It is both underserved and overserved.

The problem for small businesses is ownership and tailoring/complexity. Self-hosted solutions sound great but you need someone that knows how to run it.

Cloud solutions sound great and every VC-funded startup (there is plenty) would love you to buy-in, but that's a massive operational risk to a small business that would become entirely reliant on it. That's on top of every ERP having different workflows and either having to adapt to one or customize it to match your small business. Small businesses often don't exist by copying the ideas and workflow of another company as several industries can be highly competitive and the smallest of "custom steps and processes" can eek out a tiny niche.

And then there's the "big brand, never going away solutions", but they cost a fortune beyond what any small business can afford and likewise need developers just to customize it.

So, with many small business owners, who most likely are not a HN user nor have a github account and work on stuff that has nothing to do with the web. They will look at the ERP offerings, look at their spreadsheet and say "yea imma just go with excel"

I've been thinking about something similar. I think there's a market for "local handmade software" in cases like that, where a software developer can come in and build a little system tailored to a specific problem they have.

My dad has been a solo fabricator for most of my life, and what has always struck me was the way people came to him with jobs. Sometimes they'd show up with drawings and detailed designs, but mostly they'd just ask him to come look at something (or bring a photo), and describe the problem. He doesn't know CAD, so the drawings he makes are mostly just on napkins. The customers quite literally didn't know what they were getting before they got it, but that is fine, because they don't know what they want either.

I wonder if there's an analogue to that for software. A freelance local software developer these small businesses could go to if they had a process problem they'd like to solve.

Many large businesses still use Excel! You'd be surprised how much commerce is enabled by spreadsheets.

> a "tarpit idea" (deceptively attractive but actually unscalable, time-consuming)

Well it's hard to be as cheap as a spreadsheet.

founder here. i often advise people to use excel (or some web-based). it's excellent software, and often the simplest way to solve a problem. it just gets untenable as the company gets bigger.