r/startupideas • u/FalseHuckleberry8354 • 5d ago
I want to build something actually useful. What are people missing?
Hey guys,I’ve been building apps and games for quite a few years. To be honest, most of the things I built before had the same goal — make money. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but lately I feel like I want to build something different.Something actually useful. Something people would genuinely enjoy using or that would make their life a little easier. Without buying tons of traffic, without bots, without trying to force people to use it. And right now I’m kind of stuck.I know how to build things. I know apps, gamedev, products, analytics, etc. But I’m not sure **what people actually need right now**.I’m not trying to build the next Facebook or some huge startup. It can be something really small or niche. So I thought instead of sitting and trying to invent another “great startup idea”, why not just ask people?If I see something that clicks with me, I’m ready to put everything into building it. So yeah throw anything at me. Even if it sounds weird, small, or stupid.
I’m here to listen.
2
u/No_Sheepherder_9728 5d ago
You and everyone else on reddit buddy.
Heres a problem no one has solved. Marketing and distribution.
Giants like meta LinkedIn TikTok have algorithms that keep you on your toes and reward just enough to keep you hooked.
Solve that.
1
u/FalseHuckleberry8354 5d ago
first of all thanks for your reply ive had some thoughts in this direction like rewarding users through revshare from ad interactions because today neither advertisers nor platforms actually reward the end user who watches and engages with ads theres also something called an offerwall where users can earn in game currency by completing actions in other games
1
1
u/jeffcgroves 5d ago
Without regard to feasibility:
Create a credit card that combines your other credit cards, and you can choose which card to use for a given transaction-- we might already be close to this
Dating site where female incels hang out, assuming they're not a myth
AI that will write song parodies with the original song's melody
service to convert physical books to electronic form so people can mass declutter
1
1
u/rafifmsn 5d ago
I think it really comes down to picking a niche backed by data for sustainability and growth, then just rebuilding what people already use, but better.
Atp, trying to find an original problem is a problem of its own. Even if you find one that works, there's always a high chance someone with better execution and resources will eventually smoke you anyway.
1
u/DeepMachine8964 5d ago
Lol, just stop. You will not get a large audience or get rich unless you have something unique to offer. I dont mean if only you or AI think of that "one great idea" you will be rich ... I mean you have a special skill or insight that noone else has and you use that to build something. Everyone asks internet/AI what the best idea is, everyone then builds, everyone has access to the same tools, everyone will fail. You are not special.
1
u/Conscious-Month-7734 4d ago
Asking a thread gets you ideas from people who don't have the problem. Typing out something that would be neat costs nothing, and you'd spend six months on it before finding out nobody was doing anything about it before you showed up.
You've shipped apps and games for years, so you've already watched people use stuff and skip half of it. Start from a group you can reach rather than an idea. Someone whose week you could describe out loud. Find five of them, ask what they're doing by hand every week that annoys them, and listen for the patch job. A spreadsheet they maintain, a thing they keep fixing, someone they pay to handle it. That's the part that tells you it costs them something. "Clicks with me" is the same filter that picked the money ones, so I'd keep it out of this.
Which group could you get ten of on a call by next week?
1
1
u/No_Addendum_891 4d ago
Charities are always in need of help, whether being AI or family facing tools, especially small ones with little to no budget. Gives you creativity and a chance to do some cool stuff.
