Why the Best Startup Ideas Sound Incredibly Boring

There's a founder on Twitter who makes $40K/month selling software to funeral homes.

Funeral homes. Not AI. Not crypto. Not the creator economy. Funeral homes.

Nobody writes about this guy. He's never been on a podcast. He doesn't have a build-in-public following. He just quietly solves a real problem for a real industry and deposits real checks every month.

This is the pattern I keep seeing over and over, and I think more people need to hear it: the best startup ideas are the ones that make you go "huh, that exists?"

The sexiness trap

When people brainstorm startup ideas, they gravitate toward things that sound cool at a dinner party:

• "AI-powered social media manager"
• "Tinder for co-founders"
• "Spotify for podcasts" (wait...)
• "Web3 marketplace for digital art"

These ideas feel exciting. They're easy to explain. Your friends get it immediately. VCs nod along. Twitter gives you likes.

They're also the most competitive, most saturated, and most likely to fail.

You know what doesn't sound cool at a dinner party? "I built HIPAA-compliant fax software for dental offices." But that business probably does $2M/year with zero competition because nobody else WANTS to build HIPAA-compliant fax software for dental offices. That's the moat - the boredom itself.

Why boring wins

1. Low competition. Smart developers don't want to build software for plumbers. They want to build the next Figma. This means boring industries are structurally underserved. The software they use was built in 2005 and hasn't been updated since.

2. Customers have money. Dentists, lawyers, accountants, contractors, property managers - these are people running profitable businesses. They have budgets. They're used to paying $50-200/month for software. They don't need a free tier.

3. Low churn. A social media app user will leave the moment something shinier comes along. A dental practice that has migrated their patient records into your system is NEVER leaving. Switching costs are enormous. This is the best kind of lock-in - it's not that they CAN'T leave, it's that moving would be so painful they'd rather just keep paying you.

4. Word of mouth works differently. In consumer markets, you need viral loops and growth hacks. In boring B2B niches, people talk. Dentists know other dentists. Contractors refer contractors. One happy customer in a niche industry can bring you 5 more through genuine word of mouth.

5. Acquirers love boring. When you want to exit, PE firms and strategic acquirers go crazy for boring, profitable, niche software businesses. They trade at 5-8x revenue. Consumer apps trade at 1-2x (if anyone wants them at all).

Industries begging for better software

Here's a list of industries where the existing software is embarrassingly bad:

Property management (small landlords). The tools that exist are designed for companies managing 500+ units. Someone with 8 units is using a spreadsheet and text messages.

Veterinary clinics. The dominant players (IDEXX, Covetrus) charge $500+/month and their UIs look like Windows XP. Every vet I've talked to hates their practice management software.

Trades (HVAC, plumbing, electrical). Scheduling, invoicing, and customer management for tradespeople is still done on paper or in generic tools not designed for the industry.

Childcare centers. Parent communication, billing, attendance tracking - the existing tools are either ancient or prohibitively expensive for a daycare with 30 kids.

Churches and religious organizations. Member management, donation tracking, event coordination. The dominant tool (Planning Center) is actually good, but there's room for simpler, cheaper alternatives for smaller congregations.

Marinas and boat storage. Slip management, seasonal billing, waitlists. Most marinas use literal paper logs.

Self-storage facilities. The big players have software. The mom-and-pop storage places with 50-200 units? Spreadsheets.

Pest control companies. Route optimization, customer scheduling, treatment tracking. Most pest control operators run everything through a mix of Google Calendar and paper forms.

How to enter a boring market

The playbook is actually simpler than entering a sexy market:

1. Find the subreddit. r/PropertyManagement, r/veterinary, r/HVAC, r/daycare - these communities exist and they're full of people complaining about their current tools.

2. Use the current solution yourself. Sign up for the market leader in that niche. Try to do basic tasks. Notice every moment of friction. Those friction points are your feature roadmap.

3. Talk to 10 people in the industry. Not surveys. Phone calls or video chats. Ask what they hate about their current workflow. Ask what they wish existed. Ask what they'd pay for it.

4. Build for the underserved segment. Don't compete with the enterprise player. Build for the segment they ignore - the smaller businesses who can't afford or don't need the full-featured solution.

5. Price with confidence. $29-99/month is a rounding error for a business making $200K+/year. Don't price like a consumer app. Price like a business tool.

The mindset shift

The hardest part of building a boring startup isn't the technical work. It's getting over yourself.

You have to accept that your friends won't think your startup is cool. You have to accept that you won't get featured on Product Hunt's front page. You have to accept that your Twitter bio won't be as exciting as "building the future of X."

But you know what IS exciting? Checking your Stripe dashboard and seeing $40K/month from a product that basically runs itself because your customers are loyal, your market is stable, and nobody's trying to compete with you because they're all busy building another ChatGPT wrapper.

That's boring. And it's beautiful.