Ideas
Last updated 15 March 2024
Did you build any of these after reading this page? Let me know, I'd love to see it
Some are service-oriented, some are more strategy ideas, some are SaaS. Some will make more sense as free sites for either PR/good will or ad-supported.
Community
- Lean coffee meetups as a SaaS, other meetup tools, e.g. LeanCoffeeTable, MentiMeter
- A meetup site without the bloat of funding, half-baked features, and charging hosts for very little benefit
- Simple raffler site
Games
- Adoptables games (neopets, valenth, cryptokitties). E.g. cars, {country} animals
Job boards
- TALL Stack
- Laravel jobs in {area}
- Modern freelancer directory for {area}
- {Tech} 4 day week job board
- Climate job board that is not US-only
- {Region} remote jobs
Loadshedding
Mostly using ESP API:
- "route finder" - where to hang out near your area to avoid loadshedding slots
- "horoscope" - find people to date based on having opposite loadshedding slots
- Loadshedding website widgets
- "widget" style integration for malls to show when they are shedding
Open Source
- South African fixture data, e.g. post codes, licence plates, ID validation
- PHP SDK for EskomSePush
- PHP SDK for Paystack
- Laravel Cashier-like package for Paystack (using the SDK)
Property
- Fractional ownership facilitation for lower cost properties
- Building management suite for property management companies. Service charges, fault reports, facility bookings, body corporate voting, etc.
- FriendBnB: Book a stay with a friend
Localised to your area/niche
- Tip jar site
- Dating site - localised, or localised + niche
- Find currently busy venues in {area} (Google Maps API still doesn't support this, last checked 25/09/2023)
- Automate lotto purchases: The idea is that going from 0 -> 1 ticket is infinitely more likely to win, but everything after that has insanely diminishing returns. Also not building a habit around it, just let the code do the work.
- Airbnb for party venues/activities/event performances/studios/luxury homes
- Startup/founder networking
- Reimplement popular SaaS with localised pricing: advantage is catering to local market + localised pricing (USD is expensive!). E.g. marketing tools, online course tools, anything you pay first world currencies for online for your business.
- Neighbourhood community software - basically unbundling neighbourhood/town facebook groups
- Providing small SaaS services to the town with selfhosting
- Business acquisitions - i.e. acquire.com but local
- {niche} marketplace
- {niche} auctions
- Proof-of-tourism: partner with businesses in small towns to give then unique codes/links/whatever that users redeem for digital "stamps". Users build up a collection to show off where they've been within a region
- {area} directory to link various kinds of {niche} users. E.g. link property buyers, sellers, agents and Airbnb operators. Or voice actors
- {super-niche} commerce - e.g. onlyusedtesla.com
- {area} Upwork
- link-in-bio but localised integrations
- {luxury niche} sales
- Farm animal trading
Social
- "Date me Doc" page hosting
- Anonymous sharing sites - unbundling anonymous uni confession social media accounts
Small Business Tools
- Small town business page hosting: One page, one domain, one price
- Zoho-as-a-strategy: Make many small but interconnected services, or one simplistic-but-multifaceted service to serve creators in your niche/area. E.g. site+blog+newsletter+calendar booking+links page+memberships
- Table layout planner but online (e.g. for weddings)
- Done-with-you online course setup for educators who want to set up online courses/content but don't know where to start
- Standalone event ticketing: Get an embed for your site, hook up a payment provider account, issue a ticket
- Minimalist "super" indie hacker app: support ticketing, testimonials, suggestions, changelog, status page, link-in-bio pages, forum/feeds, form embeds, countdowns, link shortening, embeddable ecommerce
- Buy now, pay later for {niche}
White Labelling
- Software licence management/key distribution
- Job board generation
- Online auction/bidding platform
- Productised service template site: create some products, add some payment links, done
- All-in-one MVP validation site: predefined site template, analytics, form to capture signup, etc.
Info products
- How to set up your payment links to sell your {craft}
- How to set up a website within 30 minutes for your {craft}
- Basic digital literacy for seniors (websites, safety, learning to use phones)
Productised tech services
- Previous tool -> new tool migrations (e.g. Nova -> Filament, PHPUnit -> Pest)
- Codebase review
- Feature technical spec
- {tech} version upgrades
- "Cleanup crew" - linting, analysis, basically fixing unstructured repos
Laravel
- Statamic-style embeddable forum
- White label starter kit
- Logsnag selfhosted alternative
- Laravel documentation PWA
- Laravel meetups & community directory
- Chat app e.g. Campfire
Physical products
- {niche} that has fans but not many products or novelty things. E.g. a developer-themed playing card deck.
Uncategorised
- roadmap.sh but for other niches, e.g. marketing
- What does religious worship look like online? Can there be digital "churches" of some kind, and can they be provided as a service?
- {niche livestock} record keeping, e.g. horserecords.info
- Copy utility sites as widgets on your personal site to drive traffic
- Purchasing power parity API
- Interacting over alternative media, e.g. submit data over email instead of a UI
- What if you hosted many different products/saas in one codebase, and subscriptions were cumulative for products used? Auth/registration for new products would be a much lower barrier.
- Project Manager AI for freelancers