comes from having very high conversion rates thanks to the emphasis we put on professional design.
After winning a couple of eBay awards for the highest conversion rates, we started getting a lot of requests from companies who wanted us to do for them what we did for ourselves. We saw this as an opportunity to expand our business and started consulting for these companies.
However, after working with a few dozen customers we realized that this was not the type of business we wanted to grow into. We didn't want to be another consulting company, because it wasn't scalable in our eyes. What we needed was to provide all the knowledge we'd accumulated during these years to benefit as many sellers as possible without having to consult them one-on-one.
We knew very well that one of the biggest pains for eBay sellers is the listing design creation process which, to put it mildly, isn't a very positive experience. Moreover, eBay didn't provide a good solution — if you needed a professional design for your listings, you had to pay a lot of money to graphic designers unless you were extremely computer savvy and knew both HTML and design principles.
We poured all our knowledge about eBay sales conversion optimization into one super easy-to-use solution, and that's how CrazyLister was born. We hired a developer, and the first lines of code were written in 2013."
👍15
Idea: Cloud Storage for Your App Logs
"s mobile app engineers we faced the problem of not being able to reproduce specific user problems on our own devices, be it due to a weird screen size, a strange OS version, or a specific setting. So we developed a really barebones version of this internal tool for remotely accessing logs, patched it into a special build, and began sending it to users that had a problem.
We saw that this was a recurring problem (which validated the idea itself) and thought it would be great to have the tool built in by default for all of our apps. However, sending so many logs, especially for apps with thousands or even millions of users, creates two problems:
We'd have to transfer and store millions of logs per day, which is neither cheap nor simple in terms of scalability.
If this service would always be running on the user's device, sending every log all the time, it would use a ton of data and could make their phone bills quite expensive.
To solve this we put a lot of effort into making this thing scale while at the same time reducing our traffic and data storage bills. (We're still rebuilding and optimizing things today.) And for our application-side SDKs, we put a lot of engineering thought into implementing a battery-friendly process for storing logs locally and only transferring them when requested."
"s mobile app engineers we faced the problem of not being able to reproduce specific user problems on our own devices, be it due to a weird screen size, a strange OS version, or a specific setting. So we developed a really barebones version of this internal tool for remotely accessing logs, patched it into a special build, and began sending it to users that had a problem.
We saw that this was a recurring problem (which validated the idea itself) and thought it would be great to have the tool built in by default for all of our apps. However, sending so many logs, especially for apps with thousands or even millions of users, creates two problems:
We'd have to transfer and store millions of logs per day, which is neither cheap nor simple in terms of scalability.
If this service would always be running on the user's device, sending every log all the time, it would use a ton of data and could make their phone bills quite expensive.
To solve this we put a lot of effort into making this thing scale while at the same time reducing our traffic and data storage bills. (We're still rebuilding and optimizing things today.) And for our application-side SDKs, we put a lot of engineering thought into implementing a battery-friendly process for storing logs locally and only transferring them when requested."
👍20❤3
Idea: Interviewing Platform for Programmers
"CoderPad started as a side project while I was still working a day job at Everlane (the first and only job I have enjoyed). I was interviewing a bunch of candidates and kept getting into situations where I wanted to see how a candidate would figure something out.
One asked me if a certain Ruby object supported the .map operation, and I wanted to say, "Just try it!" The problem was, we were using some old-school shared text editor like Collabedit which didn't support advanced features like that.
I thought this was ridiculous, so I tried to buy a product that would do what I wanted: provide a real-time execution environment alongside a synchronized text editor. To my surprise, I couldn't find any. I thought that it couldn't be too hard to build, so I hacked a Ruby-only prototype together in a weekend.
Once I started using it to interview candidates at Everlane, it seemed pretty obvious to me that I could sell this to other people — it was providing an obvious balm to a stressful experience. I also happened to be casually interviewing at other companies for fun, so I rebuilt the prototype and started seeing if my interviewers liked it, too. They often did, which I took as a sign that it was the right time for the idea."
"CoderPad started as a side project while I was still working a day job at Everlane (the first and only job I have enjoyed). I was interviewing a bunch of candidates and kept getting into situations where I wanted to see how a candidate would figure something out.
One asked me if a certain Ruby object supported the .map operation, and I wanted to say, "Just try it!" The problem was, we were using some old-school shared text editor like Collabedit which didn't support advanced features like that.
I thought this was ridiculous, so I tried to buy a product that would do what I wanted: provide a real-time execution environment alongside a synchronized text editor. To my surprise, I couldn't find any. I thought that it couldn't be too hard to build, so I hacked a Ruby-only prototype together in a weekend.
Once I started using it to interview candidates at Everlane, it seemed pretty obvious to me that I could sell this to other people — it was providing an obvious balm to a stressful experience. I also happened to be casually interviewing at other companies for fun, so I rebuilt the prototype and started seeing if my interviewers liked it, too. They often did, which I took as a sign that it was the right time for the idea."
