Ask HN: Those of you who started companies. Where did you get your idea?
I have started working in Enterprise software and am very interested in soaking up ideas for potential new companies. Where did you guys get your ideas for a company? Did the idea pan out?
4 comments
This is an unnecessarily risky approach. Don't start with ideas -- start with a market.
Do you have lots of friends whonare dentists and would use software for dentists just because you asked them to? Great! Now figure out if there's something they all need.
You should have friends and family lined up to use a specific prototype before you write a single line of code.
Do you have lots of friends whonare dentists and would use software for dentists just because you asked them to? Great! Now figure out if there's something they all need.
You should have friends and family lined up to use a specific prototype before you write a single line of code.
tldr; solved my own problem
I was having problems keeping up with all the new vinyl releases that were coming up so I built a tool to collate them into one easy to navigate place. A couple of years later this turned into a customer-facing website.
Then I realised that once I found the record I wanted it was hard to find a store that had it in stock as most of the records i wanted were very limited releases. So i extended the site to do a real-time stock check of my favourite record stores to show me which had the records in stock.
I now have record shops coming to me wishing to be listed in the stock check feature and I charge them money to appear, either through a monthly subscription or a CPA basis.
site: https://www.soundshelter.net
I was having problems keeping up with all the new vinyl releases that were coming up so I built a tool to collate them into one easy to navigate place. A couple of years later this turned into a customer-facing website.
Then I realised that once I found the record I wanted it was hard to find a store that had it in stock as most of the records i wanted were very limited releases. So i extended the site to do a real-time stock check of my favourite record stores to show me which had the records in stock.
I now have record shops coming to me wishing to be listed in the stock check feature and I charge them money to appear, either through a monthly subscription or a CPA basis.
site: https://www.soundshelter.net
Found a small bug:
Was searching for cs + kreme records (cs and kreme)
clicked to check for stock on hhv, hardwax, deejay.de and juno
Juno showed expected search results - actual page of the record; hardwax was queried for the label name - total stasis - ok; hhv showed completely irrelevant results although they do not have that record in stock at all; deejay.de query was malformed. An attempt was made to search for "total stasis" (label name) but ended up in searching for total 20stasis.
I've noticed that deejay.de expects to query with whitespace being replaced by a plus sign /total stasis ends up in /total+20stasis and /total+stasis is a correct param that gives the expected results
Juno showed expected search results - actual page of the record; hardwax was queried for the label name - total stasis - ok; hhv showed completely irrelevant results although they do not have that record in stock at all; deejay.de query was malformed. An attempt was made to search for "total stasis" (label name) but ended up in searching for total 20stasis.
I've noticed that deejay.de expects to query with whitespace being replaced by a plus sign /total stasis ends up in /total+20stasis and /total+stasis is a correct param that gives the expected results
Thanks for the feedback - pushed a change to fix the malformed DJ request.
I wasn't that great with frontends or particularly patient enough to learn it all, so I built an API - ipdata.co
8 months later, and I'm glad I did it.
8 months later, and I'm glad I did it.
Very cool but I'm surprised you're able to make money in such a competitive environment. Did you know of the competitors before you started or did you just do it?
That's a really cool service.
How did you get the word out when you were starting out? Was it just basics like adwords, etc?
How did you get the word out when you were starting out? Was it just basics like adwords, etc?
Oh hey, I use your service for about 10k lookups a day.
YC catchphrase is good for that "make what people want". Try to understand what people around want or need.