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Ask HN: What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

by abrocks on 11/24/22, 9:43 AM with 195 comments

• by valdiorn on 11/24/22, 11:31 AM

  My startup ideas :)

  I've been designing and building audio software and hardware components for musicians since I was a teenager. VST plugins to start, then moved on to digital guitar effects and now Eurorack synth modules. I've also built custom midi controllers, traditional guitar pedals, you name it, I've designed and built it.

  I have absolutely no doubt that I could build a small, semi-successful company around these products, that would turn over 200-300k per year, with a nice profit margin. In fact, I've made quite detailed business models which make me very confident in that.

  My problem, however, is that I am extremely well employed (like probably many other readers here :) and that just won't compete with my current paycheck; which also comes with job security, low stress, and vacation days (I'm on the UK). These ideas would also be very difficult or impossible to grow into million dollar+ annual sales, as they are targeted at very niche audiences.

  So I've been stuck in this half-way place, where I have a bunch of products, mostly finished, even polished (and I work on this stuff because I LOVE doing it, that's the only reason), and every time I have to make a decision whether to open source it and give it away or try to monetise it. So far, it's all gone the open source way, but I have a couple of projects I'm holding back because I think I might be able to sell them to another company for a decent amount.

  Thinking about all those meta/alphabet/twitter employees being let go these days, I wouldn't be surprised if we're about to see an explosion in cool, scrappy tech startups, from people who've been in my situation, and decided to use this as an opportunity to build their little dream startup - I hope so!

• by dsr_ on 11/24/22, 1:32 PM

  There's always room at the bottom in logistics and scheduling. Find a local business that currently depends on guesswork, intuition and experience in managing their inventory or supplies or other shipments. Every bakery and independent pizza shop has point-of-sale software now, but how many have back-end software that reads the sales figures and can tell them to order [sugar, flour, cheese] before they run out? Even better if it looks back at previous years and suggests appropriate increases for holidays, school graduations and similar periodic events.

  Once you've got the structure and interface right, start customizing according to requirements. Does a rural area run on delivered kerosene and propane? Schedule deliveries to customers according to the local temperatures and a per-client adjustment reflecting their historical usage.

  Most of all, make it easy and obvious for your clients to use every day. Talk to them about their professional networks -- is there a forum or a mailing list where they discuss the business side? Get mentioned, get recommended. Be easy to talk to.

• by shireboy on 11/24/22, 1:52 PM

  I have often thought someone could make solid income going around to storage facilities, garages, attics etc and scanning in old photos and memorabilia. My dad has his mothers’, grandparents, and maybe further back in storage. Doesn’t want to send it off but does want it digitized, but doesn’t have time or equipment to do himself (nor do I). Some of it could probably be sold on eBay. So it sits and collects dust and storage fees with an uncertain future.

  Seems like the perfect job for a entrepreneurial student or retiree. Would be hard to scale though unless you built up a crew of people doing it.

• by drdrek on 11/24/22, 3:03 PM

  Stand up from the computer and walk out the door, pretty sure you'll find your local problems there. Do local brewers need better distribution to stores? Can you connect local handymen with clients? Can you organize local neighborhood cleanup days, maybe supported by local businesses? You'll be amazed what can be done with the technology of outside, its like the internet just with real people! :) Some call it web 4.0

• by robocat on 11/24/22, 8:03 PM

  $100k financially makes little sense for any professional because it completely ignores the risk attached - I suspect you are between 1 and 2 orders out (although you are very unclear how much time you are looking at spending).

  I suspect it is easier to think of it in time invested and returned: if you invest a year of time at a 10x risk, you need to get 10 years of early retirement to cover that risk. That is easier to back-calculate how much you need to bank to reward your risk - 10 years of after tax income is a huge figure for most people (far far more than your $100k).

  VCs target 30-times return for each individual investment to cover their risk, and they spread their risks over multiple investments. You usually have only one concentrated investment, so a sensible target profit for yourself alone could easily be $10 million if you have high earnings, and the revenue target is probably much much higher than that (depending on profit margin, and dilution, etcetera).

  There are a few mitigations that could lower the multiplier. I regarded starting a business as university-of-practicality, so I also valued learning. I had also said no to previous valuable opportunities in my past, so I knew the regret and opportunity cost of saying no. If you can do something on the side and slowly ramp up the proof-of-profitability, you can dramatically reduce risk and so far lower profitability is needed (but beware of the slow ugly death at one_second_per_second of time wasted on a failing business). Many people value autonomy highly (although beware that it is common to make clients your boss, and end up with a lack of autonomy in your own business).

