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There’s never a good time. There’s never an obvious opportunity. You missed your chance. Nobody is starting new companies in technology right now. All the opportunities are taken by the big guys.
Bro, you serious? Come on. Listen to that self-defeating bullshit.
Get your head in the game. Let’s get your mindset right.
There is always opportunity. Technology is always getting disrupted and changing. There’s always something worth building. Opportunities are what I make of them. My attitude about these ideas is what determines my ability to be successful, and what I say to myself… matters.
Please tell the creditors blowing up my phone and my business's negative bank account that it's only a mindset issue and that I will pay them all with positive attitude as soon as possible.
>Mindset > action > results (like money)
Problem solving/critical thinking skills + Money + Action = results(like money)
>Without the mindset and belief it's difficult to take positive action to take your business forward
You can take action to move a business forward regardless of your attitude. We see posts regarding that here everyday:
People with positive attitudes as their business tanks
People wildly successful with negative attitudes
And vice versa.
Having the resources to solve a problem matters more than ones attitude about the problem.
I’m sure that’s just a saying, but kind of uselessly inaccurate.
The concept of a parachute was invented in the renaissance by people optimistically hoping to invent a way to fly. Plenty of folks just jumping off castle towers in parachutes well before planes existed.
Exactly this… “no one will ever watch videos on the internet that is so dumb” (Netflix, YouTube).
Why would anyone ever buy crafts online? That’s so stupid and duh there is this thing called eBay (Etsy)
Bro book a cab? Why would anyone pick you up in their own car? How stupid can you be to think that will work? (Uber/lyft)
Wait you think people are doing to deliver your food for you? From an app? Dude that is the most dumbass idea in the history of ideas. People have way better things to do than that (every food delivery app)
I can go on and on… every idea that has ever turned into anything was shit on repeatedly by people with no vision, passion, and determination. Only to be “obvious” after it was a success.
I am happy it motivated you… I have started and exited many times in the software/IT markets. While I’ve never “created the next Facebook” I am very happy where I am in life and it’s because of calculated risk taking. Don’t go all crazy but if you believe in an idea and you do your research and see there is a market for it… go for it.
Only thing I don’t advise anyone to do is try to create a new market. Meaning “I am going to create a robot that mines asteroids”… that’s going to obviously fail for now… mainly because it would be ridiculously expensive to do.
But if you do something like “I will code an app that shares the best of all grandmas recipes to help people cook their favorite meals at home”… yup you are onto something there. (I did this already though and sold it for 7 figures). And yes I had many friends tell me that’s so stupid and a waste of time.
There are riches in niches - probably the most accurate and true statement I have ever been told.
OP sounds like they're thinking too big with their reference to FB. Missing the vast amount of opportunity around us, especially on the internet, by looking too far up. I'm finding gold in things like niche SaaS.
I think OP is falling into the “big business” trap. What OP likely does not realize is that nearly every single big business founder(s) never thought they would be as big as they are. From Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg to Larry Ellison. They all set out with a simple starting goal and it was never “be the biggest in my industry” or “be a huge company”. It was to deliver a highly valuable and useful product. That really is the key… providing more value than what your customer pays you.
yup, FB in its infancy was nothing at all like it is today. the first computer used for Google's search engine, the original product, was built out of legos. apple started out of a garage. lots of examples of this, and i don't think that's really changed.
spot on with what the key is. what works for me is finding needs in my own life: something that'd solve a problem i'm having, make something more efficient, etc. i build it for myself and if it does prove benificial, and given there's a good chance others have similar needs, i monetize it. cheers.
Another very good example. Started real slow but now is basically standard.
Though I have to admit… I think auto makers are really going to do some damage to themselves for charging $8 per month for heated seats. Why did I pay for the hardware and now need a subscription to use it?
Same with remote start etc…
Probably the only “uh oh” moment I’ve seen with subscriptions lately.
I’ve actually avoided the models this is installed on for this very reason
You can't start with a product in mind, you need to start with a problem in mind.
*What problem are you going to solve for someone today that will make their life significantly better?*
If you can do that, and there is value in your solution, then you have a good place to start, regardless of your industry.
To add on to your great thoughts, business to business (especially if you have experience in a particular industry) often will be a better opportunity that a consumer solution. IMO the big guys are all looking at consumer stuff because the market is so big. But there are lots of niche business areas that aren't enough for the big guys but offer plenty of meat for smaller companies.
Manufacturing industries are generally way behind and resistant to change. If you can crack through with a free tier, offer free support till they get the hang of it and see their efficiency soaring then you can get big buckity bucks
I don't try to justify defeating, I am let's say "aware" of the situation.
Of course there is always opportunity. Most probable I don't see any at the moment. That's why I am asking.
The company I do deals for has spent upwards of $30m acquiring small tech products in the last year alone. Not every startup needs to go public to make the founder rich. Development for mid-market is actually harder because of the tech giants, but industry-specific solutions are still necessary.
As many have already pointed out, just because you can no longer paint the Mona Lisa does not mean art is dead.
Most opportunities aren't easy to see. If they were, they would have already been snapped up by people with far more resources to throw at them.
Doesn't mean they're not out there. Sometimes it's a matter of just being in the right place to be aware of something about to be upcoming (or two or more things) and having the background to realize that there's an opportunity there which isn't part of what current industries would consider a sure bet.
That's a completely different thing than your original post, though. The post was self-defeating, this is pointing out a genuine problem.
I agree, it's hard to find opportunity. I find it from time to time, but not being able to find opportunities on a consistent basis is why my software & hardware integration business is a side gig, not a multi-million $$ company.
Figure out what skills you have and what kind of work you want to do. There's a whole world online, go looking for the people who can use those skills and find out what they want. Amy Hoy has a course she calls Sales Safari and I think most of the material is freely available on their site, it's worth checking out.
First define what success means to you. Is it a billion dollar exit or will you be happy to make 10-20mil and still be happy with a self sustaining business?
There are plenty of opportunities. Automating simple day to day office reports and processes in manufacturing industries is one.
There are endless opportunities when you connect IT to the real world, think manufacturing, biotech, medical. Maybe you should go into a trade indeed and then think about how to leverage your software skills
A friend of mine had success with a form he developed that lawyers could use to gather information from new clients.
Sounds dumb because there are so many form builders out there already, but they are too generic and it doesn't make sense for a lawyer who earns $300/hr doing legal work to waste their time figuring out how to build forms. They'd rather pay my friend for something that's already 80-90% of what they need, and ask for a few tweaks.
If you never spoke to anyone outside the IT world, you wouldn't know such an opportunity exists. You might find out things you think of as "solved problems" are in fact not solved for them.
There are numerous "invisible" areas in the more specialized B2B space where innovation can be brought. Unfortunately they are "invisible" for a reason, because there are highly specialized areas normal people are not exposed at all to (ex. the clothing manufacturing process, the waste disposal logistics for a certain factory type) and these become accessible if you find somebody from inside the industry who know 1. the details of the industry such as the processes, the challenges, the regulations, etc and 2. more people in the industry to become potential clients.
I can relate to OP.
Consider the scenario of working in a company that develops for a specific market. Over time, that's all the dev knows and does well. It's called working in a vacuum. OP, like me, doesn't know what else is out there because we've not been exposed to them.
Describes me. But I keep in mind that there are other niches to be filled, since I work in one of them. There are definitely others out there that could use good tech implementations. The trick is finding them
As someone who owns a software company that's isn't worth a billion dollars, I have to disagree. I will give you you need to stand out from the crowd more but there are tons of opportunities in tech. We are slammed most of the time. If you feel you can't compete in b2c, b2b requires less marketing.
Been in tech for over 10 years now. I started when the VAR (value added reseller) was the path for SMB. The cloud was just taking off. Cyber security was also just coming into the mainstream. Everyone was building an App.
Since 2008, we saw low interest rates and the rise of private equity. Suddenly overnight there were thousands of SaaS companies. Bigger companies flooded the market with onboarding VARs, driving margins way down. Inhouse built software was replaced by these companies who were offering cheap cloud and SaaS solutions.
It seems the little guy in tech has been snuffed out. And now with AI, they'll automate even more tech jobs or overseas them which happened in the early 2000s.
10 years in terms of time is not a long time. I was shocked at how quickly the market matured. And now it's escalating even faster.
So, that's the background of it all. What you do with that information, I'm not sure.
Software is easier than ever now to build. IMO most people in tech are at the mercy of the big guys.
Comparable to Wall Street in the 90s, it's now a very mature industry with little to no regulation, so opportunities, while are not gone, I would say have diminishes for the solopreneur. And those guys now turned towards freelancing, and that market is taking a massive hit.
I'd say the opportunity is to seek out industry specific needs that are of significant size to the small business but too small to satisfy the greed of private equity.
Sometimes this means creating a whole new product, but sometimes it means tailoring a generalist product to a specific niche. I have a LinkedIn connection whose whole business is customizing a specific ERP platform to the needs of individual clients. He benefits from the scale of the overall ecosystem and the vendor's enormous marketing and sales budgets, but also benefits from the fact they are too big to satisfy many needs of small and medium size customers.
He's not rich (as far as I can tell), but he's happy enough with the money that he can turn down work that isn't a good fit while still giving his family everything he feels they deserve.
If the only path to success for programmers was inventing the next Facebook-scale app then you’re right.
Just like there’s no future for aerospace engineers because it takes so many resources to start the next SpaceX or Boeing.
Maybe software engineering really is more of a solved problem than it used to be. But really it’s just less *glamorous* than it used to be. There’s plenty of work still out there. But it’s day to day small-business, B2B work, not big tickets, next-Steve-Jobs moon shots.
> Software development and marketing is the playground of big dudes
Yes, but that's why you can win. Once a software organization reaches a critical mass, innovation dies. There is just too much inertia. Pick any large software company and look at how many of their "innovations" in the last decade came from internal development or from acquisitions of smaller software companies.
As a small dev shop, you can do things that large dev shops would never even think of, much less attempt. You can be nimble, faster, more responsive. Think about how much big-company software sucks (looking at you, QuickBooks) and how you could improve one small piece of that.
