Ask HN: What would you build in a week that you could sell for years to come?
Considering you have $100-$500 and a week to build a product than the rest of 3 weeks to start marketing it, what would you build and sell to bootstrap a business?
Obviously your talking about development, coding, but what's your area? Back-end? Front-end? Mobile? Desktop? Server? Which OS are you targeting? Macs? Windows? Linux?
Then of course, what's the number? How much do you need/want?
A vague answer for a vague question: Build something in an area you're familiar with that addresses a pain point you have or people in your network have, make them your first "customer", give it to them for "free" in return for feedback.
Another: Build something for a niche, spend a couple days researching your chosen niche and find a small-moderate sized community that you can easily (quickly) immerse yourself in. Be honest about your intentions.
More importantly though, adjust your expectations. Realistically there's not a single thing (that I can currently think of, off the top of my head) that you can build in a week that you can sell "for years to come" without work, if you're looking for a passive income the answer is real estate.
Technology moves fast, updates will be required. Maintenance will be required. Development is mostly an iterative process. Users will request features. Features will introduce bugs and so on and so fourth.
Also what do you mean by bootstraping a business? You can be a registered business entity within a couple hours. Which means shit if you don't have a product/plan.
Good luck :)