Hey all,
A market (though really it's an intersection of markets) I keep returning to is the deaf/hard of hearing market. I have a deep personal connection with this area because I come from a family of deaf people, I have a network of deaf family and friends, and as a hearing person with software skills and some business self education, I feel like I'm poised to take on this market for my first business. It's good founder-market fit, I'd be very passionate working to improve the lives of the deaf in some way. I need to focus on B2B as I don't have starting capital to generate the reach needed for B2C.
However I know following your passion can be detrimental. My biggest problem with this market is it's of course unethical to sell solutions to deaf people directly, like if I invent some software that does 100% correct sign language generation. I'd have to sell direct to businesses instead, and the problem with this that I can see is that I believe for the most part, private businesses want to do the bare minimum required to meet accessibility requirements, and public businesses would get their money from the government and funds to support deaf people (hospitals, dentists, schools, etc). So for a 1 man business building a SaaS, I feel like this is a very very hard niche to get into. My brain tells me to abandon this niche, as overall it seems more of a vitamin than a painkiller.
There are submarkets that I've been exploring. There are things like the physical stuff, like hearing aids, that I'm not going to get into (I have no idea how!). Education is a big thing, like teaching sign language at schools. That's pretty easy, technologically, to do but selling direct to public schools? There's the whole accessibility market, something I actually got to the point of business validation earlier this spring, but I shelved the idea as it became clear I'd have to cold call large enterprises to take on my solution that was wholly a vitamin, rather than a painkiller. Dead idea there.
Captioning and Sign Language, this is perhaps the most promising area for me, but the problem is captioning is very very good (and mostly free) since AI came along, and sign language solutions (there's a huge shortage of interpreters for the deaf, there's a real opportunity here) are capital intensive, I'd need to invest a lot into machine learning/AI/avatars/AR etc, which is a bit outside of my skillset and definitely my budget, I'd need several thousands just to release a working MVP, and even after that, I'd have to start selling direct to airports, hospitals, train stations, etc. I don't like picking up the phone to my friends let alone cold calling! (I know this is an area I need to improve on).
I think there's promising signs, and the area obviously speaks to me, but when I balance it with my goals of self-employment through SaaS, scaling to being financially independent, the more traditional areas like sales/marketing/recruitment/tech/apps where we just slap an AI wrapper around it these days and call it an 'AI agent powered auto tweet replier marketing assistant' seem a more sensible thing for me to explore my first business in.
TLDR: The deaf market is a very personal and passionate market for me, but I don't think it's viable to launch my first business in due to it being pretty 'nice to have' rather than 'need to have' for businesses.
I'd really appreciate your thoughts, thanks for reading
A market (though really it's an intersection of markets) I keep returning to is the deaf/hard of hearing market. I have a deep personal connection with this area because I come from a family of deaf people, I have a network of deaf family and friends, and as a hearing person with software skills and some business self education, I feel like I'm poised to take on this market for my first business. It's good founder-market fit, I'd be very passionate working to improve the lives of the deaf in some way. I need to focus on B2B as I don't have starting capital to generate the reach needed for B2C.
However I know following your passion can be detrimental. My biggest problem with this market is it's of course unethical to sell solutions to deaf people directly, like if I invent some software that does 100% correct sign language generation. I'd have to sell direct to businesses instead, and the problem with this that I can see is that I believe for the most part, private businesses want to do the bare minimum required to meet accessibility requirements, and public businesses would get their money from the government and funds to support deaf people (hospitals, dentists, schools, etc). So for a 1 man business building a SaaS, I feel like this is a very very hard niche to get into. My brain tells me to abandon this niche, as overall it seems more of a vitamin than a painkiller.
There are submarkets that I've been exploring. There are things like the physical stuff, like hearing aids, that I'm not going to get into (I have no idea how!). Education is a big thing, like teaching sign language at schools. That's pretty easy, technologically, to do but selling direct to public schools? There's the whole accessibility market, something I actually got to the point of business validation earlier this spring, but I shelved the idea as it became clear I'd have to cold call large enterprises to take on my solution that was wholly a vitamin, rather than a painkiller. Dead idea there.
Captioning and Sign Language, this is perhaps the most promising area for me, but the problem is captioning is very very good (and mostly free) since AI came along, and sign language solutions (there's a huge shortage of interpreters for the deaf, there's a real opportunity here) are capital intensive, I'd need to invest a lot into machine learning/AI/avatars/AR etc, which is a bit outside of my skillset and definitely my budget, I'd need several thousands just to release a working MVP, and even after that, I'd have to start selling direct to airports, hospitals, train stations, etc. I don't like picking up the phone to my friends let alone cold calling! (I know this is an area I need to improve on).
I think there's promising signs, and the area obviously speaks to me, but when I balance it with my goals of self-employment through SaaS, scaling to being financially independent, the more traditional areas like sales/marketing/recruitment/tech/apps where we just slap an AI wrapper around it these days and call it an 'AI agent powered auto tweet replier marketing assistant' seem a more sensible thing for me to explore my first business in.
TLDR: The deaf market is a very personal and passionate market for me, but I don't think it's viable to launch my first business in due to it being pretty 'nice to have' rather than 'need to have' for businesses.
I'd really appreciate your thoughts, thanks for reading
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