How the directory is made

Where the ideas come from

Every idea is a business that a real person described running: in a podcast or YouTube interview with an operator, or in a public Hacker News thread where people share their side projects. We only kept sources where someone describes a business they run or ran. Generic advice and lists of ideas were left out. The directory has 651 ideas from 597 sources:

• Hacker News: 559
• The Koerner Office: 30
• Side Hustle Nation: 29
• Starter Story: 14
• Build With AI: 4
• The Startup Ideas Podcast: 3
• Corey Ganim (YouTube): 3
• Top Founders: 2
• The Side Hustle Show: 2
• The Hustle: 1
• Ryan Doser: 1
• Nick Vasilescu (YouTube): 1
• Niche Pursuits Podcast: 1
• Diary of a CEO: 1

The title and summary on each page are our own short description. Where an operator stated income or prices, the idea page shows it marked as their own claim. We have not verified any of those numbers.

How the tags work

Clef, a decision model that runs on Cloudflare Workers AI, read each source and picked a category, how the idea earns, a rough startup cost, how much time it takes, where it is run and whether it needs coding. These are estimates, not facts reported by the operator. Each tag shows the probability Clef gave it. Tags under 60% are marked “Low confidence” and are left off the idea cards.

Sources that describe investing rather than running something (index funds, dividends, savings interest) were left out by the same model.

Check before you start

Some sources are years old, and some of these businesses no longer exist. Read the source and the linked site before acting on any idea. Browse all ideas.