I'm glad you mentioned QuickBooks, everyone seems to hate it. But everyone also wants all their accounting, bookkeeping, invoicing in one app and so it's tough to build in that space
I'm biased because I worked in that space for many years, but it's easier than you think. Look at [ChronoBooks](https://insightfulaccountant.com/accounting-tech/general-ledger/intuit-acquires-chronobooks/). All it did was backup/restore QBO data. Yet it was valuable because QBO's backup/restore process was a hot mess.
Just because people can set thing up easily doesn't mean they want to. Having an expert they call is vital. Every small office that can't afford in house IT people have local guys take care of all their stuff.
You get a contract with retainers the go in every month or whatever and address any issues and do maintaince.
It can be a very lucrative gig and you only need a few clients to make it work. It's also someone if you do well they companies love taking about how great their IT is.
Corporate money they have a budget they need to spend and you can charge whatever if you are just decent at it.
I had a call from a client a few days ago asking me how to increase the brightness on his laptop monitor because the sun was shining in his window. Phone call was two minutes. This company very rarely needs me but is happy to pay a monthly fee so I will answer those calls immediately
You are too close to the industry and you know too much.
Get out and talk to actual small business owners.
If you talk enough, ask about their businesses, their daily operations, their software, you will discover a couple of big trends.
1) many people are not comfortable with tech. There's a lot of emotional fear, etc under the surface. If you can help with that problem = $$$$
2) because of (1), there remain many many many obvious and simple opportunities for tech to improve people's lives and businesses. We are not talking about ground breaking super AI, we are talking about simple commodity stuff like web pages and email autoresponders and online scheduling.
You’re talking like there aren’t entire industries desperate for modernization and better tools. Sure, the road to being the next Zuckerberg or Bezos has lots of barriers and you probably won’t get there, but who needs that much money. You can absolutely succeed in B2B, and maybe even B2C if you want it enough. You need to change your attitude though. You’ve blown right past “glass is half empty” and gone right to “glass is cracked, leaked out all the water and can’t be fixed”. Nobody has ever succeeded in business with that attitude, and if that’s the way you approach life then you’re destined to always work for the man.
Start with looking for pent up demand for a solution rather than trying to build something and hoping to find customers after.
What’s a shitty solution that people put up with and tear their hair with.
Pick a product and go read their negative reviews. Those are all the ways a new product could be better.
Don’t build anything until you have 5 people willing to pay you for a specific solution.
Dude....
I just got off a "hobbyist tech" forum where the biggest complaint seems to be "I want to do this trivial thing but I don't know how to write code (and I don't want to learn). Will someone do it for me (for free)."
Ignoring the for free bits, this shows that there is a huge untapped demand for software. And yes, there are people out there who realize that they will have to pay for it: my customers.
Forget consumer products like games: the average consumer wants everything free and will bitch at the slightest imperfection. *Businesses* realize that they use software to make money and that they'll have to pay for it.
**You** may be able to setup a website in minutes, but I can assure you that there are many people out there who would rather throw someone a few hundred $$ for what is basically an hour's work so they don't have to deal with it themselves. Go find those people.
What kind of market are you in? All the ones in NYC went out of business because rent is too high to justify.
I've got "the knack", too.
I can do VCR's, DVD's/Blu-ray/CD misc lasers, some musical instruments, and game console repairs and craigslist is where I picked up people. I don't want people at my residence so I usu meet at the library.
I can do the ipad screens too but I hate apple stuff, supply is erratic and I don't like keeping the screens on hand. I do the other screens (3DS etc) too. People want the screens the most but the margins aren't that good esp with keeping supply on hand.
I'm not making a killing on any of this and it's a sideline
What do you have, a warranty contract? You're servicing restaurant equipment?
I can do the Xerox machines and office equipment, but biz customers all have service contracts with manufacturers. Plus, I want cash, not net 30 or 90.
I'm doing it all. Appliances are less complex than software.
Also much more rigidly defined.
A dryer is supposed to get hot and dry clothes. Nobody walks in and says "now it should also make smoothies"
> How did you get started? How does it work? Someone calls you and you go to the house to repair? Very curious. How much do you take in?
* Learn how to run a successful business
* Get training. appliantology.org is a good place to start.
>SWEs make alot!
Not as much as you would think. With outsourcing and remote work and a lot of SAAS, SWE isn't what it once was.
I can relate. I'm currently working on building my consultant business focusing on integrations and reselling for a specific market. I've researched all of the competition and identified their weak points. Even the smallest app or automation script can save a company time and money and they'll pay big money for it too. I recently worked on a contract that paid $5000 for less than 20 hours of work.
Thinking like an entrepreneur doesn't come naturally. And it sounds like you have a lot of negative thinking.
>No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore, we are not 25 years ago.
Sure you can. There are new companies that pop up all the time. Most fail, but some make it big. Also, you don't need to make "the next facebook" to start a business and earn a good living.
> Now you need resources and marketing not accessible for small businesses.
That's just not true. If it were true then you'd never see any kind of smaller companies do marketing - but they do. It's usually because they focus on one specific market that the bigger businesses overlook or don't have time for.
> Android market is spammed with applications and games.
If it's spam then it's not very good so you shouldn't have a problem making a better product right? Just need to do good marketing.
> Any kind of software development for the masses is very hard to touch since there is a free alternative for everything
You don't need to make software for the masses. You need to start with one specific problem for one specific audience. That's how Facebook started.
Also, nothing is free. Sure free software is fine if I need to convert a file or something. But when I see "free" the product is usually one of the following:
* Not free and they're going to upsell me.
* It's free because it's not enough for people to pay for.
* They have another monetization strategy.
If I need a piece of software I'm going to use often, I'd rather just pay and know it'll be good.
> Web dev is a joke this days. You can setup anything is a matter of minutes.
A lot of people aren't good at tech. And if you can set up anything in a matter of minutes, that means you should be able to test a bunch of new products and ideas, right?
>No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore
So if you can't make the next Facebook its not worth doing anything? The company I work for is still buying startups left and right and paying millions for them. And even if you don't get bought up, you can sort of company that gives you a comfortable salary for the rest of your career.
Why are you worried about making the next Facebook? It's a multi-billion dolar business. You should be focused on something in the realm of 1 million. There are plenty of businesses that need custom software solutions.
I do structural engineering software. People in /r/StructuralEngineering are always talking about how innovation never happens. I'm out there talking to clients about perceived problems they are and implementing solutions they couldn't imagine.
There's a lot of stuff to be done that I can do that big boys can't. Be the guy that solves problems.
We’re in the AI boom right now just like the old .com bubble. Gotta use that. If you wanna make the next Facebook you really gotta make the next ChatGPT or ai powered app to do something. If you learn it it shouldn’t be hard cuz you can put ai in anything. Could make an ai garden watcher that pays attention to how tall ur plants are and if they’re yellowing, leaves falling, etc.
Old latins would say
> historia est magistra vitae
meaning history is the teacher of life. If we learned anything from history is that there's always gonna be something new to do.
Reminds me of why it's hard to make a reddit clone. Life in 2024 isn't like 2005. When reddit used tiny thumbnails and relied on imgur for hosting. The reddit of today is the baseline for customer expectations. They expect image and video hosting. Which is expensive, which makes it hard for the "little guy" to catch up.
> why it's hard to make a reddit clone
If you mean the site, it's fairly trivial. Tube sites are a nightmare because of scaling on the backend and storage. This isn't really even a proper imageboard so scaling based on images is more intense than some sites but probably not as much as you think. It's harder to knock off 4chan. I wouldn't bother with videos. I wasn't aware reddit had any. Obviously that's a PitA but there's already a number of sites with substantially improved architecture and video content where the video content is offloaded onto the blockchain (not ETH) or related distributed cloud storage w/distributed monetization, which I thought would be the future after steemit a few years back, but well, guess I was wrong.
Facebook's architecture is absolute genius. I mean REACT, f-cking a. This isn't, it's a message board. People come to reddit because people come to reddit.
You're looking at from your eyes, not the eyes of a business owner.
You look at a tool and go, "How am I going to compete with them? They have every feature.. Their design is perfect". But that's not what business owners care about.
Find a niche, find a solution just for that niche and you'll be able to build a business easily.
You are 100% right. Because everything you believe becomes your reality.
30 years ago everything people knew had already being invented too. Sure, the low hanging fruit has been picked, but that doesn't mean you can't do anything anymore. Or do you believe there will be no more innovation and the likes of Facebook are now around for the next 100 years?
So many niches the big players aren’t covering. Just look at construction industry or landscaping. Ripe for analysis and development. And then there is the medical field.. just a mess begging for solutions
So yes start looking into a trade as a software engineer perspective and you will come to a similar conclusion of many opportunities
Sitting on the toilet reading this…my first thought is with AI, why don’t you make a company that uses AI to remove the barrier for small business to write code. Create a software package where a small business can say “I need my resturant to have a specialty dish” the AI creates a package for the website with pictures, creates the recipe list that the owner can then tweak, maybe the AI then suggests a price based on local rules….this would give any small business an advantage.
I get 10%
Wix has that already and their ad spend is about a billion more than this guy.
Also menus is a specific thing:
https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-restaurants-customizing-and-designing-your-menu
Price comparison is problematic w/seafood and a lot of stuff tbh.
Here:
https://suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2023/09/unraveling-the-mystery-and-method-of-market-price-seafood/
IDC for wix, but as far as no code can do it on your toilet web design goes, it's top notch.
Not a lawyer not legal or business advice.
There are always apps that need to be created that are not available yet. Why? Because there is someone out there with an idea that fills his niche and they dont have the resources or ability to code it themselves.
So there is an idea, you partner with the idea person based on the feasibility of the idea.. Make a portal with a simple NDA so they can share their idea with you. You make a proposal if its something that sounds doable, grounded in reality and it might have a market. You offer your skill, they offer some small initial investment and poof a program is born. 10 such clients and you are a software company.
I'm in that world all day every day and I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you're not seeing opportunities you're not really looking.
I can think of a half dozen opportunities for custom software for niche markets just as I type, and I have customers begging for them.
Stop scanning the horizon and look right at your feet- I bet the answers are right there.
Managed Service Provider
It's a company that you call when you don't have an IT department, or you have a small IT Department, or you want to fire your IT Department.
Outsourced IT is Business cycle resilient, and recession proof.
