The usual process
Whenevery I have a new idea that could be turned into a business I write it down. Some are just crappy but others stick in my mind. Most of these ideas are for digital products or services because that is what I know best. At some point I start researching. Most of the time I find an already established business and I ditch my idea. On one side I feel sad about it because I am not the first to come across the idea but what can you expect with over 7 billion people alive. On the other side I see my idea validated and have verification that not all of my ideas are crap.
Last time
For my most recent idea I knew there are multiple providers but none implemented the concept like I had in mind. So I started to build it. I build a prove of concpet to see if it is technically possible with my skillset, set up a basic landingpage and started implementing a minimum viable product. I felt very positive about it. After I came up with a name and the corresponding domain was not registerd yet I pulled the trigger and spend my first money on the idea.
Minutes later I found exactly what I was trying to build online. The website looks very professional, the service has more features than I even imagined for my own and it is cheaper. For what I intended to already charge money was all available in the free tier.
Damn it! I could continue build my own version but it would probably a year to reach a comparable level. But my competitors service is open source and he put it under the AGPL-3.0 license. To my understanding I am allowed to just copy it, host it myself and earn money with it. But doing so does not feel right to me also because I wanted to build and provide a service to people that did not exist yet. I am not sure if the author choose this license deliberately. If there were a affiliate program I could promote his service. But I did not find one and he charges very little so the commission would be even smaller. And I do not have an audiance to promote it to, yet.
The service I am talking about is addy.io
Back to square one!