I'm working on a new project with a friend and it leverages some publicly available data. Not all data is inherently valuable, but when you connect pain points with openly available information that can inform or "feed" a solution then you can start to generate cost-efficient revenue pretty quickly.
Sidenote: Cost-efficient revenue leads to profits, super cool.
Anyways, as I've been working on this project I also came across a viral Twitter thread about "spreadsheet software" - many SaaS products originally lived in a non-collaborative Excel file and it likely powered a major function of that business. Scary, and exciting.
Scary because…what if Bill got hit by a train and never trained anyone about how that gnarly macro worked?
Exciting because an entire niche SaaS solution could just be waiting to be unlocked.
These two topics are starting to merge together in my mind quite a bit, so I wanted to write about it. On one hand, there are an immense amount of solutions (again, most are fairly niche but the riches are in the niches right?) that have yet to be built. It's a total false narrative that "software has already eaten the world"...just scratched the surface from where I'm sitting.
On the other hand, there is a growing amount of interesting and publicly available data.
I like the concept of *starting with the publicly available data, and then diving into that industry to find those random spreadsheet software opportunities. Use the spreadsheet as a guiding light, and ideally utilize the data to build a more robust solution that can drive up the ACV (average contract value).
Curious on others' thoughts on all this - would love to hear from you.