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1901 points l2silver | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

Maybe you've created your own AR program for wearables that shows the definition of a word when you highlight it IRL, or you've built a personal calendar app for your family to display on a monitor in the kitchen. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it.
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modeless ◴[] No.35737709[source]
My townhome complex had one of those call boxes at the front gate. When Doordash/FedEx/the cleaners/the in-laws/etc arrived they would have to call me from the call box and I'd have to answer it and listen to garbled audio to figure out who it was and press 9 to open the gate. It was kind of a pain, so I made a Twilio app to answer calls from the call box.

I set up custom entry codes that I could hand out to anyone. Everyone got their own code, and it would text me whenever someone used a code so I'd instantly know who was coming. The text conversation was my timestamped access log. I also put time constraints on some codes so e.g. Doordash couldn't open the gate in the middle of the night, or I could set up a temporary access code for a party, and I rotated codes too, with text notifications if an outdated code was used.

I thought about making a paid app out of it, but it just didn't seem worthwhile. I didn't expect that many people would want to pay for it. For a while I was excited about a YC startup called Doorport that was going to make a hardware device that you'd install inside those dumb call boxes and make them smart with all sorts of cool features, better than my Twilio hack. But I think they pivoted to a much less interesting pure software thing and then got acquihired.

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codetheweb ◴[] No.35737859[source]
I think FreshBuzzer is a similar idea: https://freshbuzzer.com/
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modeless ◴[] No.35737893[source]
You're right, this looks like almost exactly the product I would have made if I decided to turn it into a product. I think they started around the same time I did. I wonder how much money they're making on it? Could be a nice little lifestyle business if they get enough users. I bet their Airbnb-focused features would be the real moneymaker, I didn't consider that as a potential market.
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weaksauce ◴[] No.35748273[source]
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/buzzmein

for people that don't want to click... $450/month and also buzzmein was the old name

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modeless ◴[] No.35748792[source]
Wow cool, thanks for finding that! Interesting to see how my idea of revenue potential matched with reality. I guess it matched pretty well, however I see he hasn't done any advertising and I feel like revenue could grow 10x or more if more people knew about it. At that point it seems like it would be a worthwhile project. Tricky to market though as it's one of those things that people don't know they want until it's explained to them.
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1. weaksauce ◴[] No.35748919[source]
yeah certainly possible to get the word out and likely get the numbers up. to hit that target with their prices you'd need about 1500 people using it every month. definitely not unreasonable but not easy since it's in a tiny niche that people don't really think about.