👍18❤1
Idea: Exceptionally Useful Weather App
"My friend Trevor and I were complaining about weather apps a few years ago. There were seemingly endless weather apps in the App Store, but nobody had really nailed a decent UI. Most apps were either too simplistic and gimmicky, or heinously overcomplicated.
We thought we could do better by making something totally obvious: an app that showed only the most important info in one straightforward view.
We also wanted to learn how to make a native app from scratch. (We were web veterans, but entirely new to native app development.) I don't think either of us anticipated that we'd actually finish a shippable product — we just wanted to fiddle around with an idea and have fun for a while."
"My friend Trevor and I were complaining about weather apps a few years ago. There were seemingly endless weather apps in the App Store, but nobody had really nailed a decent UI. Most apps were either too simplistic and gimmicky, or heinously overcomplicated.
We thought we could do better by making something totally obvious: an app that showed only the most important info in one straightforward view.
We also wanted to learn how to make a native app from scratch. (We were web veterans, but entirely new to native app development.) I don't think either of us anticipated that we'd actually finish a shippable product — we just wanted to fiddle around with an idea and have fun for a while."
👍18
Idea: 3D-Printed Personalized Jewelry
"I was raised in Coimbatore, a city located in Southern India with a very entrepreneurial culture. It's also very famous for gold jewelry manufacturing. Given this background, I felt I had a natural advantage and decided to do a startup in this space.
I had little knowledge in this industry at first, so I started off selling plain gold jewelry online under the brand name Krizda, but I soon realized that unless we had a unique value proposition it would be difficult to compete with the local jewelers. In India, there is a jewelry store easily available in a 2 mile radius almost anywhere in the country. If we were to compete here, we had to be different.
At the time we saw a lot of jewelry companies going online, but they had little online marketing experience. Given our lack of sales and high amount of competition, we pivoted into a marketplace helping other jewelers list and market their products on our platform, like Amazon for jewelry. However, this required heavy capital investment, and we did not succeed in raising capital.
One fine day, when Sachin Tendulkar (a very famous cricketer/celebrity in India) retired, there were a lot of gold and silver coins being sold with his face on them. We thought, "Why not do this for our customers and make everyone a celebrity?" That's how we introduced the personalized gold/silver coins."
"I was raised in Coimbatore, a city located in Southern India with a very entrepreneurial culture. It's also very famous for gold jewelry manufacturing. Given this background, I felt I had a natural advantage and decided to do a startup in this space.
I had little knowledge in this industry at first, so I started off selling plain gold jewelry online under the brand name Krizda, but I soon realized that unless we had a unique value proposition it would be difficult to compete with the local jewelers. In India, there is a jewelry store easily available in a 2 mile radius almost anywhere in the country. If we were to compete here, we had to be different.
At the time we saw a lot of jewelry companies going online, but they had little online marketing experience. Given our lack of sales and high amount of competition, we pivoted into a marketplace helping other jewelers list and market their products on our platform, like Amazon for jewelry. However, this required heavy capital investment, and we did not succeed in raising capital.
One fine day, when Sachin Tendulkar (a very famous cricketer/celebrity in India) retired, there were a lot of gold and silver coins being sold with his face on them. We thought, "Why not do this for our customers and make everyone a celebrity?" That's how we introduced the personalized gold/silver coins."
👍23❤1
Idea: Chrome Extension for Gmail
"During my undergrad I read about the extended mind thesis, which encourages us to think of computers as extensions of our biological minds. Since then, I've thought quite a bit about "extended mind design" — I think this is a useful frame for thinking about many techniques and tools commonly tagged as "productivity advice", "lifehacking", or "metaskills".
A key function of your extended mind is to help you allocate your attention effectively. Our daily attention environment is surprisingly hostile by default, because a lot of actors have strong incentives to misdirect our attention. Recognizing this, I began observing how my attention shifts during the day and taking measures to make my attention environment more amenable to what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work".
One morning I was doing some programming and I needed to ask my client a question. I opened Gmail with the intention of emailing the client, but my attention was immediately derailed by some new messages in my inbox. When I remembered my original intention (perhaps 30 minutes later), I realized that Gmail would be much less of an attentional liability for me if only my inbox were hidden by default.
I hacked a Chrome extension to implement this functionality the following day."
"During my undergrad I read about the extended mind thesis, which encourages us to think of computers as extensions of our biological minds. Since then, I've thought quite a bit about "extended mind design" — I think this is a useful frame for thinking about many techniques and tools commonly tagged as "productivity advice", "lifehacking", or "metaskills".
A key function of your extended mind is to help you allocate your attention effectively. Our daily attention environment is surprisingly hostile by default, because a lot of actors have strong incentives to misdirect our attention. Recognizing this, I began observing how my attention shifts during the day and taking measures to make my attention environment more amenable to what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work".
One morning I was doing some programming and I needed to ask my client a question. I opened Gmail with the intention of emailing the client, but my attention was immediately derailed by some new messages in my inbox. When I remembered my original intention (perhaps 30 minutes later), I realized that Gmail would be much less of an attentional liability for me if only my inbox were hidden by default.
I hacked a Chrome extension to implement this functionality the following day."
❤8👍4