  Background: I founded a business over a decade ago that has let me semi-retire, however in hindsight I am still unsure it was worthwhile, because there are other serious costs and risks beyond my time investment.

• by motohagiography on 11/24/22, 1:25 PM

  There was one I looked into building to solve a problem, which was gasket printing. If you are having motorcycle or other engine repair done, waiting for a gasket can take a week or sometimes more depending on supplier location, and it's something printed from gasket paper.

  A website where you can print aftermarket gaskets on demand, and even do it with CAD files or derive them from edge detection in photos would make its money by shipping faster than OEMs, and without worrying about inventory. Retooling an existing custom sticker printing business would do it. Unit margins are like 100x the cost of the paper, and shipping cost margin is the other one.

• by afigkka on 11/24/22, 1:19 PM

  in the UK most villages/small towns without a school have very old residents with no real village population replacement (people die of old age and the big old cold houses are bought by increasingly wealthy retirees leaving urban environments). The current residents need increasing amounts of care and infrastructure but there isn't anybody nearby of working age (compounded by the fact that NIMBY policies have driven village houses to unobtainable prices for average families and rentals are usually very rare).

  more of a socio-economic observation but it's a problem that needs solving for each village - the current solution is government subsidy from urban areas to pay for care workers and pharmacy to drive around all day in the countryside to see people for a few mins each

  I'm thinking if each rich old person in the village paid a subscription for a dedicated local care team who lived together in a nice house in the village (like 30x people paying £1000 a month to support 5 people) then that would be a balance for a very decent care wage + consistent high quality care

• by raunometsa on 11/24/22, 12:54 PM

  Not looking to promote my site here but I will do it anyway because it may be useful for you: https://microfounder.com

  There are currently 200 founders making $1.6M per month with their solo startups.

• by hnfong on 11/24/22, 1:23 PM

  I'm involved in maintaining a dictionary website for Cantonese. We're not strapped for cash since expenses are minimal, but if we did put up ads there (according to Google's estimate) the yearly revenue might be in the say 10+k range. So the business itself at "10 P/E" would be a roughly 100k dollar business. (FWIW, I believe the estimate is probably higher than the would-be real numbers, but then we haven't finished the dictionary itself yet.)

  I think there's a lot of small-medium sized websites that fall into such a category.

• by leros on 11/24/22, 2:19 PM

  My favorite $100k idea to share is starting a landscaping business. The startup cost is small, you grow through hustle and good work, and the ability to expand to multiple employees/crews is there as you expand.

  I think it's something just about anyone can do as it doesn't require special training.

• by HermanMartinus on 11/24/22, 3:19 PM

  I work on 2 $100k ideas

  Bear Blog (https://bearblog.dev) JustSketchMe (https://justsketch.me)

  Both are profitable enough to keep me quite comfortable while being niche enough to not appeal to any company with VC funding.

• by mamcx on 11/24/22, 9:05 PM

  I work on a niche eCommerce app (https://www.bestsellerapp.net) that I only sell in Colombia for now.

  Is mostly about making orders/invoices for small companies.

  A LOT of people are like me that work in this space that you never heard of. Doing the "same" kind of apps that have a bigger brand but because we serve locally can do a better job there.

  ---

  Other option is open source. I think https://tablam.org could become an Access/excel option for my customers for the same reasons.

  Open source itself is not very profitable (heck, I love to work more on TablaM than my ecommerce app but that one is what bring food).

• by gofreddygo on 11/24/22, 4:48 PM

  For months now, I've been thinking and backing off from building a virtual queue for small shops (think barbers, food stalls at events, anything where people queue up)

  Scan a qr code, get in line. Or via a url or app.

  Sounds simple enough, useful enough. Friends easily pointed out issues with how this could go wrong and with very little extra time after work, I dropped it.

  Comments on this thread just stirred it all up.

• by s3000 on 11/24/22, 12:50 PM

  The fair ticket sale auction from this [1] submission. Sell concert tickets in a Dutch auction to prevent scalpers.

  This will remain small because the profitable real estate is locked but it could be an option for the remaining small venues.

  [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33666013

• by gnrlst on 11/24/22, 12:44 PM

  Plugins for various things - browsers (Firefox / Chrome extensions), apps (Figma), and platform providers (Salesforce, Shopify, etc). Find a feature that is needed but not offered, build a plugin for it, sell. Some of these have built-in monetization infrastructure so you don't need to roll your own.

