I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exist but are highly unique in each case, there may be a reason it's solved in a one-off way by Excel or scripts rather than a scalable product. The use of Excel isn't inherently ripe for disruption. There are plenty of problems to be solved that just can't be solved profitably. It would be no better than solving a problem that someone has but is unwilling to pay for.
There was (still is, though the website is now dead) a really cool website/app that a fmr Air Force soldier made called AFI SWiM[0] that extracted 'Shall, Will and Must' references from Air Force publications which blew up in popularity among the target demo. The dev recently(ish) wrote a blog post[1] how it surprised him to see the app[2] had gotten around ~20k downloads, though I am unsure if the app was always priced at $1.99 (which would be just under $40k).
I like the idea of developing a problem solver for a niche market, though finding and monetizing it definitely is pretty tough.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220601160702/https://swim.afie...
[1] https://willswire.com/blog/chat-afi/
[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107
the github repo: https://github.com/willswire/afi-swim
This guy found an underserved market opportunity, built something, got some success marketing it, and made a whopping total of $40k.
Meanwhile the FAANG guys are making that every two months, without all the risk.
Still risky, but the expected value is comparable to a stint at a salaried job IMO, once you find a decent market opportunity. Not to mention the qualitative value of self-employment, and that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs.
We can play this game all day, but the fact is somebody put a ton of work into a project and made about what they could have made in a month at a FAANG.
Pretty crappy trade off.
Not really. FAANG people have to show up to get that salary. It's not apples to apples to compare this to salary because the app was built once then continued to make money without additional work.
Salary requires constant effort and work. I will take working 60 - 80 hours for a week to make $40k over working 320 hours to make the same.
> that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs
You aren’t seriously comparing the risk of self-employment to the risk of being layed off by one of the most stable companies of the world during a downturn after a 15 year bullrun, are you?
They say ideas are worth nothing, but not to me. If you really have some good ideas (see definition above), I would be interested in buying them at a reasonable price.
Pretty niche but IIRC he is doing well for himself.
I don't know if this is actually a market worth pursuing, but I do know that I paid some company $500 to fill in a form for me and help figure out the process. They probably spent an hour or two on my case.
With the increase of dual citizens, digital nomads, etc. this seems like a growing market to me.
I am not a professional, so seek and pay for professional advice, if that is what you need. I've been doing my own taxes as an American living abroad for ~a decade. If anyone is in a similar situation and has questions, feel free to pm me. Because financial/tax advice from strangers with no professional credentials on the Internet is always a good idea. :p
In basically all instances:
1. These stories get a ton of upvotes because they're actually quite rare.
2. The total income to the founder is still considerably (like way considerably) less that a senior dev at a FAANG.
And the problems were so important that somebody, anybody, stepped up to the plate with a digital solution as soon as it was barely possible.
Sometimes you have to admire that effort to a greater degree than a more technically advanced alternative.
I'm sure some of these are ripe for transition to a truly more effective approach in every way but often there is no fooling them trying to provide anything less.
And disruption itself can be the enemy in some things like this.
I’m working on one such problem in the healthcare space, as an outsider. In early stages, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere.
Which just proves the immense value of Excel and the relatively bad value proposition of custom-made software.
> The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them.
1. Yes, which is why it’s increasingly hard to start a business as a pure software engineer. To put it harshly, most software engineers don’t know enough about the real world out there to solve its problems. Many choose to create software for other software engineers for this reason, and that market is fierce.
2. Another issue is that only those specific businesses might have those problems. Even if you know about them, solving them might not be a good business case. Solving them must be lucrative enough to allow for a small target audience, or the problem needs to be common enough to allow for economies of scale, which brings us to back to point 1.
There is limitless opportunity outside of the webtech/adtech bullshit bubble. Go create a hardware startup, it's never been easier. It's still harder than adtech bullshit was 10 years ago, but the turnkey manufacturing industry is faaaar better than all the "hardware is hard" weekly blogspam would lead you to believe.
I haven't read this elsewhere so it may be non-validated but you shouldn't imagine customers of a product as entirely captured nor cohesive. Inside of the customer pool are going to be people who are displeased with the product for sometimes disparate reasons but not enough to find a different product because this one is "good enough".
To make this example very simple, a product may produce orange widgets. It's good enough for most people but one group wishes it made a more yellow widget while another group wishes it made a more red widget. The orange widget isn't the ideal case, it's a compromise to serve the most people.
If someone came in and made a product that produces very yellow widgets and focuses on the yellow widget market, you could serve those people very well despite being having a smaller pool.
In other words, your product doesn't need to go toe-to-toe with the orange widget product that has a revenue of $1B, you only need to pick off the yellow widget people to get a revenue of, lets say, $10M and you are eating very well.
Profitable software-based ideas are increasingly difficult to find. Thousands of people are exploring every niche and trying to start startups in them, which is great, but competition is fierce and unexplored niches are shrinking.
And of course, it's still not straightforward even if you find a relatively unexplored niche. Most people I see who have attempted startups had extensive family support or personal wealth from exits as an employee of a company that had an IPO.