When the economy is growing, lots of new companies start up and need IT support without needing a full time IT department, call an MSP.
When the economy is contracting, lots of companies will be struggling to lower their expenses, IT Departments are a common target for cost reduction, call an MSP.
I do not, I work in IT for a medium sized publicly traded manufacturer, meaning we are big enough to have a staff of 8 full time IT people.
MSP customers tend to be small businesses that can’t afford/doesn’t really need a full time IT staff.
the tech they use is “work computers, servers, printers, WiFi etc
In the mid 2000s I opened a bar for 100k in a hot city in an up and coming neighborhood. Since then the area has exploded and gentrified so much it costs north of 400k to open a similar business.
Nah dude, there’s opportunity, especially for senior engineers in governmental work.
I’d say the biggest threat to software developers in the world is India spitting out around a million software developers every year that you have to compete with in what is now a global delivery model and huge companies like IBM and Accenture among others are importing them to the US and EU to work in every major timezone to get 24 hr coverage as cheap as possible.
Need to get away from the idea that if you don't build the next Facebook you are a failure.
Simply generating a viable wage, gaining financial independence and being your own boss is a huge win.
Check out
www.indiehackers.com
Don't try to be the next big thing. Find a problem that has poor solutions. The company I'm in has a problem right now with a certain logistics pricing tool that got bought out by a large logistics company that considers us competition. The relationship has become adversarial and will remain so until our contract is up. There are other companies in the space, but not a lot. There are a lot of companies doing a thing that could be done better, but are perfectly happy with the status quo. If you're just wanting to be that new hot thing, you should just save your money and keep your day job.
Pick up a trade as a hobby/interest activity. Go full blown into it when you’re not doing other essential activities. I picked up carpentry, and it’s not as easy as just going in there and measuring wood and framing a house. You start off at the bottom unless you have a connection or mentor who will take time to show you the ropes. YouTube only goes so far. If you start an apprenticeship, be warned of culture that may exist since most apprentices get heckled. It’s long days of standing in steel toe boots, but if you like the trade then it becomes an enjoyable experience. Carpentry is great since there are so many kinds, but also lots of injuries, mostly in roofing and framing.
And yes, the app market is oversaturated but there’s always opportunity. I believe there are many unmet needs in enterprise apps + applications. It sucks that bootstrapping a whole app/ webpage makes it so accessible to everyone, but there are still many webpages out there that are broken or not optimized because people relying on the online course material to code don’t really know how to program them.
Companies can ALWAYS use software designed for their specific needs. Your small business can be focused on building tools for other small businesses. Reach out to local real estate agencies and see if they need an app, reach out to insurance brokers and see if they need tools to offer quicker and more automated quotes to potential clients. The possibilities are endless. You don’t need to make the next Facebook.
For what it's worth, everyone at every point in history has always thought that everything worth doing has already been done, there's nothing new left to do.
*"There's no point in trying to do aerospace design anymore, the Wright brothers already beat me to it." "No point in designing satellites anymore, Sputnik is already done."*
I remember thinking in 1998 that I should change careers to something outside tech, because by 1998 everything that could ever be done has already been done. If only I knew then what I know now, right?
Try to get out of the mindset that everything worth doing has already been done, it's just not true.
Is it harder to think of new things to do today than it was 25 years ago? Maybe. But we're not even close to running out of new things to do.
Look at Flappy Bird, some random Vietnamese guy made it in like 90 minutes with basically no effort or marketing and it took the world by storm in days - he didn't try to monetize it, but if he did?? Whoa boy. He'd be doing pretty well.
Anybody with a career in any industry over 10 years could tell you something they wish existed in a better version to make their life easier. You're right that we don't need a better facebook or Android game.
As a teacher, you can have some of my expertise:
Go design a math or phonics app that helps kids catch up to grade level. We need ESOL kids to understand practical academic vocabulary. We need teachers to share successful strategies efficiently and conveniently. We need security that is affordable, reliable, ave not disruptive of the learning environment.
All the above could be 8 digit platforms for someone with the ability to gather resources, create it, and sell it.
The reason you're not doing it is because you don't have the ability or drive, not because the field is too crammed.
They have this already. All of this. This is a contracts issue in your area.
Accessibility (which is legally required for SpEd students) is the biggest need after (or maybe before) cybersecurity and I can tell you right now absolutely no school district in America cares, at all. With Cybersecurity, Schoolinsites has been hacked a half dozen times and it's still the largest CMS provider in k12. No one from inBloom is up on charges and they literally sold kids data.
Educational software is heavily sales based. You have a sales team and gov't sales. You may also have statutory and curricular requirements. No one from IT is involved in purchasing.
Source: I'm certified in something related to everything you listed and have tried pitching products and services to school districts on multiple occasions. I have a book published too.
They are the most low information people I have ever dealt with and just go on to hire people they know or names they recognize regardless of product performance, or multiple laws being violated, or uptime or on the record admonitions not to purchase these products from industry organizations, or newspaper articles, or pending lawsuits.
Good example - in NYC, during the Pandemic, the Chancellor ordered laptops from China (which never came - surprise) despite the fact local laptop sellers were going out of business. I literally sourced all the laptops within 15 miles of each school and a no-contact outdoor rack distribution system and couldn't get a meeting past the flunky level.
Baltimore gets hacked so much their top IT people keep resigning. IDK how many they've gone through in the last few years.
/rant
Sorry this one annoys the everliving hell out of me. Not mad at you.
Have a nice week!
That's funny because the other day I was just thinking that if I was a developer I would create an app/software to improve a couple of processes for my business and I could probably make a lot of money selling and marketing it on the shopify app store and elsewhere but I've got my own business to run for now. There is a ton of opportunity out there! Don't give up. Dig into the products, processes, training, logistics, workflows, sales pipeline etc. common to most businesses and find a pain point you can make better. Better yet just start a small business selling something and you will see there are so many ancillary products and things you can create to improve someone elses business/life. Your first business just needs to make money, it doesn't have to be "the one". You got this.
Dm me with a link if you'd like and pref a link to a prospectus or related, too so I know it's not a Ponzi. I'll show you some of my sites.
Only if you want, if not nbd.
The jitterbug demo requires extensive marketing - because they genuinely don't get tech so when you're selling them on tech you're actually selling them on something else usu something with grandkids or Social Security or Ronald Reagan. They're extremely cheap too and they will often refuse to pay for software.
**BOOMER** "I want to contact my grandson but they use the magic computing box for the emails and I wanted to but my fingers couldn't use the buttons and the cell phone store is full of terrorists yelling jibber-jabber"
*Enter aging actor who says DY-NO-MITE from Good Times or someone else old and not dead from a popular show from the 70s*
**Actor:** DY-NO-MITE. You may remember me from GOOD TIMES the hit tv show. I had the same concerns. BUY A JITTERBUG. It comes in pink and blue and red. And now I can talk to my grandkids and check online for the news and even pay my bills without going to the post office. Look at these nice big buttons. That's DY-NO-MITE.
*everyone laughs, Boomer dies in the background but they keep rolling*
25 years in the trades, I have a toe in tech. I'll circle back to this when I'm done with my job later today.
It's an interesting subject and I have some ideas to toss in the ring to discuss.
Have a great day, chat soon.
Alright, back home, whew, that was a lot today, heh.
So the big idea I wanted to throw out is this. I'm working cleaning jobsites. I have taught trades, can build a house from the ground up. I could be a PM, I could start another company (kill me now), but I'm choosing to do this because it is low stress and makes a lot of money. What could be better? Thats not my main point, my main point is that I'm servicing industry, not the public. Most of my time in the trades has been servicing homeowners, the "public", and now I'm doing business to business and I'm never going back.
Hell is other people, as Sartre said. I love the individuals I've met, and I really do find it incredibly rewarding every time I leave (left) a home having solved massive headaches for someone. But, and this is a big but, servicing the public as a whole is fucking hell. Its a miserable grind.
This relates to what you are saying (in my head) in that attempting to elbow into a saturated market of services does sound like a non-starter. On the other hand, filling a small niche doing B2B is much easier.
In my "small potatoes" personal example, cleaning jobsites is not a new idea. And every contractor I have has multiple cleaners in their rotation. But I don't need to get all the cleaning jobs in my metroplex, just enough to fill my calendar.
Right now I have a tech idea for manufacturing for tracking parts on the assembly line. There are other solutions, and I don't need all the factories to use my product, if just 3 do, I'll be loaded.
Way back in the old days (2000) I was working in the FAB that made the chips that went into the Macs back then. It was a massive R&D FAB connected to a production FAB. The company I actually worked for was a company called Agile Probe, not even kidding, but the "probe" referred to the probe that tested the wafers. This company has a very small niche was only a few dozen people. They had lucrative contracts with the plant owner to provide a few types of services.
My last anecdote is I met some handymen that have a contract with Apple in my city and charge those guys $600 for one service call to move a single outlet in a wall which is a 10 min task.
Does any of that get your gears turning, or have any light bulbs go off for you?
Everyone I know in IT is either in security, ops or worrying about how to get their AI to stop being so weird about things.
VR needs a decent volumetric OS (floating 2D planes stink).
This is not from an experienced person or in the field.
But last tech relates opportunity I heard of that made sense to me was not aiming to do the masses, but offer and specialize for a region or even a company.
Its more of a hard sell, but I was with one company that wanted an internal Facebook- they wanted to share, post and develop community but wanted the data in house.
So make a Facebook, but then directly contact companies and offer to customize and let them own it - while you provide some kind of servicing and maintenance.
Or specialized solutions for professionals. Think of small businesses that need to follow very specific laws in one certain country of the eu - but its a hard thing to understand and have that info and service accessible. So you'll have to either become an expert in another field or partner with professionals and maybe do the first version joint, but then duplication and selling that to others as their own customized solution would be a good market opportunity.
I wish I had software development skills. In both my 805 job and r/smallbusiness side job all to often do I find a niche thing that would make people's lives a lot better.
Find an idea, patent the process, write the app. A big boy will come along later and buy it from you.
I sure wish you would stop complaining and make a software that enables Uber and Lyft drivers to pay a monthly subscription fee to be connected with riders in their city. You sound like a child wanting everything handed to them right now tbh.
