> but everything I create or try to do seems like there are already dozens of other solutions doing the same thing
The major lesson I have after +20 years doing this: WHO CARES.
This concern is valid for a huge company or anybody that wanna get like 70% of the whole market.
For solo/small teams? Think of yourself as a street cart vendor that sells hamburgers, and is located on the front of mac donalds.
They still sell.
What you has but not others is that you are small, and is the actual person other person can , FOR REAL, talk about your product.
That is the whole thing of working as a freelancer, solo, small business. You can, FOR REAL, provide personal training/consulting/support, etc.
And that works even if you just take the product made by the big corporation and just know how to use it. There is business in being the guy who knows Excel well.
This is how you make great margins, work with people who want you to work with them, and you have no fear of the competition increasing CPC etc. Can also be more rewarding.
Once you have a decade in startups, you realize this is incredibly important. Not only that, when you do seek funding, being unique is a plus: You'll be dismissed outright or you'll be accepted. That's way more useful that being "in the ball pit" for "possible investment in our coming financial years".
Oh nevermind, I must have misread your comment (or you updated it) to represent the opposite. I think looking for under-seen/under-resolved niches is useful.
In reality your business is somewhere in a small side street no one ever visits together with 100 other small businesses and McDonalds has flashing ads for their business at each street entrance
> For solo/small teams? Think of yourself as a street cart vendor that sells hamburgers, and is located on the front of mac donalds.
What a great analogy! I always thought of how many lawyer offices there are, from single lawyer to multiple lawyers, but I like your take on it much better.
The problem with this analogy is that in the case of software, you basically have teleportation so you can go to any dry cleaner you want instantaneously.
Except that you often don’t know the alternative. You might suspect it must exist, but finding things on the internet is increasingly difficult.
Same is actually true with the dry cleaners. Maybe there’s one on the back of your block that’s the same distance from your door as the one you go to, but you never walked around to that side before. As far as you know, you are already using the closest one.
Any time I buy software I start by reviewing the top ~5 vendors that are easy to find. So I know the alternatives and just need to decide which one I think will work best for my needs. It's extremely rare that I encounter something novel and incorporate it into my life be it personal/business. Once I use something, I might be more aware of what friction I am encountering and I might review the available solutions again to see if one of them solves it more elegantly. In any case, I compare alternatives that are readily available. Sometimes I ask around or stumble on conversation that surfaces a new product that has a different approach to the same old problems and I feel like "they get me". Those products tend to catch fire.
Exactly, if you are waiting to make something that very very few ppl are doing, you will be waiting a lifetime. That or the market is extremely small to be profitable.
As my old business mentor often said: if nobody else is doing a thing, there's very likely a reason why. Learn what that reason is before you start doing it.
The major lesson I have after +20 years doing this: WHO CARES.
This concern is valid for a huge company or anybody that wanna get like 70% of the whole market.
For solo/small teams? Think of yourself as a street cart vendor that sells hamburgers, and is located on the front of mac donalds.
They still sell.
What you has but not others is that you are small, and is the actual person other person can , FOR REAL, talk about your product.
That is the whole thing of working as a freelancer, solo, small business. You can, FOR REAL, provide personal training/consulting/support, etc.
And that works even if you just take the product made by the big corporation and just know how to use it. There is business in being the guy who knows Excel well.