I've got several years of experience working for two public clouds and building core services in the containers/compute space.
I'd like to eventually build something in this space (side project that I can grow into something that will pay the bills someday) but I can never come up with ideas for side projects.
Anyone have suggestions for projects I can build?
Alternatively - What's the best way to get exposed to customer problems in this space? I honestly do not know.
How to find product ideas?
Good to know:
You can't come up with a 100% original idea.
Take inspiration from other products and fix the bad things in them:
- UI/UX
- Add or reduce features.
- Change the target customer.
How to find products to copy?
1) Marketplaces:
Go to Envato, Chrome store, AppSumo, App Store, etc and find products with a lot of downloads but a low rating.
Read the reviews carefully and extract the pain points.
2) Stories:
You can find problems, ideas, and markets by reading other product stories.
3) PH, IH, HN, Betalist, etc:
If you are looking for product ideas, make sure to follow these websites:
- Product Hunt.
- Hacker News.
- IndieHackers.
- Beta list.
4) Freelancing:
Working as a freelancer will let you know people's needs and their pain points.
- You can find some tasks that can be easily automated.
- Softwares they are using.
- Plugins ideas.
What if you don't want to work as a freelancer?
5) Spy on freelancers:
Browsing Upwork, Guru, Fiverr, etc will let you know what businesses are looking for.
It's a great way to find tasks that can be automated.