Anyone building SaaS for non-tech industries?
Hey, IH! 👋
Looking over the projects posted here, many of my fellow hackers are catering to "digital natives" and the software industry with projects like social media automation tools, landing page generators, email marketing - the list goes on.
It's wonderful to see their success and it makes sense. Devs know software pain-points, how to fix them, and how to effectively market to other software businesses.
But are there any entrepreneurs on IH that are taking the road less traveled and using SaaS to solve problems in a niche that isn't explicitly software-related? Products that will probably never trend on ProductHunt or AppSumo but nevertheless help their customers?
For example, my company https://bullionmarket.info/ will almost assuredly never appeal to any of you. It's a price sniper and data analytics dashboard for investment-grade gold, silver, and platinum products. But it's an industry I know well and feel competently equipped to provide value to.
I'd love to hear more from founders conquering a niche outside of the usual SaaS target markets and how your efforts are going so far!
Agreed that the majority of projects seem to focus on devs. But there's some good ones out there that don't! I used to be a structural engineer, so I built a project to help them write better calculations with python (https://www.efficalc.com). I've been getting some users and considering how to monetize it.
I also started a language-learning app because I wanted to jump on the AI startup train (https://www.learningroo.com).
I really like working with non-devs because they're generally more forgiving since they can't do what you do. You don't have to compete with the "I can just build it myself" mentality.
That's a great point.
Still very much in progress but i'm building a yoga sequence builder, https://flowers.yoga
I'm a yoga teacher and long time practitioner so it's a domain well within my comfort zone.
What a great example of solving domain-specific problems with software! I never would've known this is already a competitive and viable niche otherwise.
One cool thing about brick-and-mortar businesses like yoga studios is that you can actually cold-call them and many are single owner-operators.
Absolutely, there are entrepreneurs focusing on niche industries with SaaS solutions. While our projects may not appeal to everyone, we're passionate about providing value to our specific customer base. It's all about finding the right fit and making a meaningful impact
I'm targeting college students with a productivity tool, where does that fall?
The education industry definitely counts as non-tech! How did you come up with the idea and how's it going so far?
Well not a Saas but I run a service for data analysis building dashboards and doing forecasting. Any industry Is welcome.