Let’s start off by clearing ambiguities…
What’s a Solopreneur?
A solopreneur can have multiple definitions. The solopreneur that I’m addressing in this article is a person who has a source of income that puts food on the table (day job), and as a side activity s/he is building a digital product.
While i don’t consider myself a successful solopreneur at least yet, I have had the opportunity to build a few products which all failed and also formed a software development agency that achieved moderate success before exiting after 5 years of operation.
Considering that moderate experience that I had + using some common sense, I tried to put down a guide on how to come up with a product idea that, relative to the average startup idea, can promise a bit more chance of success.
While most funded startups fail, I believe solopreneurs have better chances than startups.
Startups fail because they run out of cash. Solopreneurs fail because they run out of persistence (assuming they have a day job that puts food on the table). A solopreneur can work forever on their project, because 1) they love to work on it and 2) they will face no financial stress like startups do.
You are different
As a solopreneur, you are a special breed of an entrepreneur. You are working alone, and you lack the cash that a “normal” founder has as a result of getting VC fund.
If you start as a solopreneur, and plan to continue as a solopreneur, you have to be sure of one thing: you can’t change the world.
Nobody can change the world alone. So you should keep that in mind when you pick an idea for your new product.
Picking an idea
When it comes to business, the basics are simple and well-known. You have to pick a product the solves a real problem and to make sure there is a market for it. In other words, there are people who are willing to pay for your product.
Now the question is how do you know that there is a market for the idea?
One way is to start researching if there are already existing products that you might consider competitors to yours, and try to gauge how successful they are.
You can do that by googling them, see what their customers are saying about them, check their social media accounts. If a company has a good followership on social media and active for quite some time, that should give an indication that they are successful.
If you couldn’t find a direct competitor, this could be a red flag (more on that later), but try to find where your customers might hang out on the internet, go to them, and ask them directly. They could be on reddit, twitter, instagram, forums, etc.
The idea here is to get in direct contact with a few potential customers, let’s say 10, and try to identify their pain points and see if they would consider your solution, and potentially buying it in the future .
But … don’t trust their answers that much, people might tell you that they would buy your product just to be nice. If you want to gauge if they really mean it, try to ask them a few questions to understand their interests, if they watch movies on Netflix, ask them would they pause their Netflix subscription (or Spotify, apple music, etc) to pay for your product if they wouldn’t have the budget to pay for the two? If your app is providing solid value to customers by either making them money, or saving them time, they wouldn’t be hesitant to give you their money instead of Netflix.
If your product is scratching your own itch then you are in a good position. You are your own customer. Your job is to figure out if there are many people like you that would benefit from your product, and that should be relatively easier to figure out as you are knowledgable about the domain.
Are there solo founders like yourself in the niche who found success?
If yes, this will be a good indication that you can also achieve success.
You can build a better product, you can niche down to appeal to a niche within the niche.
The other question is, is the niche full of VC-funded motherfuckers who are spending money left and right to acquire their customers? If yes, then you will be busted.
At some point in time, the VC funded startup will establish a brand name in the space and gain customer trust because they appear on every ad on the internet, and they will be the default choice to customers. Good luck competing with Skillshare or Udemy if your idea is about building a course hosting website…
You want to conquer a niche that has no dominating brands. A niche that’s exists (market), but is underserved (opportunity), and is small for a VC-funded startup to even care about, but big enough (or forecasted to be) for a solo-entrepreneur to making a living off of it and ride the wave.
Innovation vs Imitation
As a solopreneur, you don’t have the luxury to shake things up that much. You can’t come up with a super innovative idea that would change the world and build it. I mean you can, but good luck doing that without funds.
Imagine you are a solopreneur and you got the idea of Uber, Netflix, or Spotify. Do you think you, alone, will have all what it takes to build them?
I doubt.
On one hand, you will not have the time, money or resources to design, develop, do customer service, marketing, accounting, all at the same time.
On the other hand, if your vision is huge, and you are solo, you might need to spend years working on your project before it sees the light. Unless you enjoy that and you don’t expect any financial return from the project, aka — it’s a hobby — you might want to make things easier for yourself by limiting your scope and reducing your risk.
In this case looking out for niches which are already existing with products that are already there which you can improve on would make more sense.
It’s better to get a piece of an already existing pie than to bake the pie only to discover later that it’s so salty and you will be the only one who will eat it.
What value should you provide?
As an entrepreneur, your job to build a machine that provides value to your customers and in exchange you get rewarded for that.
Much like how motors transform electricity or gas to movement, your product should transform you customer’s money into value. This value when introduced to your customer’s environment, it should turn into more money being generated to your customer, or time saved, which your customer in turn can turn into money (by investing their time doing something else).
If your product makes your customer money, it’s very hard for them not to say to you “shut up and take my money”.
Saving customer’s time is less appealing than making them money directly because they have to search for a way to invest that time to make money.
Here are ways you can make your customer money through your product:
- Help them beat their competitors or provide better service to their customers.
- Help them acquire more customers.
- Help them look better to their customers.
- Help them take better decisions with a data driven solution.
- Help them save money by providing ways to cut some costs that they are already spending.
You can save your customer’s time by providing solutions that cut steps, or speed up processes that already exist in your customer’s workflow.
Now, do you see how easy it is to find the perfect idea for your product?
