I've got 14 days off from work and I want to build a SaaS/app to generate some income to substitute my job.<p>Need help/suggestions on what to build:<p>A)
Idea: iOS/Android app that lets you "review" Facebook friends anonymously (imagine Amazon style reviews). Reviews are private, only the recipient can read them. E.g. you smell good but your time-keeping is horrible.<p>Business model: Get acquired.<p>Issue: Difficult marketing. No income for a while until funded.<p>B)
Idea: Small entrepreneurs need finance ($5k-$30k to open a local coffee shop), other people have small amounts saved up ($5k-$50k) and don't know where to invest. Solution: Connect these people through a network (imagine linkedIn).<p>Business model: Entrepreneurs get charged to upload a business plans. Investors get charged a monthly fee to view profiles of entrepreneurs and their business plans.<p>Issues: Chicken and egg problem.<p>C)
Idea: Replicate FollowGen:<p>http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/twitter-should-shut-me-down<p>This will possibly make me some money until I get shut down, but by then I will have a proper start-up on the side (maybe A or B or other more convoluted ideas).<p>D)
Idea: Web based server monitoring tool (CPU, RAM, etc...) with a pretty UI, e.g.:<p>http://dribbble.com/shots/1023229-Ultramarine-Admin?list=searches&tag=dashboard&offset=16<p>http://dribbble.com/shots/1315388-Dashboard-Web-App-UI-Job-Summary/attachments/184703<p>Analytics could be stored on the cloud to give web access.<p>Business model: Subscription?<p>Issues: Super small market? Sys admins know their command line stuff, no need to buy extra crap.<p>E) Any other suggestions are appreciated<p>UX/UI: Pay a designer at the end to build a pretty UI with all the latest.js/one page/flat/parallax and other crap.<p>Remember I only have full 14 days and then it's evenings/weekends.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you go on holiday instead; jump on a flight to somewhere fun, put your feet up and enjoy some sun and interact with some locals and other travellers. You'll come back with a ton of ideas.
I think you're approaching this in the wrong way. And, trust me, I have been there and done that over and over again and failed numerous times. People work on a side project for multiple reasons, and give that your reason is simply to augment your primary income, there is only one thing you should be looking for: people who are willing to put down their money to pay for what you want to build for them. Is that easy? No, but there are tonnes of crappy software out there which businesses pay for, and if you replace one of them, you can become ramen profitable pretty soon. What you really need to do is pick an industry (boring the better) that you know well or have good contacts in, and spend some time studying how they work and what you can do to make their life better.<p>You can of course also hypothetically build a product and hope to succeed, but that will be leaving too much to chance.
You could combine D) with some service products e.g. installation of tool + monitoring of tool. Let the user provide SSH-Credentials and stack together a built system, which automatically logs in and installs some packages with common configuration, the user has chosen before. Make this service free and charge for the monitoring. More complex configuration can be sold later on.<p>Sell it as System-Administration as a Service without a lock-in, this way you can target web designers or business people.
> D) Idea: Web based server monitoring tool (CPU, RAM, etc...) with a pretty UI<p>> Issues: Super small market?<p>This is definitely not a small market and there is plenty of competition:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7340001" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7340001</a><p><a href="http://blog.dataloop.io/2014/01/30/what-we-learnt-talking-to-60-companies-about-monitoring/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.dataloop.io/2014/01/30/what-we-learnt-talking-to...</a>