Coming up with idea that can make 10k-25k per month?
Jake A
3 replies
I have been studying market and have came up with a few ideas. I tried testing a couple of them which got nowhere.
Reading stories of founders who made 10k-25k MRR, it seems that most of these people were working on something similar in consulting roles or they had in-depth knowledge of industries(sales/marketing founders).
How do I, as a low key backend engineer, who has mostly worked at mega corps come up with idea that can make at least 25k MRR? As some of you might have witnessed, engineering remains far removed from business.
Second part is, where do I find people who are going to pay for my app? Cold call or cold emails have very low conversion rates from my observation.
What is it that your company would pay $200 a year?
Replies
Sai Arora@saiarora
How are you testing your ideas? As a backend engineer, you have a pretty unique insight into really meaty technical problems that can be solved. you're also part of an audience that is (usually) very open to new ideas/products/ways of doing things.
As you look back at your experiences, try to recollect every problem or challenge you ran into at work that has really annoyed/frustrated you, your manager or your team. Write all of these down.
Once you have these problems written down, you'll want to choose one and think through who else may have this problem. think about those personas and write them down. clearly define who they are (example: Engineering Team lead, product manager, backend engineer, etc).
Once you have your personas clearly defined, go through your personal network and see how many of these personas you have a 1st degree connection with. Reach out to them and ask them if they've experienced the same problems as you. Take them through a customer discovery process where you learn more about how they deal w/ that problem and what they've tried to do to solve for it. don't pitch anything to them at this point. Should be a 20 minute conversation at most. Repeat this with other folks that fit that persona until you start to hear the same feedback over and over.
Take all of the feedback you've collected and identify any patterns that pop up in the data. Look at how all of the folks you've spoken to have tried to solve their problem and come up with what you think is a better solution. Come up with what you believe is the minimum viable product that gets to the heart of solving this problem. You dont have to code it out. Instead you can mock it up in something like Figma or XD and take it back to share w/ the folks you've spoken with. Show them your idea and tell them how their lives would improve from it. Ask them if they'd pay to use it. If they say yes, either have them sign a contract, collect a credit card and bill at an agreed upon date, get a letter of intent signed (usually more enterprise focused) or have them pay you with a check and then get to work building your product!
In my experience, nobody bats an eye at $200/year. A front line manager can easily expense that on their credit card without having to check in with anyone. Think simple calendar tools, productivity apps, and other microsaas products. If a problem is painful enough, people will be willing to pay almost anything!
Let me know if this is helpful. Happy to share what's worked (and hasn't) for me.
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@saiarora I would add to this excellent advice, it shouldn't be an exciting coding problem which most of the devs would happily solve themselves at the expence of the company. It should be a boring administrative (or such) problem, like monitorin, error collection, etc. OR it can be totally unrelated to soft/hardware and more about team interaction (the new Work From Home topic is especially hot these days), documentation, company rules, transparency, etc etc.
