Hi friends, and welcome to my first article on ideas. In this post I wanted to dive into the world of software – have all the good ideas already gone?

I didn’t use to be a product person – I started my working life as a trainee Actuary in an insurance firm before moving to consulting for a “big 4” accountancy firm. I’d touched some code at university but generally only for assignments (crack this password) or a thesis on computational problems.

I’d done nothing “real word” and certainly nothing that could be called a business.

Are there any ideas left?

Yes, but it might not be a brand new idea. When I started building ZBS CRM (now Jetpack CRM), there were already loads of CRMs out there. So what we started was a movement to build a CRM that was easy to use and the data is yours (from right in your WordPress dashboard).

The idea of a CRM already existed but we approached it from a different angle and built it by listening to feedback from our users and customers.

Your idea doesn’t have to be a brand new one, or one which puts you on the front of TechCrunch to be life changing. It can be as simple as doing something differently than others, or bringing a typically propriety based business over to open source.

A CRM running right from your WordPress dashboard had even been attempted before (and it’ll be done again) – so having the idea is only part of the route to making the idea a success.

Where can I find software ideas

Software Ideas is a pretty neat idea for a paid newsletter and another great example of teaching what you learn. Each week Kevin will email curated examples of companies in tech which could be disrupted through innovation or approaching from another angle.

Kudos to Kevin for getting this idea out there, and for going with green for his website theme (rather than the typical facebook blue you see a lot out there 😏).

I need more software ideas, please Mike

Sure thing. There’s also a ton of opportunity out there by just reading about what other people have done like this example on Paleo Meal Plans – the model they’ve created and set up can be used for similar types of business for example:-

• Weekly meal plans for toddlers with dairy intolerance.
• Gluten free guides for people with a Gluten intolerance
• Plus much more

For a subscription based email business, this can be setup just as easily as setting up a website for your idea and I’ll touch on this more in a future article.

But how do you choose the idea to go with?

There’s no silver bullet, you might try and fail lots before your idea takes off but the important thing to do is try.

The time to start is now. I’ll be writing more about idea validation in a future blog post and video so if you want to follow along, you can subscribe to my newsletter and head over to my YouTube and hit that subscribe button.