I'm proud of you [Friend]! I think this is really great work. I see this vision very vividly, and it's one where the moat very clearly comes from your strengths in design. I mean, that's why I've never used let alone heard of an app that helps you find a bathroom. Because nobody's actually done this with any seriousness or talent.
This pain point has been very painful for me in the past, literally just for trying to do basic living, no different from being a local in Boston or New York. One time I basically invited myself into a private college building at Boston to pee, and it's not like California, so the security guard yelled his ass off at me, but ultimately I needed to pee so I just kind of did what I had to do. Then also in New York, it was literally impossible to be a human being because my cousin and I were always hunting for bathrooms. Sometimes you find a bathroom and it's "employees only" so even if you paid to be a patron you're fucked. I even tasked my Virtual Assistant with putting in hours to find bathrooms for me, but that was a failure.
I just think about how many parents suffer, and old people suffer, and how many people with chronic gastrointestinal issues suffer. And tourists who don't speak the area language suffer. And we haven't even gotten started on folks who are less privileged like food delivery gig workers and the homeless. This is applicable to so much more than just New York, Boston, and Disneyland.
[Other Friend]'s cousin lives in NYC, and she was a random +1's+1 to my big family's Thanksgiving last year, and when I asked her worst story about New York, she said she struggled to find a bathroom and almost passed out from the pain. I was like jesus I've never been in that much pain before.
I think this is a problem and solution space that is overlooked and yet can be very well scoped, and all of the success depends on execution instead of unknown risk, which is really rare. I don't know what your timelines are but I imagine you are doing this as a side project. I think also there is a potential here to eliminate the designer-needs-an-engineer chicken and egg problem because I am willing to commit to just implementing your design project myself. Sounds like it would be fun. It'd be my first project developing against a formal design spec. I can't start until Christmas break.
Lately, because I think I'm taking a hiatus on startups, I've been more into the notion of starting micro-software/micro-businesses in constellations as a way to scratch the startup itch. I wonder if it's more sustainable and successful that way, at least when one is early career. And basically the idea is that you have a bunch of ad hoc micro-partnerships with friends, etc., and that ultimately adds up into a lot of value creation, and also startup experience. I think I agree with Cal Newport's view that "being successful is really important because success begets success". So that's an argument in favor of micro-businesses rather than weird venture-backed hot air cargo cults. I think this is the kind of project where it would be a very successful first micro-business. It probably has more business value than it seems, and is not just a charity project. The quality of the app will probably stay higher if it has a business interest. I doubt this is the kind of project that can become a full-time job, but it does seem like one of these micro-businesses where you can put it in your pocket and start a pile of latent wealth / career capital.
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