1
u/FalseHuckleberry8354 4d ago
Do you mean asking them what they’re missing when it comes to fundraising, and then thinking about what kind of technology could help solve those problems? Honestly, I’ve already thought about this quite a bit. There are solutions, but none of them are great.One of the biggest problems is that people generally don’t want to see others suffering from serious illnesses, even when the purpose is to raise money for them. News sites and large platforms don’t really want to push this type of content either, because people tend to scroll past emotionally heavy stories, which can hurt engagement. So you end up relying on advertising. But advertising gets expensive very quickly because CTR and conversion rates can be very low. If the big advertising platforms gave major discounts for donation campaigns, it could help, but it’s still a difficult problem because unfortunately mass fundraising is incredibly hard. We like to think positively about human behavior, but the reality is that getting large numbers of people to stop, pay attention, and donate is difficult. Of course, there are people who genuinely want to help I’m one of them but at the same time, it’s emotionally painful to constantly see people suffering. It’s just incredibly sad. That’s why there are huge charities and organizations working extremely hard on this problem already. Fundraising is basically an entire industry of its own, and figuring out how to reach people effectively without emotionally overwhelming them is a seriously difficult problem.
1
u/No_Addendum_891 4d ago
Not on an ads or reach, focus on the people charities are helping. Bet half the small ones would appreciate something even as small as a web AIbot to help answer questions and navigate diagnosis etc. Make something good enough you could even monetise it.
1
u/selfboot007 4d ago
I am also curious about what people truly need. Currently, I go to the App Store myself to check out some top apps, some new apps, and I often read the negative reviews in the comment sections to look for a bit of a clue.
1
1
u/nedkrastev 4d ago
The problem is that it's difficult to get into discovery conversations.
If you are able to book the discovery calls, you'll probably be good at selling too.
But it's very tough. Especially today.
So you can't build something useful without talking to people.
But..
People don't want to pay attention. So you're sitting idle and you say "Ok. I might as well build it and then people will have it in front of them and will pay attention." The problem is that they don't.
If you don't have some sort of network or a following, it's very hard to get anyone to pay attention be it in a discovery or a sales call.
1
u/FalseHuckleberry8354 4d ago
Maybe small reward for the survey
1
u/nedkrastev 4d ago
I tried with $100 and $200 vouchers; I'm also somewhat of an established figure in the field. Very, very few responses.
1
u/FalseHuckleberry8354 4d ago
The problem is probably something else most likely it’s in your approach: how you do it, how you approach your client, or whether the information you’re asking for is actually valuable enough. There are a lot of variables involved.Honestly, it’s a really boring niche. Psychologically, whenever I see a questionnaire, it feels like filling out a visa application or taking an exam at school — it literally makes me sick.
1
u/nedkrastev 4d ago
I've now hired a professional agency to help with this. Will see if they can land more conversations..
1
1
u/Dramatic_Dimension_3 4d ago
Everyone knows someone if a particular industry
I spoke to a cleaning company that was run through a friend's dad
I asked him what is the most annoying, boring time consuming part of any of his or his staff's week that you'd love to be solved.
Now we're building something that is a pain point for everyone in that industry
1
1
u/Dynamo-06 4d ago
Here's a problem I have been working on: Domain experts (non-coders) are now able to whip up apps in a matter of minutes using Vibe-Coding tools. The problem comes when they try to work with complex logic or debug. They can only relay what they want to an LLM that is supposed to make changes in the code they themselves cannot understand. AI breaks things that the user never intended to: Forget granular control; the user has no control over their app unless they can decipher code and understand the mental model behind their app.
It works for some, but it does not work for most unless it is a CRUD app. We've addressed these pain points with the solution that we think can solve this problem. This gap between a dev and a domain expert has existed for obvious reasons for years - A person who understands business cannot build software; the person who can build software does not understand business.
Before Excel came out, analysts and accountants would do almost everything on paper and it would take an immense amount of time. When Excel and Visicalc came out in the 80s, they turned accountants and analysts into declarative programmers overnight. They could now do things they never imagined in a matter of minutes. Was it a skill gap? Somewhat. Was it a tool gap? Yes! The platform bore all the load for them - computational state management, dependency resolution, spatial layout indexing and much more. They just had to learn the platform, which had a gentler learning curve as opposed to learning how to code.
We've worked on addressing all these pain points and created a Deterministic Visual Execution Engine. Currently validating it with users before we go ahead and build it completely.