• by protoduction on 11/24/22, 12:05 PM

  I think the main direction of $$$K dollar ideas are those in the area of consulting, do those count? It can scale well beyond that, but at that point you're an agency.

  I believe that coming up with product ideas that can work at the indie level (bootstrapped/without raising millions) is a matter of training, validating the idea is the hardest part (and not falling into the trap of building it first). The main target of those ideas is often something that can sustain you with under a hundred customers, which rules out building a new social network.

  One idea I had recently is on the edge of consumers and businesses: it might make sense to have groupon-like websites for niches. These could be geographical, or around a certain activity. For instance if you are into craft beer, why not create a "deal" website for it? Call up shops that sell brewing equipment, walk in to local bars and ask if they would like to come up with some craft beer tasting event. The model is here that you get a kickback if people take you up on your offers. The more niche the better.. It could be as specific as "young parents who love craft beer and live in New York". That sounds like it could be in the 100k range.

  A small plug, for fun I've been writing up some ideas that fit this description [0].

  [0]: https://indieideas.substack.com/archive?sort=new

• by 3pt14159 on 11/24/22, 12:48 PM

  Call around 100 high net worth individuals. Tell them you're looking to build an app to help them manage all aspects off their life. Relationship with spouse, how to handle vices, deal flow, whatever. The point is that there are a lot of high net worth people that want something to simplify their life.

  For example, "when I get in the car and it is after 6pm but before 9pm and the car is headed west on the 401, text my wife that I just got on the highway and I'm headed home."

  Charge $8k per month. Someone will take you up on it.

• by urfired on 11/24/22, 2:22 PM

  > What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

  Paying $8 for Twitter Blue

• by cranium on 11/24/22, 2:41 PM

  I would say any itch you get during the day could be a 100k idea, but don't forget to search if there is a suitable solution. I think too many programmers want to code the wheel when something already exists. And if it's unwieldy to use, try to acquire the product and repackage it for a non-dev audience.

  And look at https://tinyprojects.dev/projects, it has some 100k ideas (imho).

• by gbruins on 11/24/22, 8:48 PM

  A 'house doctor'. Perhaps a subscription service where someone routinely (annually?) inspects your home for potential issues before they become a bigger problem: termites, roof/gutters, electrical, plumbing, yard drainage, foundation, etc.

• by tyingq on 11/24/22, 2:31 PM

  You could try working in small walled gardens. Like, for example, extension stores for various shopping cart software. Lurk around the forums for something like opencart, shopify, etc, and you can usually find some niche that isn't covered. Like a module for a lesser known payment gateway. Or find a popular addon that's overpriced, buggy, etc, and release a competitor.

• by themoonisachees on 11/24/22, 1:37 PM

  10k idea at best:

  I am the creator of 2bored2wait [0], a proxy that does stuff that is useful if you are a regular player on the minecraft server 2b2t.org. the current implementation is buggy, slow, in javascript and has a lot of tech debt.

  An interesting fact about 2b2t is that because it is an anarchy server, it has not rules against using cheats and players won't get banned for using them. This means that there is a subset of players with too much money that likes to spend it on some flavor of paid hacked clients, some with monthly subscription.

  I think there is a business somewhere to rewrite 2bored2wait in a faster language, integrate it well in a hacked client and/or as a service and sell that for a monthly fee or whatever, but i haven't even had the drive to do it for the sake of open source, even less so for creating a saas product that at most 100 people would use.

• by suzzer99 on 11/24/22, 5:19 PM

  Retro-themed hipster mini-golf, with glowing balls, good food and an alcoholic Icee machine. Ideally called Astro-golf, with a bunch of old rocket-ships and space stuff scavenged from a long defunct mini-golf or similar amusement park from the 50s-70s.

• by samsquire on 11/24/22, 7:37 PM

  Let me share an idea.

  Imagine lifestyle subscriptions. You have an app that is a digital catalogue where you type in your salary and then it tells you what packages you can buy with your salary.

  Think of it as a life personal trainer and adviser with a shop attached.

  * Coffee at Starbucks every other morning on way to work

  * Gym once a week

  * You could get a job at these companies if you tried.

  * I drink coca cola or Pepsi with my pizza

  * I drive a Prius and I want a max 1 hour drive

  * Move to X neighbourhood

  * I am a vegan or I am vegetarian

  * I cook at home

  * I go to a restaurant once a month

  * I subscribe to Netflix only

  * I am learning to play the piano. Here's the address of the place you can learn and practice.

  Use recommendation algorithm and futures to reserve restaurant tables.

