I built a tiny SaaS around one very specific problem

I’m a full time police officer and I build small software projects on the side. Recently I launched a very simple product called LOC8 that came from a problem I kept running into at work.

Sometimes you end up in unfamiliar areas and suddenly realize you do not actually know the closest address. Apartment complexes, backyards, rural roads, large properties. Dispatch asks where you are and you are trying to figure it out quickly.

Maps can solve it, but they require opening the map, waiting for it to load, zooming in, and figuring out the closest address. Siri and shortcuts can do something similar, but they still involve extra steps.

So I built a tool that instantly shows your closest street address, cross street, GPS coordinates, altitude, and accuracy the moment it opens. The whole idea is removing friction and answering the question “where am I right now?” immediately.

What surprised me while building this was how narrow the original idea was. I built it thinking almost entirely about patrol situations, but once I started sharing it I heard from firefighters, EMTs, delivery drivers, and travelers who said they run into the exact same issue.

It made me realize something interesting about niche SaaS products. Sometimes the best starting point is a problem that is extremely specific to one profession. If the underlying problem is common enough, it often expands naturally into other markets.

Curious if others here have seen something similar when building small SaaS products. Have you started with a niche audience and then discovered a much broader use case later?