Ask HN:What's the biggest problem in your business that software can solve?
Fellow Entrepreneurs,
Hope things are amazing with all of you guys:)
My name is Daniel and i'm a coder looking to help businesses with the challenges they have and i was wondering what the biggest problem in your business is that can be solved by software.How do you tackle it? I would appreciate any kind of info or advice and would indeed do my best to help you) With best regards, Daniel K.W.
12 comments
From what I've seen, and once being a systems consultant, and now being embedded in an old client, I can say you really need to have exposure to business to answer that question yourself. The most successful solutions I've seen are created by a person or (even better) a large group of people who come from an industry and already have groundwork expertise in that industry. You can "grab the ear" of an embedded experienced person, but then why would business owners, C-level execs, VPs, or engineers not just create the solution themselves? (aim to become one of those people)
Here are a few generic super-saturated software solutions I've seen: - Issue tracker: anything from helpdesk, to facilities management, to bug tracking, to project management and everything in between. - Accounting software: Yes. Accounts payable, accounts receivable. - Stock tracking: I'm a vendor, I'm a distributor, I'm an end user... all still relevant to me! (integrate into the other stuff, for sure!). CRM would fall into this, if you're crafty with your nouns.
l0gicpath already expressed the value of a thread like this, I doubt you will get specific answers to your specific question. Humbly, I believe your best bet is to connect with people involved in businesses (in real life), try to focus on an industry, and see what's needed there.
I've been working with this client for almost five years, and I can say I have several ideas of what's needed for them. But as with l0gicpath, I can't share them...
Here's a magic path: 1) Start focusing on a thing you like doing: coding, working on cars, painting, a trade, furniture design, music, ceramics, clothes... (sorry I'm looking around my room)... 2) Start working harder on that until you understand business operations a bit more. 3) Find a niche that needs filling and fill it. 4) ??? 5) Profit.
I'm on step 2 and have been working for nine years generally in two industries. Many people don't have the motivation to move passed step 2, or arguably never even complete step 1 (just live a mundane life collecting a paycheck in something they don't actually enjoy). Some people are able to bypass step 2-3 by riding on other peoples' coat tails (like working for a company that does this thing). Then they expand just beyond what the company does, sort of like: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ and blammo... you've got a business.
Here's a trivial example of the magic path... I just remembered an ad on the NYC subway about a dude who graduated from Monroe College in The Bronx and opened a dry cleaner: http://www.norwoodnews.org/id=11530&story=monroe-graduate-op... http://www.stopanddropcleaners.com/v1/
He saw a pretty saturated niche service, used some business-analysis stuff to figure out where to put the service, filled it, and now he's running a successful business. If he has the business acumen, his business will grow, and he will make more money. He will spend it on himself, or on his kids education, and he will start the long line of Jimenezes, successful dry cleaners.
Tom Cat Bakery, Shake Shake, Dewalt, Seguso glass, github, Google... they all started somewhere and provided something to some clients. They all had motivation, controlled risk, and had some insight into their customers' needs and wants.
You can do the same with hard work, perseverance and motivation! I've followed you on github and look forward to seeing what you produce!
Here are a few generic super-saturated software solutions I've seen: - Issue tracker: anything from helpdesk, to facilities management, to bug tracking, to project management and everything in between. - Accounting software: Yes. Accounts payable, accounts receivable. - Stock tracking: I'm a vendor, I'm a distributor, I'm an end user... all still relevant to me! (integrate into the other stuff, for sure!). CRM would fall into this, if you're crafty with your nouns.
l0gicpath already expressed the value of a thread like this, I doubt you will get specific answers to your specific question. Humbly, I believe your best bet is to connect with people involved in businesses (in real life), try to focus on an industry, and see what's needed there.
I've been working with this client for almost five years, and I can say I have several ideas of what's needed for them. But as with l0gicpath, I can't share them...