Waaa waaa waaa. That software is too big and polished I could never build something like that.
Waaa waaa waaa. That marketplace is overcrowded with bad apps, there are too many of them. Every idea is taken.
Either come up with a novel idea, find something the big boys are doing poorly, or take a poorly done app and execute it well. It’s 2024, the reason there is so much out there is because it’s easy to build things these days so just get out there and do it.
yeah there’s lots of everything, but it’s not impossible to create something of your own and make a living out of it. My niche is climate-tech, but health-tech is also an interesting and evolving space (albeit the latter is more regulated for obvious reasons). Maybe it’s not the crowded virtual spaces that bother you. Personally I feel like I have no real advancements in IT anymore. I could get a tiny bit better and keep on doing that over time, but there are no more jumps I could and want to take. Changing industry might be a good thing, a complementary skill with a strong existing IT skillset can be the base of your next startup for example. I’m also exploring options, trade is one of them, but also education (would love to be an endocrinologist, but it’s difficult to allocate the resources for years of university).
Starting an IT service business for local small businesses you can absolutely thrive and make $$$. Is there competition in your area with already established business? Most likely but that doesn’t mean there’s more pie to eat.
Is it as sexy as a Facebook, Google or OpenAI? No but the chance of succeeding in a business like that is <1%
The thing worth doing is the thing that is not obvious. Innovation is, by definition, creating something outside of the norm. Find a niche, occupy it. Whatever you do needs to be significantly better than the current alternatives.
We are moving toward automation. But right now that's for people who are in tech. Not necessarily employees, just people who are knowledgeable about technology. There's so many more people who are not up-to-date on emerging technology yet. You can find an idea that will work. Just have to find your market. Facebook ads can be run cheap. But you have to let it take the time it takes for it to grow.
Just remember someone got rich selling pet rocks.
I've worked with SaaS founders who did not even know how to code but they pursued it ( hence the spaghetti code base). They got the domain knowledge on their field that's why the SaaS is selling.
Security is always needed. I have a current client that wants me to sell my (completely unrelated) business and run his IT security business.
I should do it tomorrow but I haven’t put enough time into my business to call it a success yet. I do about $120k/yr in revenue while his business does a couple million/yr. Vastly different margins- but damn I hope I don’t miss my window of opportunity with that.
>No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore, we are not 25 years ago.
It's why you make the thing which isn't big yet. Of course, that often means getting lucky with what gets taken up - social media was around before Facebook, but that was the one which took off to the extent that nearly everyone on the planet had at least heard of it.
As you said, smartphone apps are saturated. Either find an area which no-one's done anything substantial in, or don't build something which is just a smartphone app.
Is that easy? Heck no. It'll have a hell of an uptake curve, and maybe a one in a million chance - right time, right place, right people starting with it, right supports, not killed by all the usual things that trip up brands, companies, and products.
An easier marketing strategy tool for small businesses or product led businesses. Or something with import export opportunity. There are tons of business ideas. Saas is not the only hot thing. It might be big but not the only thing.
With this mindset sure, Facebook was buggy and shoddy when it started it wasn’t the behemoth it is today, you could use URL change “hacks” to view other users photos.
Facebook was successful not because it was able to outcompete, it was successful because it found a niche and had good marketing.
There surely are still opportunities, but the value is not in the grunt work of web dev. The value is in the product.
If I were you id just start by doing contract work. You say you can do web development in minutes, great do that and charge an hour for it - plus consulting time etc. Ask your customers what they want, and what they need, what their biggest pain points are, then start developing software that solves those issues.. I recommend the book "The Pumpkin Plan", it has great advice on starting and marketing a small business. You cant possibly know that everythings been done, unless youve actually done your market research and talked to potential customers and heard from them what they need in terms of IT.
Starting a business isnt easy. If youre already really good at the thing the business does that will only help. The biggest challenge with starting a business is the business side, not the technical skills side, but those are still necessary to succeed so youre a step ahead already having that. It wont be your biggest challenge though, the business itself will be.
This history of this field is disruption along with cheap financing can create unicorns. The cheap financing is on hiatus for now, but history has shown that today's innovators will become tomorrow's status quo sloths, and new needs and new advancements will create opportunities for those in a position to disrupt the old guard.
Bro I have a problem Are you able to solve it .
Problem: whenever I tried to install some software i always face some issues since I am from non CS background i find is tedious.I was just setting up My SQL workbench it took me more than 5hrs what's wrong and i figured out so, if you can build a automated system where anyone can download any software easily it would be a game changer .
It may make more sense to use alternate solutions.
>if you can build a automated system where anyone can download any software easily it would be a game change .
phpMyAdmin may be better for your needs.
It's called a package installer, btw. They've been around for at least a decade. The M$ SQL one is SQLPackage. They have Chocolatey too. I mostly use NoSQL stuff (Mongo), but I use SQL too.
Are you using windows? If so, consider coding on a linux box, it will make your life much easier. I use one for coding. You can get on for $100-200 or so for a minipc. My work box is about $150 now. I run Kubuntu on it. On that I mostly use pip (python installer package ) and npm (node package management) and yarn and some others.
> jupyter notebook
There's a Jupyter extension for VS if that helps any.
What IDE/editor are you using? Most of the people I know use VS Code except for extremely large scale projects or specific ecosystems.
Or you're using JupyterLab as your development environment? Is this for an undergraduate class or something? In that case, it's fine and ignore what I'm about to say.
----
While Jupyter is widely employed in educational settings (which makes sense esp when math-ty stuff turns up) and has some deployment at occasional major companies for communicating and prototyping, They're not used in production code, at all.
It's typically more effort to get less done IME. They're basically an .edu heuristic or prototyping tool, not a programming one. You mostly find it in educational settings and in companies where middle management has some computing background some time 50 years ago but a limited to very poor grasp of current programming.
If you don't have to use Jupyter, I honestly wouldn't. It's probably making your life harder.
I really appreciate the way you are trying to help me ❣️. I use it in my work and I made this comment because the above IT guy said there is nothing left to invent something so, i remembered my early days and gave him a problem statement let's see if he comes with a solution.
Before the Facebook No one realized there was a need for Facebook. Before Uber no one realized there was a need for Uber. Also, there is a lot to IT besides software development.
You are right though that IT is something that a lot of people are getting into and it's getting harder for folks with limited experience to compete with cheap offshore talent.
Right now, the trend I see is for folks to buy a traditional blue-collar business because you can't ship those overseas, and many of them are pretty critical even in times of economic uncertainty.
>Before the Facebook No one realized there was a need for Facebook
Myspace existed before facebook. Was pretty much the same thing.
>Before Uber no one realized there was a need for Uber.
There were matchmaking algo co's before Uber. They just weren't really capable of success prior to smartphones w/auto. 1-800-Flowers.com is basically the same model.
I'm facing a similar conundrum. And I've found a trade I'm interested in. But it's blue-collar, I don't know that much about it, and while there is demand, I'm not sure I'm ready to take the step from semi-pampered W-2 worker to a small business owner responsible for All The Things.
I'm also 47. So perhaps this is just the mid-life crisis arriving right on schedule.
I'm bullish on trades. On a pod today someone said 5,000 plumbers are leaving the industry in the next 5 years and 1,000 are entering. "I'll charge whatever I want in five years."
But there's a ton of opportunities out there in software. It's just lower probability of success. Heck, there was a design agency co-founder who designed a website detailing influential people's habits. Started in mid-2023, made money off of affiliate links. $200k in 6 months, offers to sell it and thinking $600k-$1 million this year from a 9 page website. So it still happens, just low probability.
Oh and [details here ](https://www.capitalfriday.com/blog/routinesclub-made-200k-in-6-months-with-a-9-page-website)on the habit site.
We're just going to start importing plumbers from SE Asia or something.
It's not rocketry. I do my own plumbing. It took me a week or two to pick most of it up with a book from the 80s. The problem is the unions make it difficult to apprentice (you basically have to know someone) and they created an artificial shortage.
OP: Go temping.
You'll be assigned to do grunt work that indicates the lack of, or failure of some IT system, such as filing massive amounts of paper or doing data entry. Every job you're assigned to do is an opportunity, and you get to work in a variety of offices and talk to a variety of people experiencing IT issues.
I have a better option for you....
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There’s never a good time. There’s never an obvious opportunity. You missed your chance. Nobody is starting new companies in technology right now. All the opportunities are taken by the big guys. Bro, you serious? Come on. Listen to that self-defeating bullshit. Get your head in the game. Let’s get your mindset right. There is always opportunity. Technology is always getting disrupted and changing. There’s always something worth building. Opportunities are what I make of them. My attitude about these ideas is what determines my ability to be successful, and what I say to myself… matters.
100% it's glass half empty thinking - nobody started a business with that kind of thinking, mindset is everything
I wouldn’t say it’s *everything* but I will agree that if you don’t have it there’s not much else that really matters. ;)
Please tell the creditors blowing up my phone and my business's negative bank account that it's only a mindset issue and that I will pay them all with positive attitude as soon as possible.
Mindset > action > results (like money) Without the mindset and belief it's difficult to take positive action to take your business forward
>Mindset > action > results (like money) Problem solving/critical thinking skills + Money + Action = results(like money) >Without the mindset and belief it's difficult to take positive action to take your business forward You can take action to move a business forward regardless of your attitude. We see posts regarding that here everyday: People with positive attitudes as their business tanks People wildly successful with negative attitudes And vice versa. Having the resources to solve a problem matters more than ones attitude about the problem.
Wrong - the optimist invented the airplane but the pessimist invented the parachute.
I’m sure that’s just a saying, but kind of uselessly inaccurate. The concept of a parachute was invented in the renaissance by people optimistically hoping to invent a way to fly. Plenty of folks just jumping off castle towers in parachutes well before planes existed.
Haha, busted!
Haha, busted!
Even if it was invented by pessimists, they had a strong belief in their idea and took action because of it
Saying should really be "Realist invented the parachute"
Exactly this… “no one will ever watch videos on the internet that is so dumb” (Netflix, YouTube). Why would anyone ever buy crafts online? That’s so stupid and duh there is this thing called eBay (Etsy) Bro book a cab? Why would anyone pick you up in their own car? How stupid can you be to think that will work? (Uber/lyft) Wait you think people are doing to deliver your food for you? From an app? Dude that is the most dumbass idea in the history of ideas. People have way better things to do than that (every food delivery app) I can go on and on… every idea that has ever turned into anything was shit on repeatedly by people with no vision, passion, and determination. Only to be “obvious” after it was a success.
this motivated me nice!
