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Comment by epicureanideal | Hacker News Reader

> The main issue is that their problems are too boring and obscure for anyone without direct personal experience to care about them.

I think there are probably several hundred HN readers who would be happy to tackle those problems. Boring is probably not the issue, but obscure is, assuming these problems exist. If they're difficult to discover that the problem exists, that's a challenge. Further, if the problems exist but are highly unique in each case, there may be a reason it's solved in a one-off way by Excel or scripts rather than a scalable product. The use of Excel isn't inherently ripe for disruption. There are plenty of problems to be solved that just can't be solved profitably. It would be no better than solving a problem that someone has but is unwilling to pay for.

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Your comment reminded me of a cool little project I found a few years ago re: niche problems and smaller solutions - the target demo being soldiers who (very generally) have some disposable income to spend on a small app that can improve their professional QoL was kind of genius imo.

There was (still is, though the website is now dead) a really cool website/app that a fmr Air Force soldier made called AFI SWiM[0] that extracted 'Shall, Will and Must' references from Air Force publications which blew up in popularity among the target demo. The dev recently(ish) wrote a blog post[1] how it surprised him to see the app[2] had gotten around ~20k downloads, though I am unsure if the app was always priced at $1.99 (which would be just under $40k).

I like the idea of developing a problem solver for a niche market, though finding and monetizing it definitely is pretty tough.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220601160702/https://swim.afie...

[1] https://willswire.com/blog/chat-afi/

[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107

the github repo: https://github.com/willswire/afi-swim

Your story supports the position that it's safer to take the FAANG job.

This guy found an underserved market opportunity, built something, got some success marketing it, and made a whopping total of $40k.

Meanwhile the FAANG guys are making that every two months, without all the risk.

Imagine if this app was B2B instead of B2C, or if it pivots to B2B in the future, or if it's acquired. Imagine also future passive income with little maintenance. And his project seemed like a side project written over a few months.

Still risky, but the expected value is comparable to a stint at a salaried job IMO, once you find a decent market opportunity. Not to mention the qualitative value of self-employment, and that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs.

> imagine if

We can play this game all day, but the fact is somebody put a ton of work into a project and made about what they could have made in a month at a FAANG.

Pretty crappy trade off.

> Pretty crappy trade off.

Not really. FAANG people have to show up to get that salary. It's not apples to apples to compare this to salary because the app was built once then continued to make money without additional work.

Salary requires constant effort and work. I will take working 60 - 80 hours for a week to make $40k over working 320 hours to make the same.

Imagine investing the FAANG money into dividend ETFs and living off those in a few years.

> that FAANG employment seems a tad risky these days with layoffs

You aren’t seriously comparing the risk of self-employment to the risk of being layed off by one of the most stable companies of the world during a downturn after a 15 year bullrun, are you?

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