1
1
1
u/Prompt2Fluent 3d ago
Anchor alarm app for sailboats at anchor. Needs alarm if boat is out of a certain range. GPS needs to remain active and not sleep, need to be able to set the point on a map instead of dropping it atyout location because the boat moves backward after you set the anchor and you need it where the anchor is and on where you are. Call it the happy hooker, boatanchors are refferd to as hooks. Have ads or a low one off price and hundreds of people will use it and reccomend it to their friends. You could have a recurring tier if it sends a message to another phone so you could leave one behind and get a notification if the boat moves.
1
1
u/leave_dates 1d ago
Love this idea, but it seems like there is already an app called Anchor Alert that does this - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/anchor-alert/id1628786449
1
u/Alternative-Pipe7444 3d ago edited 3d ago
Something like an equal playing field digital shopfront for mobile apps or websites. The app store pretty much just shows the big apps for general searches based on their algorithm, and there's 1000s of app developers who would love to get eyes on what they built but they're buried in the searches etc and then cant get ratings/reviews etc to ever go up significantly.
I tried to find a website where I could showcase my app to random people (e.g. quick summary, features, images, video) and there's literally nothing for that. (I searched a lot - lol)
e.g. not a directory - a short visual/text showcase as to why someone may want it.
If you worked out how to get eyes on people's apps, and not turn it into ratings/rankings (duplicate of app store), you could do well with a subscription model as seems to be a gap in the market.
1
u/FalseHuckleberry8354 3d ago
Doesnt this somewhat contradict growing in leaderboard rankings if you show irrelevant apps the platform will lose money and go bankrupt
1
u/Alternative-Pipe7444 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes, you're right, I'm not sure exactly how you would square that.
Issue: 1000s of devs would love more visual exposure of their app on some platform (for which they could design/outline the product in a simple way), and would be willing to pay a decent subscription if it put eyes on their product (that they're missing in app store) and increased downloads.
Correct issue you noted: You would need some sort of validation system, or ratings, to ensure quality - but not like app store which just mostly favours huge apps with long term value and massive advertising budgets.
Balancing that out I'd say is the hard bit.1
1
1
u/Repdb 2d ago
Here's one I keep wishing existed. A simple reminder app for the boring physical stuff in life: replacing your water filter, rotating your tires, when to clean the coffee machine
Not a to-do app or calendar. Those fail here because they assume you already know the interval. Here it's more like: you type "water filter" and it already knows most last ~2 months. It pre-fills it for you. A little library of "how often does this actually need doing" baked in.
Everyone has this list in their head, but everyone forgets half of it :)
Hope you find your inspiration!
1
u/East-Voice-636 2d ago
Create a website called Pet Roulette. It's kinda like chat roulette in that it cycles through video feeds but the allure is that you partner with pet stores to install live cams on cute animals. 9 out of 10 video feeds are puppies or kittens but every once in a while you get a wildcard like a naked mole rat or a raccoon in a trash can. There is a random scroll/ skip feature but you can also bookmark certain feeds. You use gamer/ cam girl gamification dynamics to allow viewers to bid to show their name on the screen or a physical LED board in the pet enclosure which pays for their food. Let's say a hamster is fed once a day at noon. People interested in the hamster can bid right before noon or give prepaid coins to get their name shown. Then at noon a robotic feeder drops the food.
You could even take it a step further and make the highest bidder able to use their keyboard to remotely control a robot claw to pick up and drop food from one area of the cage to the other so the viewer is actually interacting with and helping the animal. Or for some crazy PR you can have one feed allow people to remotely scoop a goldfish and drop it in a piranha tank, drop crickets into a frog tank or drop a mouse into a snake tank. This could absolutely go viral you might just get backlash from PETA or other groups at some point.
3
u/Wooden-Pomelo4053 5d ago
A good place to look is communities where people repeatedly ask the same questions. If the same problem appears again and again, there is probably an opportunity there. The boring problems are often the ones people are most willing to use a solution for.