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Successful entrepreneurs always say that the most profitable tools are the ones that help you solve the issues you’re facing. The problem is, I apparently have no issues. So instead, I built a PoC of a minimalistic ideas directory focused on issues others are facing. Feedback is welcome

Comments

robtherobber•1mo ago

I believe it's always a good idea to scope out for projects and ask people about their challenges in such cases, and you're clearly already doing this.

However, I dislike the usual entrepreneur framing around this stuff. I'm absolutely not a fan of "find problems so you can extract money from them" as the starting motivation. If you treat other people's frustrations primarily as 'market signals', to use the HN lingo, you end up optimising for what generates profit, not what actually helps. The best tools I've seen come from taking the user's problem seriously, building with them, and caring whether the solution improves their day even if it never becomes a business.

If this directory nudges you towards that (listening first, then building something small that actually addresses real needs for real people) then it's already doing something useful. If it proves genuinely valuable and people keep coming back, monetisation can be a downstream choice. I'd rather see "make it work and make it useful" come first, and only then decide whether it needs to be paid for, funded, open, or just free because society doesn't need every helpful thing to be gated -- on the contrary.

To frame it more cynically, someone could read this as "I'm hunting for easy victims and monetisable pain" and then the obvious question is: why would anyone hand you the blueprint for how to rip them off?

emil154•1mo ago

Thank you very much. I honestly wasn’t expecting much from posting the “project” here on HN, but your comment is very insightful and inspiring. You are absolutely right about the purpose of this directory, and it’s definitely the direction I want to head in.

r0fl•1mo ago

Great layout and website name!

Love the idea. I also have very few issues and in my spare time build useless fun ideas that waste time and are mostly exercises to learn to code better

Some feedback:

- let people upvote or downvote ideas. Do this without forcing me to give you my gmail or sign up and verify and have a crazy long password. Just let me upvote or downvote ideas. Add those votes to the algorithm

- count which things get clicked on the most. Add that to your popularity algorithm.

- are you only grabbing from x? What about Reddit? Hacker news?

- start a newsletter. Let me pick a niche or two or three or all niches and email me each time something break into the top 10 in that niche based on the algorithm.

- or…

Take this idea offline!!

Feed all the ideas into ai. Tell it to build out all the ideas. Use expired domains that ai finds. Launch 1000 sites tomorrow using free hosting. Find synergies, 8 figure exit before the new year.