What You Could Be Building Showcase

Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, recently negotiated a $50 billion valuation after reaching $2 billion in ARR in under three years. The founding team remained small, and the core idea wasn’t hyper-complex theoretical computer science—it was simply a better editor designed for people who write code.

Two years ago, that story might have felt like an outlier. In 2026, it serves as a syllabus. You could plausibly ship a market-ready version of each idea below from your kitchen table during your second year of study.

1. A Slack-Style App for a Specific Niche

Slack famously started as an internal side project within a gaming studio. The real-time messaging stack powering it is now taught line-by-line inside the BS in Software Engineering curriculum.

You don’t need to serve millions of enterprise users right away. Focus on a single underserved industry—such as pest control operators, dental clinics, or live sound engineers. Build a tailored chat and file-sharing tool fitted directly to their daily workflow, and charge $12 a seat.

2. A Meeting Tool That Focuses on One Essential Job

The most interesting products in video communication aren’t full Zoom clones; they are hyper-focused single-purpose tools.

Consider building live transcription optimized for specific regional accents, a meeting recorder designed to auto-delete everything except the final 10 minutes, or a shared canvas that turns handwritten doodles into clean, exportable digital diagrams. Each represents an achievable semester-long project.

3. A Specialized Coding Agent for Niche Codebases

When Meta launched Muse Code on August 5, 2026, they targeted enterprise-scale repositories. For a student developer, the bigger opportunity lies at the other end of the spectrum.

Focus on a language or framework that major tech companies ignore—such as Elixir, Zig, or legacy COBOL systems. Wrap specialized LLM API calls inside a tight execution loop tailored to that stack. Real engineering teams maintaining those systems will pay for tools built specifically for their ecosystem.

Why This Matters for You

At AmsterdamTech, second-year software engineering students rebuild real platforms like Slack and video conferencing tools as part of their coursework. The core purpose isn’t just completing the clone, it’s developing the mental model, production stack, and technical confidence that translate directly into a shipped, sellable product.

Take a look at the BS in Software Engineering brochure to discover what your second-year build could look like.