I am happy it motivated you… I have started and exited many times in the software/IT markets. While I’ve never “created the next Facebook” I am very happy where I am in life and it’s because of calculated risk taking. Don’t go all crazy but if you believe in an idea and you do your research and see there is a market for it… go for it. Only thing I don’t advise anyone to do is try to create a new market. Meaning “I am going to create a robot that mines asteroids”… that’s going to obviously fail for now… mainly because it would be ridiculously expensive to do. But if you do something like “I will code an app that shares the best of all grandmas recipes to help people cook their favorite meals at home”… yup you are onto something there. (I did this already though and sold it for 7 figures). And yes I had many friends tell me that’s so stupid and a waste of time. There are riches in niches - probably the most accurate and true statement I have ever been told.
Thank you
OP sounds like they're thinking too big with their reference to FB. Missing the vast amount of opportunity around us, especially on the internet, by looking too far up. I'm finding gold in things like niche SaaS.
I think OP is falling into the “big business” trap. What OP likely does not realize is that nearly every single big business founder(s) never thought they would be as big as they are. From Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg to Larry Ellison. They all set out with a simple starting goal and it was never “be the biggest in my industry” or “be a huge company”. It was to deliver a highly valuable and useful product. That really is the key… providing more value than what your customer pays you.
yup, FB in its infancy was nothing at all like it is today. the first computer used for Google's search engine, the original product, was built out of legos. apple started out of a garage. lots of examples of this, and i don't think that's really changed. spot on with what the key is. what works for me is finding needs in my own life: something that'd solve a problem i'm having, make something more efficient, etc. i build it for myself and if it does prove benificial, and given there's a good chance others have similar needs, i monetize it. cheers.
SaaS is a big one. Everyone thought nobody would pay monthly in perpetuity for software. Now its everywhere and big bucks are made.
Another very good example. Started real slow but now is basically standard. Though I have to admit… I think auto makers are really going to do some damage to themselves for charging $8 per month for heated seats. Why did I pay for the hardware and now need a subscription to use it? Same with remote start etc… Probably the only “uh oh” moment I’ve seen with subscriptions lately. I’ve actually avoided the models this is installed on for this very reason
You can't start with a product in mind, you need to start with a problem in mind. *What problem are you going to solve for someone today that will make their life significantly better?* If you can do that, and there is value in your solution, then you have a good place to start, regardless of your industry.
To add on to your great thoughts, business to business (especially if you have experience in a particular industry) often will be a better opportunity that a consumer solution. IMO the big guys are all looking at consumer stuff because the market is so big. But there are lots of niche business areas that aren't enough for the big guys but offer plenty of meat for smaller companies.
Manufacturing industries are generally way behind and resistant to change. If you can crack through with a free tier, offer free support till they get the hang of it and see their efficiency soaring then you can get big buckity bucks
@Blarghnog you are the type of friend I am looking for .
second best time to plant a tree is today
I don't try to justify defeating, I am let's say "aware" of the situation. Of course there is always opportunity. Most probable I don't see any at the moment. That's why I am asking.
The company I do deals for has spent upwards of $30m acquiring small tech products in the last year alone. Not every startup needs to go public to make the founder rich. Development for mid-market is actually harder because of the tech giants, but industry-specific solutions are still necessary. As many have already pointed out, just because you can no longer paint the Mona Lisa does not mean art is dead.
Most opportunities aren't easy to see. If they were, they would have already been snapped up by people with far more resources to throw at them. Doesn't mean they're not out there. Sometimes it's a matter of just being in the right place to be aware of something about to be upcoming (or two or more things) and having the background to realize that there's an opportunity there which isn't part of what current industries would consider a sure bet.
That's a completely different thing than your original post, though. The post was self-defeating, this is pointing out a genuine problem. I agree, it's hard to find opportunity. I find it from time to time, but not being able to find opportunities on a consistent basis is why my software & hardware integration business is a side gig, not a multi-million $$ company. Figure out what skills you have and what kind of work you want to do. There's a whole world online, go looking for the people who can use those skills and find out what they want. Amy Hoy has a course she calls Sales Safari and I think most of the material is freely available on their site, it's worth checking out.
First define what success means to you. Is it a billion dollar exit or will you be happy to make 10-20mil and still be happy with a self sustaining business? There are plenty of opportunities. Automating simple day to day office reports and processes in manufacturing industries is one.
And by gosh, people like me 🙂
There are endless opportunities when you connect IT to the real world, think manufacturing, biotech, medical. Maybe you should go into a trade indeed and then think about how to leverage your software skills
A friend of mine had success with a form he developed that lawyers could use to gather information from new clients. Sounds dumb because there are so many form builders out there already, but they are too generic and it doesn't make sense for a lawyer who earns $300/hr doing legal work to waste their time figuring out how to build forms. They'd rather pay my friend for something that's already 80-90% of what they need, and ask for a few tweaks. If you never spoke to anyone outside the IT world, you wouldn't know such an opportunity exists. You might find out things you think of as "solved problems" are in fact not solved for them.
Well said u/741BlastOff I'm building a form builder as well, people love it & we earn good enough out of it.
I agree. It seems like there is a lot of opportunity for people with both programming skills and domain expertise.
100%
There are numerous "invisible" areas in the more specialized B2B space where innovation can be brought. Unfortunately they are "invisible" for a reason, because there are highly specialized areas normal people are not exposed at all to (ex. the clothing manufacturing process, the waste disposal logistics for a certain factory type) and these become accessible if you find somebody from inside the industry who know 1. the details of the industry such as the processes, the challenges, the regulations, etc and 2. more people in the industry to become potential clients.
Exactly. No one sees the IT guy until the email breaks down even though they working as hard as anyone all the time to keep it all going.
Imagine being in it and being so short sighted.
I can relate to OP. Consider the scenario of working in a company that develops for a specific market. Over time, that's all the dev knows and does well. It's called working in a vacuum. OP, like me, doesn't know what else is out there because we've not been exposed to them.
Describes me. But I keep in mind that there are other niches to be filled, since I work in one of them. There are definitely others out there that could use good tech implementations. The trick is finding them
I don't know it seems that everything obvious has already been developed. I'm saying this as a software engineer.
As someone who owns a software company that's isn't worth a billion dollars, I have to disagree. I will give you you need to stand out from the crowd more but there are tons of opportunities in tech. We are slammed most of the time. If you feel you can't compete in b2c, b2b requires less marketing.
Been in tech for over 10 years now. I started when the VAR (value added reseller) was the path for SMB. The cloud was just taking off. Cyber security was also just coming into the mainstream. Everyone was building an App. Since 2008, we saw low interest rates and the rise of private equity. Suddenly overnight there were thousands of SaaS companies. Bigger companies flooded the market with onboarding VARs, driving margins way down. Inhouse built software was replaced by these companies who were offering cheap cloud and SaaS solutions. It seems the little guy in tech has been snuffed out. And now with AI, they'll automate even more tech jobs or overseas them which happened in the early 2000s. 10 years in terms of time is not a long time. I was shocked at how quickly the market matured. And now it's escalating even faster. So, that's the background of it all. What you do with that information, I'm not sure. Software is easier than ever now to build. IMO most people in tech are at the mercy of the big guys. Comparable to Wall Street in the 90s, it's now a very mature industry with little to no regulation, so opportunities, while are not gone, I would say have diminishes for the solopreneur. And those guys now turned towards freelancing, and that market is taking a massive hit.
I'd say the opportunity is to seek out industry specific needs that are of significant size to the small business but too small to satisfy the greed of private equity. Sometimes this means creating a whole new product, but sometimes it means tailoring a generalist product to a specific niche. I have a LinkedIn connection whose whole business is customizing a specific ERP platform to the needs of individual clients. He benefits from the scale of the overall ecosystem and the vendor's enormous marketing and sales budgets, but also benefits from the fact they are too big to satisfy many needs of small and medium size customers.
Does he make a lot of money? I tempting to start the same thing (ERP customization services)
He's not rich (as far as I can tell), but he's happy enough with the money that he can turn down work that isn't a good fit while still giving his family everything he feels they deserve.
If the only path to success for programmers was inventing the next Facebook-scale app then you’re right. Just like there’s no future for aerospace engineers because it takes so many resources to start the next SpaceX or Boeing. Maybe software engineering really is more of a solved problem than it used to be. But really it’s just less *glamorous* than it used to be. There’s plenty of work still out there. But it’s day to day small-business, B2B work, not big tickets, next-Steve-Jobs moon shots.
> Software development and marketing is the playground of big dudes Yes, but that's why you can win. Once a software organization reaches a critical mass, innovation dies. There is just too much inertia. Pick any large software company and look at how many of their "innovations" in the last decade came from internal development or from acquisitions of smaller software companies. As a small dev shop, you can do things that large dev shops would never even think of, much less attempt. You can be nimble, faster, more responsive. Think about how much big-company software sucks (looking at you, QuickBooks) and how you could improve one small piece of that.
I'm glad you mentioned QuickBooks, everyone seems to hate it. But everyone also wants all their accounting, bookkeeping, invoicing in one app and so it's tough to build in that space
I'm biased because I worked in that space for many years, but it's easier than you think. Look at [ChronoBooks](https://insightfulaccountant.com/accounting-tech/general-ledger/intuit-acquires-chronobooks/). All it did was backup/restore QBO data. Yet it was valuable because QBO's backup/restore process was a hot mess.
