Build what's missing on a fast-growing platform
jasonleow • 7 Apr 2024 •
An indie hacking playbook that I tried and tested, and love:
$500K micro-saas built with ONE simple playbook:
- Find a fast-growing platform
- Identify the killer feature its missing
- Build that feature
This micro-SaaS is NoteForms, a form builder for Notion. It plugged a gap where Notion fell short. And it made half a million from that! It’s always hard to understand how big tech companies think about priorities. In a follow-up tweet, Pat talks about why it worked out for NoteForms:
Why this works:
Pre-existing user base
Quickly validate idea
Easy integration
Built-in trust
Network effect
That’s exactly how I found some small success for my Carrd plugins actually! Carrd is a great web builder platform that I love using but it’s missing a responsive mobile menu. And so that was my very first paid plugin. Then I went on to build more features that people needed but Carrd didn’t have.
Typingmind started out as a better UI layer to use ChatGPT, because it’s own UI was sooo bad. Twitter/X’s scheduling feature is dismal, that’s why Hypefury and Typefully exists.
Now, what’s a fast-growing platform out there that’s missing features that users frequently complain about? 🤔 What’s a fast-growing platform I use often but hate that it’s lacking one feature?
- Jsfiddle/Codepen - Realtime collab ala Google Docs
- Twitter/X - Auto retweets, AI reply filters, better bookmarking
- Cloudflare - Confusing UX
- LinkedIn - Better analytics, scheduler, bookmarking
- Telegram - Proper scheduler
- Gmail - Screener, custom domains, multiple accounts
- Google Drive - Native AI chat with all docs
What else?