Move over Google

Updated: February 13th, 2022

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Billions will (quietly) be made in this niche

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Have you ever heard of Salesforce or Asana? Probably.

But have you ever heard of Alteryx, Anaplan, or Avalara? No? Exactly. 

(or maybe you've heard of them but you don't really know what they do)

And that is my point:

These enterprise software products are in the Top 50 SaaS companies in the world but they are boring and nobody talks about them.

Enterprise software sucks, yet companies pay huge money just to use it, and even more money to maintain it. (it is reported that larger companies allocate 5% of their costs to consulting for enterprise software)

5% for a company like Amazon? That's $3-5B per year.

So, here are the opportunities:

1. Direct consulting services

Directly help large companies manage their enterprise stack. Some examples:

2. Enterprise software learning resources & community

Help people learn more about enterprise software and connect with other enthusiasts:

3. Enterprise software automation services

Build technology that improves enterprise software, or enables users to save time or automate things:

Find more business ideas from our database of 6,695


I'll do it myself, thank you

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Do you need a co-founder to be successful?

10 years ago, most people would say: "Yes you need a cofounder to be successful".

But if you see the graph above, more than 50% of businesses have just one solo founder.

Why? Because starting a business in 2021 is a lot different than it was in 2011. In 2021:

  • You no longer need an accountant, lawyer, coder, marketer, etc
  • You don't need 'entrepreneur secret sauce' to build a successful business
  • You can start with $0 (no VC needed)

In other words, you can (and should) outsource your "weaknesses" (or the things you don't enjoy) to platforms, tools, and services.

What do I mean by this?

If you need more proof, here are 100 profitable businesses created by solo founders (many with millions in revenue).


Move over Google search [easy way to find an idea]

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Zoom in on that image above. See what I did there?

(want to try this on your own? just go to google.com and type 'search engine for' and then any letter of the alphabet.)

Have you ever thought about this? Most (great) online businesses are actually search engines.

For example:

  • Amazon is a search engine for products. 
  • Airbnb is a search engine for places to stay.
  • Coinbase is a search engine for cryptocurrencies

This is why I'm so excited about the "search engine for X" trend right now.

We just interviewed Daniela, who created a search engine for people, and she's making $2.4M/year.

The opportunity:

Google search is an amazing product, but its search engine does only one thing very well: searches web pages.

That's why Google bought YouTube (video search engine) and created Google Flights (flight search engine).

There are thousands of more opportunities like this (let's get way more niche):

If you're looking for more inspiration on search engines, just check out our explore page.

e.g. With this filter, I'm looking at digital businesses making over $50k/month. (so many inspirational ideas in there)


1.  48 of the most profitable business ideas we could find

2. This developer from India built a Chrome extension used by thousands of people (and it only cost him $5 to build)

3. $2M/year catering to a super niche audience

4. $12M/year logo maker?

5. An update from a naughty business

6. $12M/year printer label biz?

7. How I turned my teenage hobby into a $2k/month  business

8. On creating an IT consulting company [with 60+ specialists]

9. How we grew revenue 10% over last year

10. We created a student information system used by 2k+ schools


Looking for a job, or some work on the side?

Get your feet wet before you take the plunge into founder life.

Many of the companies we interview are hiring in operations, design, marketing, engineering, and more...

Check out our jobs portal for all new opportunities - new jobs are added every day!

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Thanks for reading.

meet the author
Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.