Ask HN: How did you find a side project idea that worked?

ryan_tc — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:57:55 +0000

Hi HN, Over the past year I’ve started and abandoned quite a few side projects. Most of them followed a similar pattern: - I’d see an idea (often from Twitter, Reddit, or other builders) - It would feel promising at first - But after digging a bit, it either turned out to be too crowded, or I couldn’t tell if anyone actually needed it The hardest part for me isn’t building — it’s deciding what to build with some level of confidence. I’ve tried a few approaches: - Building from personal pain points (sometimes too niche) - Looking at what others are launching (often already saturated) - Checking search trends / keywords (but hard to tell signal vs noise) It still feels very hit-or-miss. For those of you who’ve built something that got real users: - How did that idea originally come together? - At what point did you feel “this might actually work”? - Was there any concrete signal, or was it mostly intuition? Lately I’ve been thinking about whether there’s a more systematic way to spot early demand signals — especially from things like search behavior — but I’m not sure if that’s a useful direction or just another rabbit hole. Curious how others here think about this.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897644

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

TestConverter: Convert Test Questions to Excel

ryan_tc — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 07:22:59 +0000

Article URL: https://testconverter1.vercel.app

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42801570

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

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Ask HN: How did you find a side project idea that worked?

TestConverter: Convert Test Questions to Excel