Unvalidated Ideas #031
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Here's a fresh idea you can take out there and validate.
Imagor/Thumbor addon for Heroku (🗒Raw Notes)
Webapps often need to crop, resize and optimize images. A lot of those site are running on Heroku (despite reports to the contrary, Heroku is not dead).
Build a image manipulation/optimization solution for the Heroku market. Offering a solution that is more-or-less "we run Thumbor for you, but cheaper than what it would cost you on Heroku" is surprisingly missing.
Before you ask -- yes, the image manipulation API space is crowded. There are quite a few juggernauts: Cloudinary, IMGix and Kraken.io, not to mention Cloudflare having a general solution.
Even with such a crowded market, there are some factors that make it possible to win in this space:
- Leveraging the Heroku app store for distribution & combined billing
- Lower price (compute and storage have gotten cheaper -- the first paid Cloudinary add-on tier is $99/month!)
One great way to steal marketshare from a larg player like Cloudinary in the Heroku space specifically is to offer a similar service (to the extent that is possible), and replicating subsets of their API to maek it very easy to switch.
Easy to try, easy to save (money), easy to switch.
What was in this week's uncut edition?
Like being teased? I hope so, because here's what was in the uncut edition this week:
Ideas:
- Imagor/Thumbor add-on for Heroku
- ███████Form█████multi-tool████
- Notion███████████████████
Wrapup:
- Validating your SaaS idea, the MicroConf way.
Don't forget, there's always money in the banana stand 3x more in the uncut edition.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this letter feel free to criticize, comment on, remix, and share these ideas with your fellow builders and entrepreneurs!
If email isn't your style, you can also get ideas 🐦 tweet by tweet.
Check out the archive for access to editions that have been previously released.
Victor (victor@unvalidatedideas.com)
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