[freefaler]

Find a good local problem that you have connections with people who'd buy it. Doesn't need to be a software, many small businesses start as sole proprietor working for himself and slowly growing the company by hiring help.

No cheap programmer would copy your "fixes-fences-in-Boston.com" idea. A lot of local services aren't sold properly on the internet, so if you combine the two you can get something out of your time and labour.

Also local bureaucrats love to "regulate" and automating local compliance is also a good niche. Now with all LLMs around the scope of what is possible has grown, thus the niches where it could be applied have grown too.

Don't drink the VC/YC combinator cool-aid, that you "go big or go home". It's better to own 100% of your comany, than 3% of a VC based startup most of the time. You see outliers like Facebook, Airbnb & etc... but as 37Signals has proved for the majority of startup founders the risk/reward ratio is skewed not in their favor.

[gitt67887yt7bg]

Local services are not tech jobs. The second you decide to go tech, you have to be prepared to complete globally.

[freefaler]

There are many local problems that require local knowledge and serving local customers. I have a friend with a business for California vehicle compliance reports. Some stupid paperwork that needs to be updated yearly when the rules change. It's super local and he has 10 employees supporting clients remote and on site. It grew very slowly but it's in 11th year now and revenue is not bad at all. Nothing to compete globally, knowledge is local, clients need local services.