I cannot find an idea to work on
Hello,
I am a developer with strong programming skills, however, I lack the business mindset and having hard times to find and idea to work on. Whenever I came up with an idea, I see tons of copies of it. This is not a bad thing necessarily but considering that there is a variant of a product that offers more than I can in the initial stage, I lose motivation to work on the idea. Why would anyone use my untested, unknown app when there is something better out there?
Anyways, this situation makes me really depressed. Each weekend I set myself for coding but I end up doing nothing. Everyone says that find a problem and solve it with an app, but as a person going to work in the morning and coming home in the evening, I hardly interact with the world.
How do you come up with an idea? How should I change my perception?
Here's my suggestion: start smaller. Instead of trying to figure out a product to build for other people, figure out a product to build for yourself. This is way easier. Projects that you build when you scratch your own itch can expand into projects that also appeal to other people.
And how do you figure out products to build for yourself? Easy: just pay attention to the various kinds of adversity you face in your everyday life. Case in point: you're currently facing adversity coming up with a business idea. So perhaps your product should be "Idea Generator": a collection of tools and mental frameworks for finding and triaging project ideas. The work that would go into such a project would probably be a mix of research and experimentation on your part.
If you can take an existing idea and do it better somehow (more efficient, more convenient, cheaper etc.), it's still worthwhile to explore.
I've been doing some consumer research and competitive analysis for an idea I have, and I'm consistently finding that there are products/apps that do something similar, but there are still pain points in the market to solve for.
I regularly help technical founders find a project that would drive them. What we do is break down how many hours you want to invest with it, when you want to make money with it and how to scale it. Let's connect on Twitter.
More info https://best-periodical-bca.notion.site/Let-s-scale-your-startup-8f0c0130df324afa9387b35fc3beaf9c
I just spoke to my brother today, he is also a programmer who can complete an MVP by himself; if you see there are many players in the market who are doing similar products to your idea, this tells that the concept is accepted by the market.
Start it small, and keep doing the right thing everyday, you'll get there soon like them soon.
Just grab anything you'd like, maybe something that you would like to have but is too expensive or just low quality. Many people start new projects by just scratching their own itches, if there is nothing try to find out something that could be just interesting for you.
For example, once I was in the same position and wanted to create a SaaS but didn't have any ideas. I remembered then I liked the flying, aircraft and everything related. After browsing forums I found there are many cool apps but also there are much less cool that mine could compete with. (I didn't implement it just because I found another idea that looked pretty slick to me).
I'm a marketer not a developer. I have loads of ideas that are half validated from a marketing and business perspective, but I lack the dev skills to implement. Email me via my profile if interested in a collaborative project.
As long as you understand that there is virtually nothing new under the sun, you'd get over your fear of pounding on your idea. 99% of startups out there take an existing idea and put a bow on it. So to speak. So my advice to you is to go with your gut. You'd be amazed at how perfecting an idea could almost make it look original. So just give it a try! Good luck!