  Allow user generated curriculum to get your desired lifestyle.

  Integrate with calendar and meetup.com

  It's a one stop shop for following any dream

  Schedule your life to work towards a goal

• by autotune on 11/24/22, 3:16 PM

  I work in the trucking and consumer banking industry industry. A $100K idea is buying your own truck and becoming a trucker, shipping goods from one state to another. This is a billion dollar industry right now and is booming like crazy.

• by hamilyon2 on 11/24/22, 12:56 PM

  Win a government contract is the easiest and most straightforward one I can think of. Support some legacy codebase, take care of big company stuck with old software, help them transition or offer infinite support.

• by pjc50 on 11/24/22, 12:58 PM

  I think unfortunately here is exactly the wrong place to ask: we're in the center, and close to the pure-tech world. The small business ideas left are, almost by definition, in communities that aren't quite so online and well-connected.

• by Axien on 11/24/22, 8:42 PM

  A “Jump to Conclusions” mat.

• by throwaway0asd on 11/24/22, 1:42 PM

  Things that have to do with code, but not product, that uniquely qualify your existence are your 6 figure ideas. Examples:

  * Architecture - Most people writing code cannot plan, write, or envision an original solution to something wildly ambitious. This takes practice and with enough practice it gets comfortable and easy, but most people writing code will never get to that point. A mastery of architecture is possibly the only way to produce a superior product compared to the competition provided that business requirements remain unchanged.

  * Performance - Astonishingly most people never measure anything unless they are forced to. Learning to measure things (everything) is a cognitive skill and the result is the difference between a 2 hour work day and an 8 hour work day. Measuring things is also the only way to write fast software, because everything else is guessing (and probably guessing wrong by several orders of magnitude). At the end of the day performance is not about how fast something this, but how much faster it is than something else.

  * Writing, especially bridging the gap between technical writing and narrative writing for common people.

• by lucozade on 11/24/22, 12:43 PM

  Putting 10k down at 10-1 on the first race at Chepstow.

• by fuzzfactor on 11/24/22, 4:58 PM

  >What are 100K dollar ideas but not million dollar ideas?

  It's the kind where it's so common you think of one every day.

  It's also not that much, 100K USD has never been lower in value, so that trend is moving in your favor too.

  That's why they say ideas like this are worthless, but they're wrong.

  In perspective, though, when a company pays somebody 50K it really costs the company about 100K anyway, and there are companies all over the place where that's what they pay people who are not expected to produce anything at all. We all know how many bullshit jobs there really are.

  So there's lots of people every day who have ideas more wortwhile than their actual job.

  Every once in a while it's a million dollar idea but it can be kind of hard to tell and usually slips under the radar.

  Since it requires a different type of action to get the ball rolling either way, 10X remains just as far out-of-reach as an uneconomical venture.

  Now the 100K amount is a good example benchmark, but you can also think about things like 250K etc.

• by rdtwo on 11/24/22, 4:41 PM

  Some ideas I had:

  Launching boats as a service. I pick up your boat, launch it and all you have to do is get in. Comes with a matching extraction and cleaning service.

  Online dating management service. Have a process takes photos, creates the profile and then a recurring subscription to have a person do messaging for you and arrange dates. Hire college gals to generate the initial leads.

  A service to tack all the local kids classes and events, keep track of sign up dates and such. Have a super premium service that signs people up automatically when the spots open.

  Extra Garbage pickup as a service. While everyone is required to have basic garbage service you can easily undercut the garbage company for anything non standard or extra.

  Rental service for high quality tools. Let people rent festool, sawstop, and other high end items.

• by helsinkiandrew on 11/24/22, 1:24 PM

  The best of these would be something related to a lifestyle business you are interested in as a hobby or would do for fun anyway. So if it doesn't generate a lot of income you are still having fun - importing/selling wine, something to do with antique motorbikes etc.

  Your question implies you are looking for tech ideas and your skills are in building software or services. The other side is applying high tech to areas of business that aren't very high tech at the moment - think about all the small or local businesses that still thrive that can barely get a website together and couldn't afford to hire a decent developer or even have the skills to manage a software project - if tech can improve that business you can differentiate yourself.

• by thinkmcfly on 11/24/22, 11:29 PM

  There is shitloads of money to be made in Idaho off of the national nuclear labs there. Can you machine simple parts and secure an American supply chain? Can you get security clearance? Can you handle living in that state that has such horrible governance?

