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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Here's an idea: find someone else with a problem and work on that. This works especially well if the someone else is in business, very busy, and has some money. Chances are better that your solution to their problem won't have much competition: if it did, they would have already gone with it.

I know this is the opposite of "scratch your own itch", but I always found that advice overrated. I have always been much more successful scratching other people's itches.

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1000x this. The Internet doesn't mean every idea you have will be built by 10 other people first; it means that every idea you have that serves 20-something geeks will be built by 10 other people first. Build for other people. Added bonus: other people tend to actually spend money for solutions to their problems.

Can I recommend building for ladies? It's like you get to avoid 98% of the competition for free.

The issue is that it's hard to know what ladies want, but then again, that's your competitive advantage...

I mean this in the "It's harder to come across this information" sense, not the "LOL ladies, amirite?" sense.

It's not at all hard to know what ladies want. Start by talking to ladies. The Internet improves your nerdy guy private life in a variety of ways. Distill them to crisp examples. Seek isomorphisms in your conversations with women. You buy hobby item X, they may buy hobby item Y. Or, maybe they buy X too, but are too put off by the culture of the sites/apps that help you with X. You have job N. They have job K. You rarely think about K because you're an N and a guy. And so on.

Teaching. Fabric and crafts. Child care (holy is there ever a billion dollars waiting for whoever cracks the code on babysitters). PR work. Marketing/communications. Office managers. Metalworking. Literary fiction. I'm sure you can find something.

It's true, it's not _that_ hard.

But it is harder than simply implementing something that directly helps me.

I don't want to be a negative nancy, but every idea I can think of along those lines with an obvious profit angle actually has been built by 10 people first. For example, babysitters — there are tons of sites in that space. Just Google "find a babysitter" and you'll get a full page of sites dedicated to just that.

Not one of them work. We spend thousands on this problem every year.

I think one thing most women want is something emotionally gratifying. (I believe this is why rock stars get laid so much: Their songs meet some of those emotional needs in women that lots of men are so bad at meeting.) I think that is part of what typical "girly" loves like kids, pet cats, and "pretty" things have in common: They serve emotional needs rather than practical needs. If you can figure something out that serves an emotional need and a practical need for women, that's probably billionaire territory.

You know the saying: Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love. If you can find a way to sell lurv, you will be in very tall cotton.

(Please note that I am female and not "talking trash" about women at all. Thank you.)

The gentlemen market is also terribly, terribly underserved.

I think this has largely to do with the acquisition of Heroku and the notion of “you can mine for gold or you can sell pickaxes.” [1] It seems to me there is a gold rush for the pickaxes now.

[1] - http://cdixon.org/2011/02/05/selling-pickaxes-during-a-gold-...

Wait... If there's a gold rush for the pickaxes, does that mean it's time to sell pickaxe stores, or just go mine gold now that pickaxes are so cheap?

I think that approach would work better for a startup company, but for a side project, it doesn't seem that feasible.

It is good advice, but when I want something to hack on in the evening or on the weekends, setting up a business meeting isn't exactly crossing my mind.

I work on other peoples problems at the day job so it's nice to have a break :)

HackerBooks will definitely be my last "scratch your own itch" project for a long time.

New projects will be products targeting businesses.

I think this is only a problem if you're targeting niches because as I see it, if you can't use your own product while pretending to be your non-technical mother, then you shouldn't be in business unless you're selling for a premium. Unfortunately, technical geeks won't pay a premium and they themselves can often build something relatively useful with, in this case, even a simple google search: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

I actually went through this exercise before and found it to be annoying, but how often do you search for and buy books? It's not everyday you do.

Don't get me wrong, I've bookmarked your site and find it useful, but I probably won't go back to it in a while.

Both are valid approaches. One requires vision, the other requires connections. Realizing either of them requires lots of hard work.

"scratch your own itch, but I always found that advice overrated."

It depends. If you are building a business "scratch others' itch". It you are in it for the fun, "scratch your own itch"

Maybe if there is so much itching going on you should make a niche site regarding skin disorders...

That's strange, because I've found the opposite to be true.

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