Mobile apps: 6+ months to build, $100K+ cost Chrome extensions: 21 days, $5 entry fee Guess which one has 18x less competition and solo founders making $500K+/year? The most overlooked business opportunity on the internet 🧵 (a practical guide to build chrome extensions)
Let me show you exactly what I'm talking about: Meet Ajay Goel. He had a simple problem with Gmail - needed to send personalized emails to 20 people. No native solution existed. So he built a quick extension. That "quick fix" now makes $5.4 million per year. Solo operation.
The crazy part? For years, Ajay ran this as a solo operation. One person. One laptop. While everyone obsesses over building the next unicorn, he quietly built a multi-million dollar business solving a Gmail annoyance. He's not alone.
Think about it for a second. 3.2 billion people use Chrome. Only 130,000 extensions exist. Meanwhile, 3.6 million apps fight for 1 billion iPhone users. The competition disparity is absolutely insane.
A 21-year-old Brazilian kid taught himself to code. Built CSS Scan - hover over any website element, copy its CSS instantly. Charges $69 for this simple tool. Made over $100K and funded his world travels. The tool he built in weeks generates more than most people's salaries.
Every successful extension I studied had the same origin story: Founder had a personal problem. Couldn't find a good solution. Built their own. Turns out thousands of others had the same problem. Personal pain = validated market.
The "scratch your own itch" doctrine works because you become user zero. You understand the exact workflow, the friction points, what a real solution looks like. No surveys needed. No focus groups. No guessing. If it's painful enough for you to build something, others will pay
If you are curious about how to find new extension ideas, I've got you covered:
And now comes the most important question: How do you actually make money? The successful founders figured out models that work... And some are pulling in serious cash. Here are the models that seem to work the best:
One pro tip: You can't just add a "premium = true" check in your extension code. Users can see and modify client-side code. Every successful paid extension needs a server component for verification. The security architecture matters.
Lastly, this window won't stay open forever. More developers are catching on. AI is creating both opportunities and privacy concerns. Google could change policies overnight. The best goldmines are always temporary.
While everyone fights over the next billion-dollar startup, solo founders are building profitable businesses in 3 weeks. No VC needed. No team needed. No office needed. Just a problem worth solving and the skills to solve it.
Thanks for making it to the end! I'm Loic - indie hacker, Slow-nomad, and a product tinkerer. Currently building something exciting at ColdIQ (http://www.coldiq.com). Previously built http://Podly.co & http://TubeRocket.com
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