Here's a magic path: 1) Start focusing on a thing you like doing: coding, working on cars, painting, a trade, furniture design, music, ceramics, clothes... (sorry I'm looking around my room)... 2) Start working harder on that until you understand business operations a bit more. 3) Find a niche that needs filling and fill it. 4) ??? 5) Profit.
I'm on step 2 and have been working for nine years generally in two industries. Many people don't have the motivation to move passed step 2, or arguably never even complete step 1 (just live a mundane life collecting a paycheck in something they don't actually enjoy). Some people are able to bypass step 2-3 by riding on other peoples' coat tails (like working for a company that does this thing). Then they expand just beyond what the company does, sort of like: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ and blammo... you've got a business.
Here's a trivial example of the magic path... I just remembered an ad on the NYC subway about a dude who graduated from Monroe College in The Bronx and opened a dry cleaner: http://www.norwoodnews.org/id=11530&story=monroe-graduate-op... http://www.stopanddropcleaners.com/v1/
He saw a pretty saturated niche service, used some business-analysis stuff to figure out where to put the service, filled it, and now he's running a successful business. If he has the business acumen, his business will grow, and he will make more money. He will spend it on himself, or on his kids education, and he will start the long line of Jimenezes, successful dry cleaners.
Tom Cat Bakery, Shake Shake, Dewalt, Seguso glass, github, Google... they all started somewhere and provided something to some clients. They all had motivation, controlled risk, and had some insight into their customers' needs and wants.
You can do the same with hard work, perseverance and motivation! I've followed you on github and look forward to seeing what you produce!
Quite a few in particular that come to my mind but for various reasons I'm neither inclined to share nor my team can't resolve so I'm just writing to say cheers to you.
I checked your profile, you are quite young. A small tip, might want to point out to a few things you've done. Maybe small side projects, weekend hacks or any open source contributions just to add some context to your post.
> I'm a coder looking to help businesses with the challenges they have
With your age and little experience, that statement doesn't project much.
All the Best and keep pushing forward.
I checked your profile, you are quite young. A small tip, might want to point out to a few things you've done. Maybe small side projects, weekend hacks or any open source contributions just to add some context to your post.
> I'm a coder looking to help businesses with the challenges they have
With your age and little experience, that statement doesn't project much.
All the Best and keep pushing forward.
Hey,thanks i get that.
But still,i'm just searching for an idea,for pain that businesses have,guess there is no problem if people can share problems they have...
Don't let anybody discourage you--that's most important. Just do stuff.
It isn't hard to find examples of young millionaires and billionaires in this industry.
It isn't hard to find examples of young millionaires and billionaires in this industry.
I run a < 10 man company. Still looking for Nirvana with...
1. What is my balance if I shut the business down today and paid off all creditors and pulled in all debts? What does the business look like if I hire someone new? I need financial planning and forecasting that goes way beyond excel. Which is lighting fast to work with.
2. Where are my projects really at? I'm a service business. I have to sell our deliverables. Need agile planning, rich documentation and project costing. The bastard child of Google Docs, Excel and Pivotal Tracker.
1. What is my balance if I shut the business down today and paid off all creditors and pulled in all debts? What does the business look like if I hire someone new? I need financial planning and forecasting that goes way beyond excel. Which is lighting fast to work with.
2. Where are my projects really at? I'm a service business. I have to sell our deliverables. Need agile planning, rich documentation and project costing. The bastard child of Google Docs, Excel and Pivotal Tracker.
Sounds like you need a 'Problem Exchange' site. In all seriousness, this could be a valuable way to aggregate pain points, get community feedback and see how much impact the solution could bring. Also, if lots of small organisations are suffering the same issues, there could be the option for crowd funding the work.
Maybe something like this already out there, if someone knows then please let me know!
Maybe something like this already out there, if someone knows then please let me know!
This is a great idea. You should build it!
