What are the money making ideas that you have that most people who fit the HN demographic could likely start and make some money doing?
Passive income businesses or businesses where an average 16 year old can put in $1 and get $1.25 out are liable to get 'disrupted' by someone who is willing to put in $1 to $1.15 out or someone savvy who can put in $0.90 to get $1.25 out. Terrible market and it's exactly why you see them on YouTube selling courses on how to do it or even just saying their entire business plan because it's that brain-dead.
They are just bad businesses because they have no defensibility or IP generated. Yes, you don't have to work to earn necessarily but you are still hitched quite heavily to being hands-on.
My opinion is a good "boring" business is something that passes unremarkably at Thanksgiving and will never be on magazine covers, also good competition to prove the market is strong enough to have another entrant
If you can tell someone what the business is and they go "So anyway"... fantastic business. You don't want any venture-backed companies whose business plan starts and ends at a snow shovel and a pile of money. You will lose unless your plan is the same and you either have a bigger pile of money or your competitor is much worse. The ideal space is likely an established market with sleepy / stagnant competitors so you can carve off a few percent by addressing what the market is not and having a few million+ a year in revenue.
Some ideas:
* Try to target niche non-technical industries where you know people who can validate, ask where they use spreadsheets.
* Wait for a company to be acquired and build a replacement. Acquirers usually abandon or ruin the product.
* Similar to above, find a service that was once good but has since pivoted the product to focus on the top-of-market whales. Things like gating access behind length sales processes and complicating the product to meet those requirements. Usually at this point existing SMB customers see billing hikes, can't get the time of day and start looking for alternatives. Build a simpler, self-service, down market competitor.
- Google analytics alternatives, like Fathom, Plausible, Simple Analytics, Umami.
- Uptime monitoring services
- Logging, server-side logging, but these seem to be larger companies now like NewRelic, DataDog, Pagerduty
- Niche-specific file hosting, like UploadThing for Next.js, essentially a super simple way to host/upload assets for your Next.js project that removes some of the annoyances when dealing with uploading.
- For this one, I think startup costs might be high but I feel like being a domain registrar is a boring business that could have long term passive possibilities.
- For a web dev HN user, I think one of the more "boring" ideas is to have a web dev agency that focuses on an offline business whose owners are not tech savvy or care not to be. I'm in Portland, OR and I've noticed a few web dev agencies being the main ones creating basic/static websites for clients ranging from plumbing business, landscaping, and other home related repairs. Or for family run business that just care about a simple online presences (hours, contact info, some basic details about their business).
It doesn't seem like his endeavors require a TON of smarts beyond knowing how to sharpen blades and run the mill. But the human interaction aspects of running the business seem to be why he succeeds at it. He's prompt, thorough, upfront, on time, and a VERY hard worker. Lots of these aspects of running a boring business seem to be done very poorly in general, often because the boring business owner hires inexpensive staff, so set yourself apart from the rest by being really good at them if you start a boring business.
You'll find things like website development, a need for lightweight CRM, regulatory needs, accounting, etc.
You should price 10% of the savings. So if you save a company $100k/yr, you should charge $10k/yr.
You'll get a benefit, they'll get a benefit, and you can prove that your product is worthwhile to other companies.
Much of it is through integrations not code. If I wanted, I could just cut out the custom integrations and just rely on plug-n-play / third party integrations.
It's an honest living. But I am uninspired by it, so am pivoting.
Otherwise, making services and seeing what sticks. There are millions of these that go unnoticed but are still going by on API fees. Or they just go nowhere :P
Are you just asking for easy, low-tech (or lower/simpler tech) biz ideas or what?
Laundromat etc have higher value multiplier because they’re passive. Something like a large plumbing or trade business is great because you can have someone manage it but lower multiple.
Real estate can be good but typically hard to do better than 10% cash on cash return. Vs a business could be 100% on cash return. But obviously more risk and active management needed, and the real estate is more likely to appreciate. All about risk vs reward
Use your technical skills to automate 80% of the job, then hire the last 20%
Assets can be anything : an online tool, saas, an ebook, graphics, icons, stocks etc.
So, create or acquire digital assets.