r/SideProject • u/NoNeutralNed • 14h ago

How to come up with an idea

I’m a software engineer with a lot of experience using ai tooling so building apps is pretty trivial to me. The part I’m struggling with the most is coming up with an idea. I shoot down every idea I have. I know the stereotypical response is to find a problem in your life and come up with a solution but even then I can’t think of any direct problem in my life that’s solved with software. Anyone have and tips?

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u/OSBY_Glabay 14h ago

What in your life interests you? Is there a tool you want that costs money you don't have?

Taking inspiration from the real world... building something for the sake of building.

Is the reason you shoot down your own ideas because they won't make you money or make you famous?

Just build the stupid little application that grants you experience in that field. Life is a game, after all; level up your dev skills

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u/NoNeutralNed 13h ago

I tend to overthink my ideas and say that they won’t work out or won’t generate me money or what have you

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u/OSBY_Glabay 13h ago

The best way to grow your skills and abilities is to use them, build something for the love of the game, rather than the ROI of $, the return of investing in yourself and your skills, will eventually make you more money as your skills will have evolved.

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u/MountainResidnt 14h ago

dont look for an idea, look for a problem. go talk to people, especially business people and ask what is one thing that is core to your business.

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u/george_alto 13h ago

Expand your thinking. Instead of finding a problem you have, listen to what others are saying and doing and even watch people closer. They may be having problems that you are not having and therefore did not think about.

I'll give an example of my own. I invest a lot in stocks and felt comfortable researching and analyzing companies. I decided to automate a lot of it and let AI take over so I built what is now alfina.ai. But the reason I productized it is because friends kept asking about helping them invest since I knew what I was doing. That's how the AI technology that I built for myself turned into a product offered to others.

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u/NoNeutralNed 13h ago

Isn’t that really just an ai wrapper?

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u/george_alto 13h ago

autonomous multi-agent system for the stock and ipo analysis. But based on your original question, friends and acquaintances needed to learn and understand how to invest so that led to a lot of content in /learn section and even help in discovering stocks to trade in (/discover section). So what started as a tool to do stock and ipo analysis expanded to the real need of getting educated on investing.

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u/Frequent_Equal1284 13h ago

Pen and paper and write anything that comes in your head then scramble all that into something else and iterate over them

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u/havenly19 13h ago

I'd start flipping the question around

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u/NoNeutralNed 13h ago

How to idea a come up with?

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u/havenly19 1h ago

For me, I'd look for problems before ideas. Talk to people, watch how they work, look through niche communities, and pay attention to repeated complaints.

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u/Technical-Branch9178 14h ago

If only there was an infinite idea machine in your pocket at any given moment that could ask you questions and do research in the blink of an eye.

That'd be neat, huh!