Oh man, this sounds like the classic “Entrepreneur’s Groundhog Day”! You’re in that fun loop where your brain becomes a problem-seeking missile, but the moment you lock onto a target, it suddenly transforms into a doubt-spewing machine. Classic!
Here’s a bit of unconventional advice: embrace the copycat… initially. Almost every great idea was once a photocopy of something else with a little twist. Remember, Facebook wasn’t the first social network, and Google certainly wasn’t the first search engine. It’s all about taking something and adding your unique spice to it.
But here’s the kicker for breaking the loop: Passion isn’t found, it’s developed. Start with something that mildly interests you. Then, deep-dive into it. The more you learn and tweak, the more invested you become. Suddenly, you’re not just solving a problem; you’re on a quest to create something amazing.
And if all else fails, remember the wise words of every entrepreneur’s spirit animal, Michael Scott: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take – Wayne Gretzky – Michael Scott.” Keep shooting! 🚀

One way to come up with ideas is prompt ChatGPT: “Give me a list of SaaS ideas I can build as a solo developer” and continue reprompting until you find something you like.

You should ensure it’s something you have at least a little passion for as you’ll be working on it for a long time, even after development. It’s okay to enter a market with competitors, even large ones, just niche down a bit more than them and create a better solution for your more targeted audience. It’s okay to have similar marketing and features but yes definitely don’t want to just build a copycat business.

Also don’t let doubt stop you before you start. I faced doubt so many times and tried to talk myself out of it at least once a week, but just pressed on and now my first start up is launched and live, still working on the getting customers part haha

Hello! I’m not sure if my comment is the right one, but it’s just my opinion. I think it’s important that when you encounter a real problem, you try to create a creative or innovative solution. Eventually, in the process, you’ll see if it’s something you’re passionate about or not, and in the midst of it, you’ll discover new problems that you could solve. I believe it’s very important to do in order to learn in the process, regardless of whether you succeed or not in your project. Best of luck, greetings!

I’d just ask yourself, “What would I pay $1,000/month for someone to solve for me?” Figure out who else would have that same problem. Interview those people. Learn their real problem. Solve that and build.

You don’t win a race looking at who’s running next to you

One Tip: Improve your Network and you will get Opportunities you never had before

until you actually get it in front of a customer, you’re ‘idea masturbating’ - you dont know until its in the hands of the customer and they give you visceral feedback - ask more customers, get a pattern in the feedback then use that to optimise.

dont worry overly about competitors, there will always be competitors, and ideas are generally never really original, the goal isn’t to be original, its to be valuable to the customer, by truly addressing their problem with a solution they can embrace.

You are overthinking. You just need to execute. When you are in execution mode it will be so much easier to pivot and answer all these questions you have. Action, my friend. Action.

If it’s any consolation, I’m stuck in idea limbo as well. Seems like I find an idea, get super excited about it for a week or two, sometimes even build an MVP (easy trap to fall into when you’re also a dev), and then lose interest or talk myself out of it two weeks later.

I’m really frustrated because I want to start working on actual business problems but I can’t even get past the starting line.

So hey, you’re not alone.

You are missing one of (if not it the) most important step. After discovering a problem to solve, and quickly surveying the market for existing solutions and competition, you gotta dive head first into Customer Discovery. If you’re not familiar with this, study and practice stuff from Steve Blank, Rob Fitzpatrick, and Justin Wilcox. Learn about the customer development process, focusing on doing discovery work with early adopters. This is the first step to executing well.

Look using the convential wisdom of the market is not stupid or inefficient. Learning from your competitors as a start usually is a good strategy. Innovate when you have their business model replicated. Most businesses are just replicas of very old and proven business models, some of them find an edge by making that very model more efficient. New untested business models are unlikely to succeed

Execution > Idea

Many people gave up because they don’t think their idea is unique enough.You don’t have to worry about competition. In fact, having competition already = your idea is validated.

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I’m running this site where I feature interviews and stories with indie founders who’ve started profitable business on their own, and this is my biggest takeaway.

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To give you some context:

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• There are tons of website builders out there, but Alexander Isora still manages to build his website builder Saas business to over $16k MRR

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• Google created Google Analytics, but this doesn’t stop these 2 guys from creating a privacy-focused analytics tool to take on Google. They are doing $23k MRR after 5 years

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Most importantly, don’t give up.

Go do something else. Get a job with someone else’s startup (always valuable), find a co-founder (maybe they have a good idea?), something different.

Part of the problem we have in the tech startup world is that the problems we encounter are already massively solved because a million other geeks like us looked for a problem to solve. Meanwhile, other parts of the population struggle with problems that we could solve easily.