The Bakery Problem: A Framework for Choosing What to Build

Do you struggle to find what to build? Let's play a funny experiment 😊.

Let’s say you want to start a business in your neighborhood.

You walk around, observe what's already there, and notice something: there are 15 bakeries, all doing the selling the same thing. A few of them are thriving: lines out the door every morning, loyal customers, solid revenue.

But the majority of them are struggling. A few will probably close within the year.

Now here's the question: Would you open the 16th bakery?

Most people would say no. That's obvious, right? The market is saturated. One or two winners are taking most of the pie (pun intended 😎), and the others are fighting for crumbs.

But here's where it gets interesting.

This exact situation plays out every single day in the indie hacker world. People keep opening bakeries, and some of them (very few) succeed!!

The Four Paths

When you're standing in that neighborhood, you actually have four distinct options. Let me walk you through each one.

Path 1: Open Another Bakery Anyway ❌

This is the "I'll just do it better" approach. A LOT of indie hackers are thinking that way!

You look at the 13 failing bakeries and think: "They're failing because they're not good enough. I'll make better bread, have better service, create a better atmosphere."

Sometimes this works. But here's the uncomfortable truth: most of those 13 bakery owners thought the exact same thing when they started. They weren't stupid. They weren't lazy. They just underestimated how hard it is to compete when someone already owns the market.

In Indie Hacking terms, this is like building another launch platform, another note-taking app, another social media scheduler. Could you build a better one than what exists? Maybe. Will "better" be enough to win? Probably not.

The dominant player has distribution. They have brand recognition. They have years of compound growth. You're (for most of us) starting from zero.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying the odds are against you, and you should be honest about that before you commit years of your life to the fight.

Path 2: Open a Specialized Bakery ✅

What if instead of competing head-on, you carved out a niche?

You notice that none of the 15 bakeries caters to people with dietary restrictions. So you open a gluten-free bakery. Or a vegan bakery. Or a bakery that only does sourdough with ancient grains.

Now you're not competing with 15 bakeries anymore. You're the only option for a specific subset of customers who were previously underserved.

This is the niche down strategy, and it's one of the most reliable paths to success for indie builders.

The key insight: you're still in the bakery business, but you've redefined the game. You're not trying to be a better bakery, you're trying to be the only bakery for a specific group of people.

The only con is that most of the time, you’re not 100% sure there’s a need for gluten-free or vegan things in your neighborhood.

In Indie Hacking, this looks like:

Not "a CRM" but "a CRM for real estate agents"
Not "a scheduling tool" but "a scheduling tool for podcast hosts"
Not "an invoicing app" but "an invoicing app for French freelancers"

The narrower your focus, the easier it is to win. You become the obvious choice for your specific audience, even if the general market is crowded. It’s also WAY much easier to reach your audience, because you know them. Maybe you could find a community of vegan people to advertise your bakery?

Path 3: Open a Doorknob Store ❌

Now let's talk about the riskiest path.

You love doorknobs (i don’t know lol). You're passionate about them. You have opinions about brass vs. chrome, about ergonomics, about vintage vs. modern designs. You could talk about doorknobs for hours.

So you think: "I should open a doorknob store!"

Of course, there are zero doorknob stores in your neighborhood: you found something that doesn’t exist 🙌🏻!!

But you need to ask yourself a hard question: is that because you've found a hidden opportunity, or because there's no demand?

The absence of competition can mean two things:

You've discovered an untapped market (extremely rare)
There's no market to tap (common)

When there's no competition, you have no validation. You don't know if people will pay. You don't know if the business model works. You're making a bet based entirely on your own intuition.

Sometimes these bets pay off spectacularly. Every new category started with someone taking this risk. But for every success story, thousands of doorknob stores never found customers.

If you're going to take this path, you need to be honest with yourself:

Are you solving a real problem, or just building something you find interesting?
Have you talked to potential customers, or are you assuming they exist?
Can you afford to be wrong?

Path 4: Open a Laundromat Instead ✅

Here's where things get interesting. To me, THIS is the golden path.

While everyone is obsessing over bakeries, you notice something else in your neighborhood: there's only one laundromat. Just one. It’s old and dusty, but it's doing well. There's clearly a demand (people need clean clothes), but only one business is serving that need.

So you open a laundromat on the next street over.

This is validated demand with room for competition. You know the business model works. You know people will pay. You're not inventing anything new. You're just serving a portion of an existing market that isn't fully captured yet.

This is probably the safest path for most indie hackers.

Find something that's already working — a product with paying customers, a business model that's proven — and build YOUR version of it. Not a clone, necessarily, but your take on a validated idea.

Maybe you target a different geography. Maybe you focus on a slightly different use case. Maybe you just execute better on the basics. The point is: you're not guessing whether people want this. You already know they do.

Some of the most successful indie products are "laundromats":

There were email marketing tools before ConvertKit focused on creators
There were form builders before Tally made forms free and simple
There were landing page builders before Carrd made them dead simple

They didn't invent new categories. They found proven markets and carved out their space.

A Note on Passion

I want to address something that might be nagging at you: "But shouldn't I build something I'm passionate about?"

Here's my honest take: passion is overrated as a starting point, but essential for the long haul.

You don't need to be passionate about laundromats to open a successful one. But you do need enough interest to stick with it through the hard parts: the bugs, the customer complaints, the slow months, the endless small decisions etc

In my opinion, the sweet spot is finding something at the intersection of:

Validated demand (people will pay)
Reasonable competition (not a bloodbath)
Genuine interest (you won't hate working on it)

You don't need all three to be maxed out. But you need enough of each to sustain you.

The Bottom Line

Next time you have a project idea, ask yourself: What kind of store am I opening?

Another bakery? You're entering a crowded market competing on "better." Possible but hard.
A specialized bakery? You're niching down to become the only option for a specific group. Much better odds.
A laundromat? You're building in a proven market with room for more players. Probably your best bet.
A doorknob store? You're betting on unvalidated demand because you love the idea. High risk, potentially high reward.

There's no universally right answer. Some people are built for the bakery fight. Some discover that their doorknob store was actually serving a hidden need. Some will even succeed with a traditionnal bakery or a doorknob store.

But most indie hackers, most of the time, should be looking either for laundromats or for a specialized bakery. Find what's already working. Understand why it's working. Then build your version for your audience.

The neighborhood is big enough for more than one laundromat.

Thomas