Featured article by Jaqueline Smith, Inedependent Technology Author
There’s a balancing act that goes into any new startup. On the one hand, you want to do something innovative and to fill a void in the market that hasn’t been properly serviced.
On the other hand, you don’t necessarily want to re-invent the wheel or be too far ahead of your time, because there are so many examples of companies getting out there first, only to have a bigger competitor come along and take over their market share by improving the blueprint. It’s not always ideal to be the trailblazer, sometimes it’s better to be the company that comes along and improves on a proven formula.
You can try to create a brand-new market from scratch, but it’s an uphill battle. Here are some ideas for tech startups, and some tips to keep in mind that will help you further develop these ideas, or use them as a launchpad for your own creation. Some of these might sound similar to ideas that would have worked in 2017, 2016, 2010, and might not sound incredibly groundbreaking, but remember, that’s okay sometimes! Good ideas are timeless.
A few tips:
Look for a market that has frustration and find an easy way to solve that problem.
People have made fortunes in the world of real estate, for example, by creating software that helps agents keep track of their listings, appointments, and so on. It might not be as hot as coming up with the next huge social network, but finding a big problem and fixing it can make you rich, even if it’s not a problem that millions of people have. If you can fix something for a small group, the world is a big enough place that it can still be very worthwhile.
Come up with a real plan on how you can improve on what already exists.
Just saying, “We’re just going to be better” isn’t a plan. How are you going to be better? What’s going to set your start-up apart from the crowd?
Don’t be afraid to make money.
Everyone is aiming to have the next huge round of venture capital funding for their startup, to a point where they’re not even worrying about making a profitable business, they’re just trying to make something to impress investors. That’s one way to do it, but if you can hold onto your equity and bootstrap it rather than selling out for fancy offices and quick cash, you’ll have no trouble finding investors easily once you’re profitable. Many of today’s hot new tech startups are losing tons of money on a monthly basis, with no profit in sight, and there are some investors that are okay with that, but it’s never hard to find backers when you’ve actually proven that you can make money with your startup.
Now, here are a few business ideas that you can pursue, based on trends and demand that we’ve noticed:
Anonymous social media
While Facebook is based on using your real name and photos, and Twitter has discussed moving in the same direction, there’s demand for a platform where people can post anonymously. Some say that being anonymous brings out the worst in people online, and that can certainly be true in some cases, but there are places in the world where speaking truth to power can be dangerous, and without anonymity, it can be very hard to get the truth out. Perhaps there’s room for an anonymous social network where people can be completely honest with their ideas, rather than trying to impress people or to show how great their lives are, creating a false narrative of themselves, which we see so commonly on sites like Instagram or Facebook.
A new boom in eCommerce
eCommerce is nothing new, in fact it helped law the foundation for the internet as we know it today. You can find just about anything on the massive sites like Amazon, but there’s still a lot of room for more niched ventures. If you can find a specific market and serve them better than Amazon does by having expertise, great content on your site, and a selection of products that suit your audience perfectly, there’s lots of room to grow.
News
The news, and news websites, have been around forever… but many people around the world are growing frustrated at the bias they see in news. If someone could come up with a way to tell the stories that matter, in a factual way, without inserting a narrative or leaving out certain facts, there is a huge demand for that from people who just want to know what’s going on. In a world dominated by clickbait and “junk food” versions of news, more and more people are just looking for facts and the truth.
Affiliate websites
Here’s an example of an old idea that can be improved upon. Creating an affiliate website is nothing new, but there are still unique ways to go about it, with the common denominator being to bring tons of value to your readers. It’s not just about product reviews anymore, or recommendations, it’s about providing a legitimately valuable service. For example, AskGamblers works to help people resolve issues and disputes with online casino sites, while maintaining a database of which companies are the most user-friendly and try the hardest to make things right. They go further than any other gambling affiliate sites, and it’s why they’ve become the leader in that space.
Those are just a few ideas of areas where we see potential moving forward, hopefully something here has helped make something click and gotten your wheels spinning as far as ideas are concerned.