• by 1970-01-01 on 11/24/22, 2:29 PM

  An app that inventories all your tools and checks them out when they are borrowed. SMS messages constantly nag your neighbor to return said tool(s) after a specific time interval. Sell with ads or go ad-free for $.99

• by tengwar2 on 11/25/22, 1:35 AM

  One area I find interesting is ergonomic computer keyboards. My daily driver is a Kyria (https://docs.splitkb.com/hc/en-us) running 20cN choc switches. That's one you make and customise yourself, but there are quite a few companies that make their own designs for sale (e.g. https://shop.keyboard.io). These would be of about the scale you mention.

• by lakotasapa on 11/26/22, 4:04 AM

  It's clear to me that very few of the HN'ers have children. As I have a 3yr toddler and trying to help him navigate this somewhat unforgiving ugly world as of now. It's hard for me to find him that isn't ADHD or Corporatized msgs. $100k idea? Make small but meaningful children apps. Just tonight alone trying to steer him away from ADHD inducing mindless apps and videos. I spent $20 more meaningful content for him. I'm looking into this myself as... Necessity is a mother of all inventions.

• by chiefalchemist on 11/24/22, 1:57 PM

  It depends, but it's likely a slight bit too small. If you're single, intend to be, and care bear the risk, it's doable.

  Otherwise, if you hit by a bus (as the saying goes) you're screwed. Worse, your customers are left for dead. It's the morals / ethics of the latter that make such a size tough.

  You want a size that can support two or three total employees. If you're going to serve customers you want some redundancy. Sure, others don't take such precautions, but that doesn't make it right.

• by ano88888 on 11/25/22, 3:54 AM

  The problem is that building and selling a product to 5000 people are probably the same effort as to 5 million . This is the hard part. (software related)

• by karterk on 11/24/22, 1:56 PM

  Every billion dollar idea is a million dollar idea.

  Every million dollar idea is a 100K dollar idea.

  There are always smaller segments within large segments that you can go after.

• by softwaredoug on 11/24/22, 4:08 PM

  These are probably products that come out of freelancing. You see a pattern of a problem that needs to be solved in a domain and couple the product with you consulting. You get a bit of revenue from the product, but maybe also from an ongoing consulting relationship.

• by smarri on 11/24/22, 8:52 PM

  A colleague of mine buys and sells art in his spare time and makes $100k per year

• by thejohnconway on 11/26/22, 3:48 PM

  Managed Mastodon hosting/professionally run and moderated paid-for instances. There are more people joining now than can fit, and there’s definitely a market for both of these things.

• by hardwaresofton on 11/24/22, 3:20 PM

  I've got a whole bag full of em:

  https://unvalidatedideas.com/archive

  The only problem is I can't tell you which ones are the 100k ones...

  I've got a hunch that this one is solidly 100k and not million+:

  https://unvalidatedideas.com/editions/11

  Got all the hallmarks of an idea that is hard to profit/scale:

  - selling to developers

  - content-based (so often very manual at the beginning)

  - absolutely boring (to some people) niche

  [EDIT] - wait no I could see this one possibly getting big, if you strike the right "compliance and security posture" tone.

• by rozenmd on 11/24/22, 12:25 PM

  Uptime monitoring (imho as founder of OnlineOrNot)

• by yen223 on 11/24/22, 1:34 PM

  If your company is paying you $100,000 a year, then whatever it is you're working on this year is worth $100,000 to your company.

• by andyish on 11/24/22, 2:48 PM

  So long as you can sell you just can just about turn any basic business process into a $100k idea.

• by somtingserve on 11/24/22, 2:01 PM

  Not in terms of 'bodyshaming', but the lockdown had done something to many people, hint: i saw some 'superfat' (obese)

  now i thought 'selfdriving refrigiators' maybe a thing, and yes (with few thousand paying customers a month) it may scale to a million-dollar bizz... ^^

• by vcryan on 11/24/22, 1:24 PM

  Ideas that don't have good marketing.

• by entropicgravity on 11/26/22, 5:43 PM

  This question would benefit from a few more orders of magnitude. It's rarely good strategy to start on an idea that can't scale.

• by yuppie_scum on 11/24/22, 1:10 PM

  Kitten mittens

• by leobg on 11/24/22, 7:44 PM

  Gotta reply with an old Elon joke:

  Start with a billion dollar one. :-)

• by moneywoes on 11/24/22, 1:43 PM

  Affiliate marketing

• by dismalpedigree on 11/24/22, 12:39 PM

  Work for somebody else. No startup stress. No need to take it home with you. Consistent schedule. You can easily clear $100k just keeping your head down in a big company.