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Stop Building Useless Apps and Products

·4 mins
Indie-Hacker Business Technology
Table of Contents

Everyone thinks their app is different. It’s not. #

The number of “Just Launched!” posts on r/sideproject that start with “I built X for Y because I needed it” is staggering. You know the hot takes by now: billing reminders for freelancers, minimalist habit trackers, yet another recipe app.

Here’s the thing: needing something isn’t the same as someone else needing it.

I’m not saying don’t build for yourself—that’s where lots of your best practice comes from. But if your endgame is users and revenue, you can’t rely on the “build what you need” cliché without validating it. People aren’t struggling to remember to drink water, I promise.

Solve problems that actually exist. #

A recent thread started with: “I built an app to track my plants’ watering schedules!” I groaned. Then I clicked into the discussion—and so many people were agreeing with me. You don’t need yet another niche app. You need a calendar with reminders. Or a sticky note. Or your brain.

This hits the core problem with so many side projects: overengineering. You’re trying to turn minor inconveniences into software. Spoiler: no one pays to remove minor inconveniences. You might attract 100 installs, but how many active users after 30 days? Two? Zero?

Here’s some hard data: the average consumer installs ZERO apps per month now. Unless you’re solving a legit hair-on-fire problem, people will not give you storage space, let alone their money.

“But I’m learning!” you say. #

Fair point. Rant aside, there’s VALUE in building useless things—if your goal is to learn. But here’s my challenge: make it clear to yourself from the start. Don’t try to pretend your toy project is the next big SaaS when you know it’s for skill-building.

Hacking on your own micro-CRM (because Notion is bloated and you want something lean)? Great—just don’t post on Reddit about how “freelancers are desperate for this.” They’re not.

Sharpening your Rust skills with a project to stream data across Raspberry Pis? Awesome—just don’t dress it up as a “disruptive IoT stack” unless you’re ready to back the claim.

How do you know if your idea sucks? #

Three tests:

  1. Ask before you build. Post a napkin version of your idea in r/Entrepreneur or r/sideproject and see what people say. The internet is weirdly honest about bad ideas. No response? That’s not indifference—it’s death.

  2. Go beyond /r you know. Reddit validation is fine, but getting strangers on Twitter to care is harder. If people aren’t responding outside your echo chamber, it’s a red flag.

  3. Look for alternatives. If your app idea can be replaced by an existing tool that costs $5/month or less—or worse, by a Google Doc—don’t build it. (And if you don’t know what exists out there, do research before coding a line.)

So what should you build? #

Build what scales—or what’s niche enough to matter.

Two contrasting examples:

  1. Scalable solution: You think Docker is clunky for local dev? Build a sidecar tool that integrates Podman into Visual Studio Code instead. Niche, but devs will pay for it because it solves a workflow problem they’re actively searching how to fix.

  2. Specific niche: A European farmer in a recent thread built SaaS for his specific type of irrigation system. It made €15,000 in Year One—because it solved a painfully real problem in his vertical. Niche usually doesn’t scale, but it does pay if you know your market cold.

Somewhere in between these two ideas is where you want to be. Niche enough to start small. Useful enough to hit revenue faster than you burn out.

Stop shipping noise. #

Not everything needs to be built. Not everything you want to build needs to be shared. Here’s a harsh truth: 99% of side projects die because their creators lose interest before their users gain any. Don’t be part of that 99%. Build less. Test more. Ask honest questions earlier.

And for the love of all things indie, don’t post “yet another to-do app” in 2026. The world doesn’t need it. We don’t need it.

Get out of the way—and build something that makes real, actual lives better. Even if it’s just three people’s lives.