35 ways to come up with SaaS business ideas

​I came across this post by Adam Wright where he discusses how he brainstorms ideas for new businesses. Wright sets out a super practical and diverse approach to ideation that mixes creative thinking, adaptability, marketing. I didn't want to misplace the list so I'm storing it here on my site, below.

1. niche down: apply an idea to a narrow audience.
2. go micro: take an app and boil it down to one feature.
3. different angle: take a well-mined idea and find an angle no one is thinking of.
4. go local: take an app and apply it to one city/region/state.
5. do less: could you do the idea as a Google Sheet, PDF, Chrome extension, etc?
6. streamline/automate: rewrite the app idea to use 50% fewer steps.
7. go service: take the app and provide manual service (eliminating user effort).
8. the teacher: popular app? create a YouTube or newsletter or course around using it.
9. job board it: extremely popular app? create a job board specifically for it.
10. the combo: take an app idea and add other info or SaaS ideas to take it to the next level.
11. find weaknesses: look up negative reviews on the SaaS and build yours to address these.
12. be funny: provide color commentary on an industry/app; leverage the audience
13. marketing hole: is there a way the existing SaaS is not marketing to? exploit that.
14. security+: take the SaaS idea and market it as more secure.
15. different language: translate a successful app and translate to another language.
16. affiliate review site: crowded space? make a review/comparison site with affiliate links.
17. go upstream: they are solving X; what's the upstream problem? solve that.
18. lifestyle analysis: find your root goals; work backward to find an idea that fits that.
19. curiosity: what are you curious about; follow that passion; solve problems around that.
20. think outsource: if you didn't build the product yourself, what would you do?
21. how would they fix it: think of famous developers or marketers; how would they do X?
22. unfair advantages: what problem do you have unique skills or knowledge to fix?
23. 3-day build: what problem or idea could you build out and launch in 3 days?
24. first dollar: what idea could you do that will get your first dollar this week?
25. your reach: what audience do you have access to? build something for them.
26. no code: how could you daisy-chain some existing services to fix X problem?
27. bigger pain: you came up with an idea; okay, what's the even bigger problem?
28. new opportunity: is there a new platform or law that change that opens up an audience?
29. old world: what are industries that will never die? can you solve something for them?
30. think smaller: many big apps started very tiny; start small; build from there.
31. 1/20 view: pretend 19 ideas fail & 1 succeeds; how would you spend your time?
32. 5-year view: you can build the idea; but do you want to do it in 5 years?
33. "mom test": ask businesses about their problems and how they solve them today.
34. consolidate info: take existing info out there; consolidate; charge access.
35. leverage trends: find untapped search terms; build an app around it.