[gonzo41]

Whilst this is great advice, If you got access to one of those mega spreasheets and worked out the business logic you'd be confronted with a few things. 1. Most business run pretty much the same. 2. Most home grown processes captured in spreadsheets are terrible. 3. Most people don't want to change anything about how they are doing things.

Point 1 makes things easy, 2 and 3 are harder because you have to create and incentive to onboard people onto your product that doesn't exist yet. So actually there's a point 4. You have to do a market scan, and either become an integration expert at some extendable technology or build something new. And then you're developing goes from developing to selling. And then to support.

It's hard to beat excel.

[bluehatbrit]

I agree, the process of building a new product and a successful business is really hard. Especially if you're dislodging existing processes in some way. Extensions and other little bits of process automation can be a nice way to help offer clear advantages over those spreadsheets. None of that is foolproof though, and it's still not easy. That said, it can still be a good signal that there's something in the business which could be turned into a useful product or service.