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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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