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Comment by Adiqq | Hacker News Reader

Personally I find it hard to believe that it's simple for people to start profitable online business. Some people might be lucky and can promote themselves well, but how many fail? How often freelancers are approached with "great ideas for application", but there's zero chance to find paying clients for it. How much can anyone do alone, in comparison to all these big corporations or even smaller companies with dozens employees dedicated to some specific niche?

Maybe I'm overthinking, but I can't see how single person can do this, without really good idea.

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I don't know if it's "simple", but there is a well established corpus of knowledge, as taught by Y Combinator and others. He describes a fairly standard path.

First he has domain experience (teaching French and English in Korea). This experience exposes him to a problem (students know grammar but can't speak). He then explores solutions to this problem. First with a blog and a book (sells enough to "cover the bills"). Then he iterates to an interactive book (which now was "selling well"), and then finally moves on to build the fully fledged webapp. And with that, out of the 5 billion internet users, he can convince 800 of them to hand over their cash.

Of course the story is probably streamlined and leaves out the dead ends. You can only connect the dots in retrospect, as Steve Jobs said.

I’m the app creator. It’s definitely not simple but it’s also easier than what most people think. Pretty much anyone on Hacker News could do the same given enough time and motivation. The problem is that it takes a long time to see success. You can easily spend years earning close to nothing. I love doing it but there are definitely pros and cons.

Honestly my idea was not particularly amazing. I was just frustrated with courses that were too focused on grammar and decided to create a solution to this problem. You don’t need an amazing idea, you just need to offer a solution enough people will be happy to pay for :).

This. In addition I would just add that most people search for some paradigm shift or innovation potential.

I reckon its much easier to just find a market with personal interests and compete with existing players on a smaller feature for a smaller audience since the demand is already validated.

How many times you've heard people hating Salesforce?

There are many small niches that can sustain one person, but are too small to attract corporate attention.

I specialize in Berlin bureaucracy. Some guy reviews ebook readers. Sometimes, you have to think small, because everyone is busy thinking big.

That is the HN problem; everyone here wants to be a unicorn and acts like it (cloud hosting, microservices, serverless etc) while they will never be a unicorn or even close and would be happy with a small company making 10k a month (it would need to be profit in the west, but that’s not so hard in a niche).

100% agree with this. Look for things that serve needs of real people, but where the scale is too small to be interesting to VCs.

> even smaller companies with dozens employees dedicated to some specific niche?

Companies with dozens of employees can’t chase a niche with a revenue potential in the low-five figures per month. A solo worker can and do so efficiently enough to leave $10k/mo after expenses.

Have 30 people working together is an advantage. Having 30 mouths to feed (or more, with family members) is a disadvantage.

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