How to find a Great "One Person" Profitable Startup Idea

🚀 Our Hustle Updates

For the past two weeks, we've examined over 500 products built by solopreneurs and indie hackers. Some of these products failed, while others are thriving, growing, generating revenue, and even receiving acquisition offers.

Inspired by these successes, we've chosen three ideas and are currently developing our own product. As we're product and marketing focused, we're already building our distribution strategy while our developers work on the product itself.

In today's edition, we'll share our methodology for 'How to Find a One Person Profitable Startup Idea'

🔥Topic of the Week

“How to find a great startup idea”

Ever wondered why some startups skyrocket while others fizzle out? The secret often lies at the very beginning: the idea. But here's the million-dollar question: How do you find that game-changing idea?

The Idea Goldmine: Where to Dig

• Pain Point Prospecting: Your frustrations are fertile ground for innovation. Remember how Uber was born from the simple annoyance of not being able to hail a cab? Your life experiences might seem limited, so keep your ears open to problems during conversations with friends. Almost everyone rants about something at some point – this could be your idea goldmine.

• Trend Surfing: Ride the wave of emerging technologies. Did you know ChatGPT reached 1 million users in just 5 days? The AI revolution is just one of many trends ripe for the picking. People are building incredible innovations every day; you just need to see enough data points to start recognizing trends.

  Pro tip: Nearly 90% of builders launch their products on Product Hunt – it's a great place to spot emerging trends.

• Industry Intersection: Some of the most revolutionary ideas happen at the crossroads. Airbnb combined travel with the sharing economy. What industries could you merge?

  As Naval Ravikant says, "Not everything can be taught, but everything can be learned."

  Look for unexpected connections between different fields.

Your Million-Dollar Action Plan

1. Carry a notebook (physical or digital) everywhere. Ideas strike when you least expect them! We use our phone's notes app to jot down ideas on the go, then set aside an hour each weekend to review and distill them.

2. Set a goal to list 3 problems you encounter daily for the next week. Your next big idea might be hiding in plain sight. Whether you're reading an article, listening to a podcast, or hearing a friend complain about Wi-Fi or relationship issues, always ask: What's the root cause? How can this be solved? It takes time to build these mental muscles, but once you develop them, you'll see problems waiting to be solved everywhere.

3. When brainstorming ideas, suspend judgment. Don't start filtering based on your perceived capabilities. The first step is to let ideas flow freely. Developers often fall into the trap of immediately thinking about the tech stack and how to build the product, rather than diving deep into the problem statement itself. Remember: great ideas often seem impossible at first.

The Delta 4 Approach: Kunal Shah's Framework for Billion-Dollar Ideas

Kunal Shah, the founder of CRED and FreeCharge, developed the Delta 4 framework to identify and analyze high-potential startup ideas.

1. Identify a Delta 1 behavior and its Delta 4 counterpart

   • Delta 1: What's a behavior that's already popular and doesn't need convincing? (e.g., people love to save money)

   • Delta 4: What's the aspirational version of this behavior, 4 steps ahead? (e.g., getting cashback on credit card bills)

   • Your idea should bridge the gap between Delta 1 and Delta 4, creating value in the process.

2. Assess the market size and growth

   • Is your target market for the Delta 4 behavior big enough and growing?

   • A small but rapidly expanding market can be more attractive than a large, stagnant one.

   • Use tools like Google Trends, industry reports, and market research to gauge potential demand.

3. Evaluate the friction and problem intensity

   • How much friction exists between Delta 1 and Delta 4? The more friction, the bigger the potential reward for solving it.

   • Rate the problem intensity on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is "hair on fire" urgent. The more intense the problem, the more likely people are to pay for a solution.

4. Define your unique value proposition

   • How does your solution help people move from Delta 1 to Delta 4?

   • What makes your approach 10x better than existing alternatives?

   • If you can't articulate a clear, compelling advantage, you might need to refine your idea.

5. Consider frequency of usage

   • As per the Delta 4 approach, ideas that can be used daily or weekly have a higher chance of success than those used annually or less frequently.

   • How often will people engage with your solution as they move from Delta 1 to Delta 4?

6. Assess your execution capability

   • Do you have the skills, resources, and passion to bring this Delta 4 idea to life?

   • Building a startup is a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you're equipped for the journey from Delta 1 to Delta 4.

7. Validate with potential users

   • Test your Delta 4 concept with potential customers or industry experts.

   • Are people excited about moving from Delta 1 to Delta 4? If you can't find anyone enthusiastic about your idea, it might be a red flag.

Remember, no idea is perfect from the start. The key is to find an idea with enough potential to warrant further exploration and development. This is the exact framework we use, to come up with potential startup ideas, and by far this is the best approach we figured out.

Here's a tip: Before jumping to build on the idea, build a landing page using ConvertKit or WordPress, run $5 Google ads and get people on a call. This will help you niche down the problem, get paying clients even before building the product and reach a scalable version sooner.

🌟 Community Showcase: Interesting Hustles of the week

• Mehrab making 2500$ a month by building MVPs for other startup founders, read it here

• Abhishek shares how he built a cool tool that hunt leads for startup founders on social media and made $1000 in just a day

• Claud Sonnet 3.5 is sick, Riley shares how he build a product without any prior coding experience by just using Claude

• A cool product, an AI that roasts your landing pages, it’s a new product will be cool to see how it shapes out, read here

📈 Growth Hacks

SEO is time taking, Ads are quick but expensive way to get traffic on your landing page. The most cost effective way to get quick traffic on your website is making videos.

1. Create short form reels / tiktok yourself, or hire a UGC creator on fiverr to do it for you, you can get one for as low as 20$. But a single video might not go viral, this is tricky and needs precise tuning. We will talk about how to get viral on TikTok / Reels in future edition, till then stay tuned

2. YouTube: “How to …” videos are quick way to get a good amount of traffic on your website. Figure out jobs to be done for your customers using your tool and create short 2-3 minutes explainer videos using loom chrome extension. Within a few days you’ll start getting traffic on your website

📚 Resource of the Week

[Book] Actionable Gamification - this book is a gem and has ton of insights on gamification elements that you can implement in your product to improve retention and conversion. Highly recommended

[Online Course] - How to start a Startup by Y Combinator, a YouTube Playlist

🤔 Parting Thought

🎤 Drop the Mic (and Your Thoughts)!

Did this edition light your entrepreneurial fire? 🔥 Did it leave you craving more? We're all ears (and eyes)! Slide into our Twitter DMs @Piyush @Animesh and share your feedback!

• 🌟 What made you go "Aha!" in this edition?

• 🔮 What startup secrets do you want us to unveil next?

• 💡 Got a growth hack that's too good to keep to yourself? Spill the beans!