HACKER Q&A
📣 loboda_ro

Do I have to know in advance on how to make money from a side project?


Many YC videos and Paul Graham's essays emphasize the value of discovering startup ideas organically, often through building side projects that you are interested in. But does it have to be something I am interested to build AND I know someone who would pay money for this? Or I can just start building staff to solve my problems.


  👤 cameron_b Accepted Answer ✓
It is good exercise to build things to solve your own problems. You might validate the "Would other people have this problem as well?" question but "Would they pay for it?" is a separate question.

In theory you have a lead funnel for your project. The wider end is people who might find it interesting and check it out. Narrower, closer in, are the people who might use your project regularly. Even narrower is the section of people who might pay for a thing.

You invest your time into a thing, and pay in that way. So there is at least one person, at least part of the time in the "Paying customer" category. The more compelling your product, and the more value you get from it ( As the primary user model ) the more likely others will find that they might also pay for it.

It is not wrong to build things to solve your own problems, its a quick feedback loop for your customer ( you ).

But if you want to build to make money, you might find a problem that you identify with personally among a group of motivated problem-havers, and solve that.


👤 verdverm
No, but it's a good idea to have some hypotheses or plans. They will likely be wrong at first, but that is better than nothing. Often you can look around at similar things to find some decent starting points

👤 shoo
what are you trying to achieve from the side project? do you have a goal in mind?