Check below ideas shared in another HN post. Even you can't work on those ideas, you might be able to learn how he finds/describes his ideas.
http://thedannorris.com/startup-ideas/
http://thedannorris.com/startup-ideas/
To expound a little bit on l0gicpath's question, really, we need more to go on.
In my experience, finding a random problem is only a small part of the battle. What kind of customer do you want? The problems at Fortune 50 companies are very different to the problems of 20-man shops. 37Signals made their mark on the world by recognizing that, and by focusing on the latter.
They were able to do this, probably, because that was the size of their own company, and they were likely scratching their own itch. That gave them insight into what they needed, and the problems they had, which gave them a bit of experience that they never would have had otherwise.
So, what kind of customer do you want? There aren't very many good solutions for 360 feedback, but the target market for those kinds of products are enterprise customers, and they're painfully hard to sell to.
What kind of problems can you solve? If I told you that we had problems calibrating our nuclear cooling systems, is that something you can solve? Is that a problem you can even approach?
These things matter, really, and it's hard to just spit out problems at random without knowing the kind of problems you're looking for. On top of that, there's very little practicality to someone trying to solve a problem that they don't experience themselves... or, at least, it rarely works.
In my experience, finding a random problem is only a small part of the battle. What kind of customer do you want? The problems at Fortune 50 companies are very different to the problems of 20-man shops. 37Signals made their mark on the world by recognizing that, and by focusing on the latter.
They were able to do this, probably, because that was the size of their own company, and they were likely scratching their own itch. That gave them insight into what they needed, and the problems they had, which gave them a bit of experience that they never would have had otherwise.
So, what kind of customer do you want? There aren't very many good solutions for 360 feedback, but the target market for those kinds of products are enterprise customers, and they're painfully hard to sell to.
What kind of problems can you solve? If I told you that we had problems calibrating our nuclear cooling systems, is that something you can solve? Is that a problem you can even approach?
These things matter, really, and it's hard to just spit out problems at random without knowing the kind of problems you're looking for. On top of that, there's very little practicality to someone trying to solve a problem that they don't experience themselves... or, at least, it rarely works.
Hey,thanks for your comment:)
I'm talking mostly about small-size businesses.I've already made a similar post on Reddit and got a whole list of problems that small-size companies have:)
But yeah,i see you're absolutely right and i realize i should have been more concrete...
Word. I'm not trying to not be helpful or anything... but I work at a tech company, so for the most part, all the problems that we've identified, we've either found solutions for or built solutions for. I can think of very little in my immediate knowledge that could be considered a problem that I think could be solved.
In the absence of a problem, I thought I'd try to be helpful by helping you help me more.
What are you own areas of expertise? I know a local company that's making a few million a year by building an accounting, inventory management, estimation solution that's targeted to landscaping companies. They know the market, and basically built the 'Basecamp-sized' alternative to the million dollar solutions that only exist for very large companies. Generally, even very large landscaping companies (which are their target market) aren't making enough money to move to an SAP-caliber solution and hire a team of developers and engineers to run / administer it.
The ideal problem for you to solve is something that you have enough expertise in that you could identify with the pain point and be able to execute well. Either way, good luck in finding something and nailing it.
Care to link to the reddit discussion?
In the absence of a problem, I thought I'd try to be helpful by helping you help me more.
What are you own areas of expertise? I know a local company that's making a few million a year by building an accounting, inventory management, estimation solution that's targeted to landscaping companies. They know the market, and basically built the 'Basecamp-sized' alternative to the million dollar solutions that only exist for very large companies. Generally, even very large landscaping companies (which are their target market) aren't making enough money to move to an SAP-caliber solution and hire a team of developers and engineers to run / administer it.
The ideal problem for you to solve is something that you have enough expertise in that you could identify with the pain point and be able to execute well. Either way, good luck in finding something and nailing it.
Care to link to the reddit discussion?
http://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1q128m/whats_...
I also found a bunch of other promising ideas on reddit that are not that technically difficult to implement...
Just have to validate them completely and then build&market:)