Startups & Ventures

Positive news An app that shows users only positive news.

Ease a flat searching A tool that helps people to find a flat to rend or buy. It evaluates a level of infrastructure of a chosen place, prices in other regions, etc. Thus, it is easier to understand is a flat a right choice in this building, region, for a such price and given infrastructure.

ERP software Enterprise resources planning software is very expensive because of the domain maturity, ERP companies obsolescence. Businesses pay a few millions of dollars just for consultation how to integrate ERP and to teach its employees how to use it. The software is overcomplicated, not UX friendly at all. The problem is to sell brand new ERP software, as the market is stabilized enough to not take a look at new players.

The world is always in movement. © V. Naipaul @quote

All in one website optimization A tool that points you where are weak performance places in your website/server. For the websites there is Chrome's Lighthouse, but it doesn't send you optimized code, in other words it is suitable for developers or experienced website owners. For backend apps, there is no all in one tool to measure performance, weak places, make security report, load tests and so on.

As India bans 59 Chinese apps, people who are building similar apps have a big opportunity. Also applicable to those who don't build such. Many of you have the opportunities opened.

On why you need to care about mobiles in your SaaS tl;dr: people already use their mobile phones in surfing the web. They use popular apps that don't have such UX that their desktop versions have. We have an opportunity to build mobile only services that have UX compared to desktop. https://hackerstash.com/blog/the-next-gold-rush

Convenient CV A tool that helps to manage your CVs and keep them up to date. The problem is to update them: you need to edit PDF manually by adding new experience and changing skills level and so on. The tool should help you to eliminate the pain. It's like versioning your resume.

Smart anti-spam bot A bot that can detect a primary goal of a message and conclude whether it's spam, flood, advertising of something, self promotion, etc. The bot should be configurable to be triggered to particular primary and secondary goals of messages. It can be created to different platforms like Telegram, Slack, whatever.

💬 Chat by interests The app connects you with a random person for a few minutes to discuss a topic proposed by the app. You can choose text or video chat. There is should be a strict moderation, so a report system should be perfectly configured.

Mailing list analytics A service that allows to measure clickthrough rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, list growth rate, emailing sharing/forwarding rate, open rate, unsubscribe rate, and more in mailing lists.

Educational platform A service that connects teachers and students. For teachers, the service helps to create educational materials without a need to promote them and find the right audience, that relies on the platform. For students, it helps to find educational materials, aggregates the courses. Therefore I, as a student, don’t need to grab a math course from Harvard, a biology course from Coursera and so on. The service helps to build an education plan. Why does it matter? Fundamentals are great to learn in school (mostly), but the further education in universities/colleges can be boring as there is a lot of non-practical, outdated information. Such situation creates an opportunity for the best teachers to teach other people who really need and want to be educated.

Email extract An app that loads a list of URLs from csv/excel/txt, scraps the websites and extracts email(s). It's a popular freelance task.

​​Trend: Jade Roller Jade rollers are a rapidly growing category in the beauty space. What are they? Jade rollers are essentially rounded jade stones that you roll on your face. The selling point is that jade rollers can reduce puffiness. Especially around the eyes. In fact, many “jade roller obsessives” state that these handheld devices have helped them find relief for a host of health problems, from rosacea to headaches. Why the uptick in popularity? Unlike many of today’s beauty and skin care products, jade rollers are relatively affordable (they typically cost between $20-$30). They also look interesting. Which helps them stand out on visual platforms, like YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram (the #jaderoller hashtag has 102,781 results in IG).

Today’s business idea: Home services A service that allows you to hire services related to plumbing, repairing, cleaning, tutoring, any kind of help to your home. It can be a platform that connect customers and the people who provide the services. With a review system, transparent pricing.

Health inspector An app that allows you to save and keep track of clinic records/visits, illness history. All the written records can be converted to a digital format, so it's okay when you forget the paper clinic records. The app could do that. The app is targeting the customers convenience, although there are ways to cooperate with businesses(clinics).

On creating a product or an appendage If I'm going to start a SaaS business, what type of product should I make? Should it be an appendage or an independent product? By appendage, I mean a product that is built on top of another product. For instance, a browser extension for Medium to enhance the reading experience, a tool to schedule Instagram posts, a tool to extend or enhance the Shopify experience. By an independent product, I mean a product that is valuable by itself. Shopify, Instagram, Facebook, etc. On the first hand, choosing a self-sustained product means you're not dependent on other APIs/services. You don't need to adjust the functionality/features to the new release. That is the opposite of appendages. The customers pay for a product because it has value without other services or additional hustles. Again, that is also the opposite of appendages. It seems the right way to start a SaaS venture is to create a product, not to build something over something. Is it? What about the competition? Sure, we can build a great product. We miss the point that it's hard to market the product after release. It depends on a niche though. By choosing a small niche, we can be sure there are fewer competitors. Building on top of another product gives us privilege. We know, there is a market for the product we build over. We know, there are problems with the product we can solve, that's why we decided to build our tool.

Hey, product friends! 😉 Breaking news🔥 ProductStar Global will conduct Free Product Management webinar on this Saturday (May 23rd) 🚀 This week's speaker - ❗Aayush Jain (India), Product Manager at American Express. He'll talk about “Understanding the Product Life Cycle with the Best Examples” 😎 It's going to be super interesting! 💥 Aayush will share answers to 3 key questions: 🔸What are the stages of the product life cycle? 🔸What are the best examples for each stage? 🔸What are some of the best practices for managing a product life cycle? Don’t miss out on a chance to develop your skills and ask your questions in live! The most active participants will get cool prizes from ProductStar Global! 😉 So, 🗓 May 23th (Saturday) ⏰ 14.00 GMT, 19.30 IST, 21.00 Jakarta 👉 Register here: https://productstar.org/productwebinar_st Let’s develop our skills together! 🙌

​​Trend: TrueCoach Gym equipment was one of the earliest product categories to face shortage issues due to the pandemic. Many consumers consequently found themselves relying on bodyweight exercises, causing a surge in demand for virtual coaches who could walk through these new maneuvers. At the center of this surge is TrueCoach, a video conferencing software for fitness training. It also serves as a content management system and as a CRM for managing client relationships. While many gyms themselves are using TrueCoach, many personal trainers who previously worked at gyms are also using it. Technically, it doesn't fully compete with traditional gyms because a major customer segment for gyms is folks who don't go to the gym but pay the membership fee anyway, thinking they’ll go some day. The way TrueCoach is competing with traditional gyms though, is on one of gyms’ biggest sources of high-margin revenue: those who do go to the gym and get personal training sessions as an extra. In fact, many gyms credit offering virtual individualized training programs as a key reason for high client retention since closing their doors. Truecoach also has resources to help remote coaches attract new clients, beyond the saturated acquisition channel for this demographic that is Instagram. The site saw 1.7M site visits last month, double the traffic it saw earlier this year, and, in total, over 17,000 independent coaches and gym owners use the platform. Gyms that have moved to remote training platforms say many customers are fans of the convenience and want to continue even after they reopen.

Hi, guys! A friendly reminder: you can discuss ideas/problems/opportunities and such in the discussion group. Maybe it’s even a good place to find a co-founder. Also, don’t forget that there are a lot of interesting people! Go meet them :) If you need any help or you have a feedback, just message me.