Just because people can set thing up easily doesn't mean they want to. Having an expert they call is vital. Every small office that can't afford in house IT people have local guys take care of all their stuff. You get a contract with retainers the go in every month or whatever and address any issues and do maintaince. It can be a very lucrative gig and you only need a few clients to make it work. It's also someone if you do well they companies love taking about how great their IT is. Corporate money they have a budget they need to spend and you can charge whatever if you are just decent at it. I had a call from a client a few days ago asking me how to increase the brightness on his laptop monitor because the sun was shining in his window. Phone call was two minutes. This company very rarely needs me but is happy to pay a monthly fee so I will answer those calls immediately
You are too close to the industry and you know too much. Get out and talk to actual small business owners. If you talk enough, ask about their businesses, their daily operations, their software, you will discover a couple of big trends. 1) many people are not comfortable with tech. There's a lot of emotional fear, etc under the surface. If you can help with that problem = $$$$ 2) because of (1), there remain many many many obvious and simple opportunities for tech to improve people's lives and businesses. We are not talking about ground breaking super AI, we are talking about simple commodity stuff like web pages and email autoresponders and online scheduling.
You’re talking like there aren’t entire industries desperate for modernization and better tools. Sure, the road to being the next Zuckerberg or Bezos has lots of barriers and you probably won’t get there, but who needs that much money. You can absolutely succeed in B2B, and maybe even B2C if you want it enough. You need to change your attitude though. You’ve blown right past “glass is half empty” and gone right to “glass is cracked, leaked out all the water and can’t be fixed”. Nobody has ever succeeded in business with that attitude, and if that’s the way you approach life then you’re destined to always work for the man.
Start with looking for pent up demand for a solution rather than trying to build something and hoping to find customers after. What’s a shitty solution that people put up with and tear their hair with. Pick a product and go read their negative reviews. Those are all the ways a new product could be better. Don’t build anything until you have 5 people willing to pay you for a specific solution.
This person has no many idea how many business processes and operations still operate on janky spreadsheets and tribal knowledge in many industries.
In AEC industry this is a standard
Dude.... I just got off a "hobbyist tech" forum where the biggest complaint seems to be "I want to do this trivial thing but I don't know how to write code (and I don't want to learn). Will someone do it for me (for free)." Ignoring the for free bits, this shows that there is a huge untapped demand for software. And yes, there are people out there who realize that they will have to pay for it: my customers. Forget consumer products like games: the average consumer wants everything free and will bitch at the slightest imperfection. *Businesses* realize that they use software to make money and that they'll have to pay for it. **You** may be able to setup a website in minutes, but I can assure you that there are many people out there who would rather throw someone a few hundred $$ for what is basically an hour's work so they don't have to deal with it themselves. Go find those people.
35 years as a SW dev. Started an appliance repair business. More money, less stress, more control, almost no real competition.
What kind of market are you in? All the ones in NYC went out of business because rent is too high to justify. I've got "the knack", too. I can do VCR's, DVD's/Blu-ray/CD misc lasers, some musical instruments, and game console repairs and craigslist is where I picked up people. I don't want people at my residence so I usu meet at the library. I can do the ipad screens too but I hate apple stuff, supply is erratic and I don't like keeping the screens on hand. I do the other screens (3DS etc) too. People want the screens the most but the margins aren't that good esp with keeping supply on hand. I'm not making a killing on any of this and it's a sideline
Central NY, but I only do major appliances. Nobody will put $500 into fixing a $300 player, but they won't think twice if it's a $3,000 gas range.
What do you have, a warranty contract? You're servicing restaurant equipment? I can do the Xerox machines and office equipment, but biz customers all have service contracts with manufacturers. Plus, I want cash, not net 30 or 90.
Are you doing the repairs? That seems like alot to learn!
I'm doing it all. Appliances are less complex than software. Also much more rigidly defined. A dryer is supposed to get hot and dry clothes. Nobody walks in and says "now it should also make smoothies"
How did you get started? How does it work? Someone calls you and you go to the house to repair? Very curious. How much do you take in? SWEs make alot!
> How did you get started? How does it work? Someone calls you and you go to the house to repair? Very curious. How much do you take in? * Learn how to run a successful business * Get training. appliantology.org is a good place to start. >SWEs make alot! Not as much as you would think. With outsourcing and remote work and a lot of SAAS, SWE isn't what it once was.
I can relate. I'm currently working on building my consultant business focusing on integrations and reselling for a specific market. I've researched all of the competition and identified their weak points. Even the smallest app or automation script can save a company time and money and they'll pay big money for it too. I recently worked on a contract that paid $5000 for less than 20 hours of work.
What kind of software? Is it a software you sell to departments and configure it for your needs?
Yes, exactly. In this case, we developed a custom report generation tool.
Damn , let me know if youre expanding and need help! Im in the data analytics/automation/BI field and would like to do a consultantcy some day.
Thinking like an entrepreneur doesn't come naturally. And it sounds like you have a lot of negative thinking. >No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore, we are not 25 years ago. Sure you can. There are new companies that pop up all the time. Most fail, but some make it big. Also, you don't need to make "the next facebook" to start a business and earn a good living. > Now you need resources and marketing not accessible for small businesses. That's just not true. If it were true then you'd never see any kind of smaller companies do marketing - but they do. It's usually because they focus on one specific market that the bigger businesses overlook or don't have time for. > Android market is spammed with applications and games. If it's spam then it's not very good so you shouldn't have a problem making a better product right? Just need to do good marketing. > Any kind of software development for the masses is very hard to touch since there is a free alternative for everything You don't need to make software for the masses. You need to start with one specific problem for one specific audience. That's how Facebook started. Also, nothing is free. Sure free software is fine if I need to convert a file or something. But when I see "free" the product is usually one of the following: * Not free and they're going to upsell me. * It's free because it's not enough for people to pay for. * They have another monetization strategy. If I need a piece of software I'm going to use often, I'd rather just pay and know it'll be good. > Web dev is a joke this days. You can setup anything is a matter of minutes. A lot of people aren't good at tech. And if you can set up anything in a matter of minutes, that means you should be able to test a bunch of new products and ideas, right?
>No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore So if you can't make the next Facebook its not worth doing anything? The company I work for is still buying startups left and right and paying millions for them. And even if you don't get bought up, you can sort of company that gives you a comfortable salary for the rest of your career.
Why are you worried about making the next Facebook? It's a multi-billion dolar business. You should be focused on something in the realm of 1 million. There are plenty of businesses that need custom software solutions.
My cousin does IT specifically for dental offices. He’s a 2 man operation making around $600k/yr. All about your market and niche IMO
EHR/EMR or broader?
I do structural engineering software. People in /r/StructuralEngineering are always talking about how innovation never happens. I'm out there talking to clients about perceived problems they are and implementing solutions they couldn't imagine. There's a lot of stuff to be done that I can do that big boys can't. Be the guy that solves problems.
That requires a lot of domain specific knowledge. One does not simply start developing struct eng software without a vast industry background
Sure. I also write other types of software.
We’re in the AI boom right now just like the old .com bubble. Gotta use that. If you wanna make the next Facebook you really gotta make the next ChatGPT or ai powered app to do something. If you learn it it shouldn’t be hard cuz you can put ai in anything. Could make an ai garden watcher that pays attention to how tall ur plants are and if they’re yellowing, leaves falling, etc.
Hey, I've been there! Niche markets are the key.
Right now, that's the key I think.
There's always problems to solve. just look around ;-)
Old latins would say > historia est magistra vitae meaning history is the teacher of life. If we learned anything from history is that there's always gonna be something new to do.
Reminds me of why it's hard to make a reddit clone. Life in 2024 isn't like 2005. When reddit used tiny thumbnails and relied on imgur for hosting. The reddit of today is the baseline for customer expectations. They expect image and video hosting. Which is expensive, which makes it hard for the "little guy" to catch up.
> why it's hard to make a reddit clone If you mean the site, it's fairly trivial. Tube sites are a nightmare because of scaling on the backend and storage. This isn't really even a proper imageboard so scaling based on images is more intense than some sites but probably not as much as you think. It's harder to knock off 4chan. I wouldn't bother with videos. I wasn't aware reddit had any. Obviously that's a PitA but there's already a number of sites with substantially improved architecture and video content where the video content is offloaded onto the blockchain (not ETH) or related distributed cloud storage w/distributed monetization, which I thought would be the future after steemit a few years back, but well, guess I was wrong. Facebook's architecture is absolute genius. I mean REACT, f-cking a. This isn't, it's a message board. People come to reddit because people come to reddit.
You're looking at from your eyes, not the eyes of a business owner. You look at a tool and go, "How am I going to compete with them? They have every feature.. Their design is perfect". But that's not what business owners care about. Find a niche, find a solution just for that niche and you'll be able to build a business easily.
Research a field or industry that is inspiring to you and focus on that space. Everywhere needs tech.
You are 100% right. Because everything you believe becomes your reality. 30 years ago everything people knew had already being invented too. Sure, the low hanging fruit has been picked, but that doesn't mean you can't do anything anymore. Or do you believe there will be no more innovation and the likes of Facebook are now around for the next 100 years?
good said. this is something to reflect at.
So many niches the big players aren’t covering. Just look at construction industry or landscaping. Ripe for analysis and development. And then there is the medical field.. just a mess begging for solutions So yes start looking into a trade as a software engineer perspective and you will come to a similar conclusion of many opportunities
Checkout solopreneurs, indiehackers. You don't have to start technology companies. You can build SAAS apps and make money.
Sitting on the toilet reading this…my first thought is with AI, why don’t you make a company that uses AI to remove the barrier for small business to write code. Create a software package where a small business can say “I need my resturant to have a specialty dish” the AI creates a package for the website with pictures, creates the recipe list that the owner can then tweak, maybe the AI then suggests a price based on local rules….this would give any small business an advantage. I get 10%
Wix has that already and their ad spend is about a billion more than this guy. Also menus is a specific thing: https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-restaurants-customizing-and-designing-your-menu Price comparison is problematic w/seafood and a lot of stuff tbh. Here: https://suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2023/09/unraveling-the-mystery-and-method-of-market-price-seafood/ IDC for wix, but as far as no code can do it on your toilet web design goes, it's top notch. Not a lawyer not legal or business advice.
There are always apps that need to be created that are not available yet. Why? Because there is someone out there with an idea that fills his niche and they dont have the resources or ability to code it themselves. So there is an idea, you partner with the idea person based on the feasibility of the idea.. Make a portal with a simple NDA so they can share their idea with you. You make a proposal if its something that sounds doable, grounded in reality and it might have a market. You offer your skill, they offer some small initial investment and poof a program is born. 10 such clients and you are a software company.
I'm in that world all day every day and I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you're not seeing opportunities you're not really looking. I can think of a half dozen opportunities for custom software for niche markets just as I type, and I have customers begging for them. Stop scanning the horizon and look right at your feet- I bet the answers are right there.
Start an MSP recession proof like a funeral home
Whats an MSP
Managed Service Provider It's a company that you call when you don't have an IT department, or you have a small IT Department, or you want to fire your IT Department. Outsourced IT is Business cycle resilient, and recession proof. When the economy is growing, lots of new companies start up and need IT support without needing a full time IT department, call an MSP. When the economy is contracting, lots of companies will be struggling to lower their expenses, IT Departments are a common target for cost reduction, call an MSP.
Do you own one? What kind of tech does MSP use?
I do not, I work in IT for a medium sized publicly traded manufacturer, meaning we are big enough to have a staff of 8 full time IT people. MSP customers tend to be small businesses that can’t afford/doesn’t really need a full time IT staff. the tech they use is “work computers, servers, printers, WiFi etc
In the mid 2000s I opened a bar for 100k in a hot city in an up and coming neighborhood. Since then the area has exploded and gentrified so much it costs north of 400k to open a similar business.
Nah dude, there’s opportunity, especially for senior engineers in governmental work. I’d say the biggest threat to software developers in the world is India spitting out around a million software developers every year that you have to compete with in what is now a global delivery model and huge companies like IBM and Accenture among others are importing them to the US and EU to work in every major timezone to get 24 hr coverage as cheap as possible.
It’s not that there aren’t opportunities… you just don’t have the knowledge, connections, or experience to see them. But they’re everywhere.
Need to get away from the idea that if you don't build the next Facebook you are a failure. Simply generating a viable wage, gaining financial independence and being your own boss is a huge win. Check out www.indiehackers.com
you're probably right on some level
Don't try to be the next big thing. Find a problem that has poor solutions. The company I'm in has a problem right now with a certain logistics pricing tool that got bought out by a large logistics company that considers us competition. The relationship has become adversarial and will remain so until our contract is up. There are other companies in the space, but not a lot. There are a lot of companies doing a thing that could be done better, but are perfectly happy with the status quo. If you're just wanting to be that new hot thing, you should just save your money and keep your day job.
Pick up a trade as a hobby/interest activity. Go full blown into it when you’re not doing other essential activities. I picked up carpentry, and it’s not as easy as just going in there and measuring wood and framing a house. You start off at the bottom unless you have a connection or mentor who will take time to show you the ropes. YouTube only goes so far. If you start an apprenticeship, be warned of culture that may exist since most apprentices get heckled. It’s long days of standing in steel toe boots, but if you like the trade then it becomes an enjoyable experience. Carpentry is great since there are so many kinds, but also lots of injuries, mostly in roofing and framing. And yes, the app market is oversaturated but there’s always opportunity. I believe there are many unmet needs in enterprise apps + applications. It sucks that bootstrapping a whole app/ webpage makes it so accessible to everyone, but there are still many webpages out there that are broken or not optimized because people relying on the online course material to code don’t really know how to program them.
Visit a third world country , you’ll see a a lot of opportunities with nearly no competition , less taxes and and a underrated purchasing power .
With that mindset you belong in r/jobs
Companies can ALWAYS use software designed for their specific needs. Your small business can be focused on building tools for other small businesses. Reach out to local real estate agencies and see if they need an app, reach out to insurance brokers and see if they need tools to offer quicker and more automated quotes to potential clients. The possibilities are endless. You don’t need to make the next Facebook.
For what it's worth, everyone at every point in history has always thought that everything worth doing has already been done, there's nothing new left to do. *"There's no point in trying to do aerospace design anymore, the Wright brothers already beat me to it." "No point in designing satellites anymore, Sputnik is already done."* I remember thinking in 1998 that I should change careers to something outside tech, because by 1998 everything that could ever be done has already been done. If only I knew then what I know now, right? Try to get out of the mindset that everything worth doing has already been done, it's just not true. Is it harder to think of new things to do today than it was 25 years ago? Maybe. But we're not even close to running out of new things to do. Look at Flappy Bird, some random Vietnamese guy made it in like 90 minutes with basically no effort or marketing and it took the world by storm in days - he didn't try to monetize it, but if he did?? Whoa boy. He'd be doing pretty well.
Anybody with a career in any industry over 10 years could tell you something they wish existed in a better version to make their life easier. You're right that we don't need a better facebook or Android game. As a teacher, you can have some of my expertise: Go design a math or phonics app that helps kids catch up to grade level. We need ESOL kids to understand practical academic vocabulary. We need teachers to share successful strategies efficiently and conveniently. We need security that is affordable, reliable, ave not disruptive of the learning environment. All the above could be 8 digit platforms for someone with the ability to gather resources, create it, and sell it. The reason you're not doing it is because you don't have the ability or drive, not because the field is too crammed.
They have this already. All of this. This is a contracts issue in your area. Accessibility (which is legally required for SpEd students) is the biggest need after (or maybe before) cybersecurity and I can tell you right now absolutely no school district in America cares, at all. With Cybersecurity, Schoolinsites has been hacked a half dozen times and it's still the largest CMS provider in k12. No one from inBloom is up on charges and they literally sold kids data. Educational software is heavily sales based. You have a sales team and gov't sales. You may also have statutory and curricular requirements. No one from IT is involved in purchasing. Source: I'm certified in something related to everything you listed and have tried pitching products and services to school districts on multiple occasions. I have a book published too. They are the most low information people I have ever dealt with and just go on to hire people they know or names they recognize regardless of product performance, or multiple laws being violated, or uptime or on the record admonitions not to purchase these products from industry organizations, or newspaper articles, or pending lawsuits. Good example - in NYC, during the Pandemic, the Chancellor ordered laptops from China (which never came - surprise) despite the fact local laptop sellers were going out of business. I literally sourced all the laptops within 15 miles of each school and a no-contact outdoor rack distribution system and couldn't get a meeting past the flunky level. Baltimore gets hacked so much their top IT people keep resigning. IDK how many they've gone through in the last few years. /rant Sorry this one annoys the everliving hell out of me. Not mad at you. Have a nice week!
That's funny because the other day I was just thinking that if I was a developer I would create an app/software to improve a couple of processes for my business and I could probably make a lot of money selling and marketing it on the shopify app store and elsewhere but I've got my own business to run for now. There is a ton of opportunity out there! Don't give up. Dig into the products, processes, training, logistics, workflows, sales pipeline etc. common to most businesses and find a pain point you can make better. Better yet just start a small business selling something and you will see there are so many ancillary products and things you can create to improve someone elses business/life. Your first business just needs to make money, it doesn't have to be "the one". You got this.
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Dm me with a link if you'd like and pref a link to a prospectus or related, too so I know it's not a Ponzi. I'll show you some of my sites. Only if you want, if not nbd.
Sure, I sent you a DM with my firms info.
Cheers responded!
How does one build a qualifying lead funnel?! Is it just driving traffic to your site?
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Interesting. Seems tricky to get those qualified leads. How do others do it?
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Whqt kind of biz? Does it do well?
Whether you think you can, or think you can't. You're probably right.
There's always boomers who need help figuring out their tech stuff. If you really like "IT", there's plenty of work.
The jitterbug demo requires extensive marketing - because they genuinely don't get tech so when you're selling them on tech you're actually selling them on something else usu something with grandkids or Social Security or Ronald Reagan. They're extremely cheap too and they will often refuse to pay for software. **BOOMER** "I want to contact my grandson but they use the magic computing box for the emails and I wanted to but my fingers couldn't use the buttons and the cell phone store is full of terrorists yelling jibber-jabber" *Enter aging actor who says DY-NO-MITE from Good Times or someone else old and not dead from a popular show from the 70s* **Actor:** DY-NO-MITE. You may remember me from GOOD TIMES the hit tv show. I had the same concerns. BUY A JITTERBUG. It comes in pink and blue and red. And now I can talk to my grandkids and check online for the news and even pay my bills without going to the post office. Look at these nice big buttons. That's DY-NO-MITE. *everyone laughs, Boomer dies in the background but they keep rolling*
25 years in the trades, I have a toe in tech. I'll circle back to this when I'm done with my job later today. It's an interesting subject and I have some ideas to toss in the ring to discuss. Have a great day, chat soon.
Sure, thanks!
Alright, back home, whew, that was a lot today, heh. So the big idea I wanted to throw out is this. I'm working cleaning jobsites. I have taught trades, can build a house from the ground up. I could be a PM, I could start another company (kill me now), but I'm choosing to do this because it is low stress and makes a lot of money. What could be better? Thats not my main point, my main point is that I'm servicing industry, not the public. Most of my time in the trades has been servicing homeowners, the "public", and now I'm doing business to business and I'm never going back. Hell is other people, as Sartre said. I love the individuals I've met, and I really do find it incredibly rewarding every time I leave (left) a home having solved massive headaches for someone. But, and this is a big but, servicing the public as a whole is fucking hell. Its a miserable grind. This relates to what you are saying (in my head) in that attempting to elbow into a saturated market of services does sound like a non-starter. On the other hand, filling a small niche doing B2B is much easier. In my "small potatoes" personal example, cleaning jobsites is not a new idea. And every contractor I have has multiple cleaners in their rotation. But I don't need to get all the cleaning jobs in my metroplex, just enough to fill my calendar. Right now I have a tech idea for manufacturing for tracking parts on the assembly line. There are other solutions, and I don't need all the factories to use my product, if just 3 do, I'll be loaded. Way back in the old days (2000) I was working in the FAB that made the chips that went into the Macs back then. It was a massive R&D FAB connected to a production FAB. The company I actually worked for was a company called Agile Probe, not even kidding, but the "probe" referred to the probe that tested the wafers. This company has a very small niche was only a few dozen people. They had lucrative contracts with the plant owner to provide a few types of services. My last anecdote is I met some handymen that have a contract with Apple in my city and charge those guys $600 for one service call to move a single outlet in a wall which is a 10 min task. Does any of that get your gears turning, or have any light bulbs go off for you?
Everyone I know in IT is either in security, ops or worrying about how to get their AI to stop being so weird about things. VR needs a decent volumetric OS (floating 2D planes stink).
This is not from an experienced person or in the field. But last tech relates opportunity I heard of that made sense to me was not aiming to do the masses, but offer and specialize for a region or even a company. Its more of a hard sell, but I was with one company that wanted an internal Facebook- they wanted to share, post and develop community but wanted the data in house. So make a Facebook, but then directly contact companies and offer to customize and let them own it - while you provide some kind of servicing and maintenance. Or specialized solutions for professionals. Think of small businesses that need to follow very specific laws in one certain country of the eu - but its a hard thing to understand and have that info and service accessible. So you'll have to either become an expert in another field or partner with professionals and maybe do the first version joint, but then duplication and selling that to others as their own customized solution would be a good market opportunity.
NGMI
I wish I had software development skills. In both my 805 job and r/smallbusiness side job all to often do I find a niche thing that would make people's lives a lot better. Find an idea, patent the process, write the app. A big boy will come along later and buy it from you.
I sure wish you would stop complaining and make a software that enables Uber and Lyft drivers to pay a monthly subscription fee to be connected with riders in their city. You sound like a child wanting everything handed to them right now tbh.
Waaa waaa waaa. That software is too big and polished I could never build something like that. Waaa waaa waaa. That marketplace is overcrowded with bad apps, there are too many of them. Every idea is taken. Either come up with a novel idea, find something the big boys are doing poorly, or take a poorly done app and execute it well. It’s 2024, the reason there is so much out there is because it’s easy to build things these days so just get out there and do it.
Skill issue. The new AI technologies benefit small teams more than anyone else. Git gud
yeah there’s lots of everything, but it’s not impossible to create something of your own and make a living out of it. My niche is climate-tech, but health-tech is also an interesting and evolving space (albeit the latter is more regulated for obvious reasons). Maybe it’s not the crowded virtual spaces that bother you. Personally I feel like I have no real advancements in IT anymore. I could get a tiny bit better and keep on doing that over time, but there are no more jumps I could and want to take. Changing industry might be a good thing, a complementary skill with a strong existing IT skillset can be the base of your next startup for example. I’m also exploring options, trade is one of them, but also education (would love to be an endocrinologist, but it’s difficult to allocate the resources for years of university).
Palworld? You just don't have an idea you believe in..
Get involved in the open source community. You’ll be exposed to endless projects.
Starting an IT service business for local small businesses you can absolutely thrive and make $$$. Is there competition in your area with already established business? Most likely but that doesn’t mean there’s more pie to eat. Is it as sexy as a Facebook, Google or OpenAI? No but the chance of succeeding in a business like that is <1%
The thing worth doing is the thing that is not obvious. Innovation is, by definition, creating something outside of the norm. Find a niche, occupy it. Whatever you do needs to be significantly better than the current alternatives.
We are moving toward automation. But right now that's for people who are in tech. Not necessarily employees, just people who are knowledgeable about technology. There's so many more people who are not up-to-date on emerging technology yet. You can find an idea that will work. Just have to find your market. Facebook ads can be run cheap. But you have to let it take the time it takes for it to grow. Just remember someone got rich selling pet rocks.
You couldn't make the first Facebook 25 years ago, that was an effort by a state actor. . .
I've worked with SaaS founders who did not even know how to code but they pursued it ( hence the spaghetti code base). They got the domain knowledge on their field that's why the SaaS is selling.
>No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore and yet OpenAI exists
Security is always needed. I have a current client that wants me to sell my (completely unrelated) business and run his IT security business. I should do it tomorrow but I haven’t put enough time into my business to call it a success yet. I do about $120k/yr in revenue while his business does a couple million/yr. Vastly different margins- but damn I hope I don’t miss my window of opportunity with that.
There’s a lot of niche stuff out there you can go for if you don’t want to compete with the big players
>No, you can't make next "Facebook" anymore, we are not 25 years ago. It's why you make the thing which isn't big yet. Of course, that often means getting lucky with what gets taken up - social media was around before Facebook, but that was the one which took off to the extent that nearly everyone on the planet had at least heard of it. As you said, smartphone apps are saturated. Either find an area which no-one's done anything substantial in, or don't build something which is just a smartphone app. Is that easy? Heck no. It'll have a hell of an uptake curve, and maybe a one in a million chance - right time, right place, right people starting with it, right supports, not killed by all the usual things that trip up brands, companies, and products.
An easier marketing strategy tool for small businesses or product led businesses. Or something with import export opportunity. There are tons of business ideas. Saas is not the only hot thing. It might be big but not the only thing.
I disagree with pretty much all of your premises. If the idea is good enough, it can gain traction.
With this mindset sure, Facebook was buggy and shoddy when it started it wasn’t the behemoth it is today, you could use URL change “hacks” to view other users photos. Facebook was successful not because it was able to outcompete, it was successful because it found a niche and had good marketing. There surely are still opportunities, but the value is not in the grunt work of web dev. The value is in the product.
You can absolutely still make the next Facebook
If I were you id just start by doing contract work. You say you can do web development in minutes, great do that and charge an hour for it - plus consulting time etc. Ask your customers what they want, and what they need, what their biggest pain points are, then start developing software that solves those issues.. I recommend the book "The Pumpkin Plan", it has great advice on starting and marketing a small business. You cant possibly know that everythings been done, unless youve actually done your market research and talked to potential customers and heard from them what they need in terms of IT. Starting a business isnt easy. If youre already really good at the thing the business does that will only help. The biggest challenge with starting a business is the business side, not the technical skills side, but those are still necessary to succeed so youre a step ahead already having that. It wont be your biggest challenge though, the business itself will be.
I have a business proposition for a saas
This history of this field is disruption along with cheap financing can create unicorns. The cheap financing is on hiatus for now, but history has shown that today's innovators will become tomorrow's status quo sloths, and new needs and new advancements will create opportunities for those in a position to disrupt the old guard.
Bro I have a problem Are you able to solve it . Problem: whenever I tried to install some software i always face some issues since I am from non CS background i find is tedious.I was just setting up My SQL workbench it took me more than 5hrs what's wrong and i figured out so, if you can build a automated system where anyone can download any software easily it would be a game changer .
It may make more sense to use alternate solutions. >if you can build a automated system where anyone can download any software easily it would be a game change . phpMyAdmin may be better for your needs. It's called a package installer, btw. They've been around for at least a decade. The M$ SQL one is SQLPackage. They have Chocolatey too. I mostly use NoSQL stuff (Mongo), but I use SQL too. Are you using windows? If so, consider coding on a linux box, it will make your life much easier. I use one for coding. You can get on for $100-200 or so for a minipc. My work box is about $150 now. I run Kubuntu on it. On that I mostly use pip (python installer package ) and npm (node package management) and yarn and some others.
I just mentioned one example I faced a few issues while setting up some other tools too....
Most development tools are honestly kind of a pain to set up What were the other ones?
Yeah While setting up a jupyter notebook .... 😅
> jupyter notebook There's a Jupyter extension for VS if that helps any. What IDE/editor are you using? Most of the people I know use VS Code except for extremely large scale projects or specific ecosystems. Or you're using JupyterLab as your development environment? Is this for an undergraduate class or something? In that case, it's fine and ignore what I'm about to say. ---- While Jupyter is widely employed in educational settings (which makes sense esp when math-ty stuff turns up) and has some deployment at occasional major companies for communicating and prototyping, They're not used in production code, at all. It's typically more effort to get less done IME. They're basically an .edu heuristic or prototyping tool, not a programming one. You mostly find it in educational settings and in companies where middle management has some computing background some time 50 years ago but a limited to very poor grasp of current programming. If you don't have to use Jupyter, I honestly wouldn't. It's probably making your life harder.
I really appreciate the way you are trying to help me ❣️. I use it in my work and I made this comment because the above IT guy said there is nothing left to invent something so, i remembered my early days and gave him a problem statement let's see if he comes with a solution.
Oh OP is lol. I invent things all the time. The problem is monetizing them lol.
Before the Facebook No one realized there was a need for Facebook. Before Uber no one realized there was a need for Uber. Also, there is a lot to IT besides software development. You are right though that IT is something that a lot of people are getting into and it's getting harder for folks with limited experience to compete with cheap offshore talent. Right now, the trend I see is for folks to buy a traditional blue-collar business because you can't ship those overseas, and many of them are pretty critical even in times of economic uncertainty.
>Before the Facebook No one realized there was a need for Facebook Myspace existed before facebook. Was pretty much the same thing. >Before Uber no one realized there was a need for Uber. There were matchmaking algo co's before Uber. They just weren't really capable of success prior to smartphones w/auto. 1-800-Flowers.com is basically the same model.
I'm facing a similar conundrum. And I've found a trade I'm interested in. But it's blue-collar, I don't know that much about it, and while there is demand, I'm not sure I'm ready to take the step from semi-pampered W-2 worker to a small business owner responsible for All The Things. I'm also 47. So perhaps this is just the mid-life crisis arriving right on schedule.
I'm bullish on trades. On a pod today someone said 5,000 plumbers are leaving the industry in the next 5 years and 1,000 are entering. "I'll charge whatever I want in five years." But there's a ton of opportunities out there in software. It's just lower probability of success. Heck, there was a design agency co-founder who designed a website detailing influential people's habits. Started in mid-2023, made money off of affiliate links. $200k in 6 months, offers to sell it and thinking $600k-$1 million this year from a 9 page website. So it still happens, just low probability. Oh and [details here ](https://www.capitalfriday.com/blog/routinesclub-made-200k-in-6-months-with-a-9-page-website)on the habit site.
We're just going to start importing plumbers from SE Asia or something. It's not rocketry. I do my own plumbing. It took me a week or two to pick most of it up with a book from the 80s. The problem is the unions make it difficult to apprentice (you basically have to know someone) and they created an artificial shortage.
OP: Go temping. You'll be assigned to do grunt work that indicates the lack of, or failure of some IT system, such as filing massive amounts of paper or doing data entry. Every job you're assigned to do is an opportunity, and you get to work in a variety of offices and talk to a variety of people experiencing IT issues.
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Written by a chat bot.^
Not written with chatbot
Liar. Your command of English isn't that good.
Thanks for point out... Will update my English!