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More Startup Ideas

benbloch.posterous.com

39 pointsbenbinary36 comments

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5 is the best one IMO. 3 seems to describe what GetSatisfaction is doing and 4 seems to describe Last.fm.

Your favorite idea has literally hundreds of possible customers!

#5 mystified me.

I had a vague wish for XCode on my ipad.

haha scary....

The trouble with an IDE for the iPad is that it can't include a compiler unless it's only for jailbroken devices (which severely limits your market). I'm convinced there would already be several if Apple didn't impose that limitation, but an IDE without the ability to compile or run tests is kind of a hard sell.

What if the code is compiled remotely? If it's a web app, that makes sense because you could then view it in a browser. Of course no compilation necessary for rails and it's colleagues.

Xcode already has distributed compilation support. I've never used Visual Studio, so I can't comment on if it has support or not. Either way, a cloud-like compiler 'front-end' might be a decent idea, as long as you factor in the CPU costs involved. Compiling C family languages is a rather intensive task.

There's even a Y Combinator RFS for it: http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html

Heres 2 random ones I had the last few days:

Roll your own self serve ad system. Much like how reddit lets you bid for ads on their site, let me install a system like that, complete with keyword bidding and the like. Im well aware of things like buy/sell ads, but those are for banner ads across the span of a time frame- not targeted really.

Also, A new analytics system which instead of focusing on already done things, it makes sense of ups and downs. For instance, it could tell me: Traffic is slightly up today- Keywords X Y and Z are sending increased traffic

Traffic is slightly down today - Abandonment on page X is up 150%

etc..

  Re: new analytics system

Google Analytics already does this. Have a look at their 'Intelligence' feature.

Some random comments:

1) I don't get the idea. Do you mean something like an automatic check-in based on your current location?

2) This is already partially covered by Twitter: just twit "Who wants to meet in 5 minutes in..."? I don't see the need of an added service. Sure, you could add all the features you can think of, like maps. But now twits can be geolocalized too.

3) I like this idea. The only problem is that a system like Aardvark could work mainly for big companies with a large customer support department. Such companies could be difficult to convince to try the new system for their support.

4) Last.fm already does that. Edit: I've seen only now your comment. Well, I prefer the Last.fm model...what is the logic behind an invite only service? If we have in common many favorite artists, it's probable that I will like also some other artists from its collection.

5) I don't own an iPad and I can't judge the usability of its keyboard...but I don't see many people programming on that thing. It's more a consumer, rather than producer type of product. However, I believe there will be hundreds of geeks ready to install it on their iPad, even if they won't use it much.

Thank you very much for your ideas! I'm currently looking for one and posts like yours are really useful for my brainstorming.

1) "Do you mean something like an automatic check-in based on your current location?" - gowall doesn't like this, see: , more of a reminder service maybe? It's open to interpretation what you'd do with the information once you could predict someones intent to check in.

2) Twitter leaves a lot to be desired for spontaneous event organization. What if all of your friends aren't on twitter, or you need a minimum number of people to confirm before, say making reservations? Twitter is still a tool that can get you part of the way there most of the time.

3) Thanks, maybe it'd start as targeting startups.

4) Clarification on this idea coming.

5) It's a huge interface challenge for sure, I hope someone figures it out.

Thanks for your feedback!

Agree with Ben on #2 - Twitter is far from a being a satisfactory solution for spontaneous group organization. As it has evolved to be increasing about sharing news, tweets are quick to slip below the fold unless you've limited your following to only your closest friends (and they aren't heavy users). The feed simply isn't conducive to organizing events that are tied to a specific time and only involve a subset of your social network.

With regard to #2, if your friends aren't on Facebook or Twitter, they are probably even more unlikely be on this new service.

I think that this problem is pretty much solved by mobile phones (sms, call).

In terms of discovery of casual events, there might be something there though.

#4 I couldn't agree more. Its easy to find all the well known artists for a particular style, but after you find the 10 or 15 main ones it gets much harder to find new GOOD songs.

I would consider myself as one of the ones who have spent a ton of time creating my 1 playlist. Its really hard to find new artists. It works almost like highschool. There are little groups of artists who sound similar and know each other. Once you find 1 its easy to find the rest of the group, however finding that first 1 can be extremely hard.

I easily go through 200+ new songs every week by artists that are supposed to be similar but are not.

It doesn't help when I like a somewhat different genre then mainstream.

What type of music are you looking for? Tag-based radio on last.fm doesn't work? Allmusic.com doesn't work?

If you happen to like electronic it couldn't be easier, just listen to Internet radio like www.di.fm where there are like 30 radio stations for every subgenre of electronic imaginable with all good tracks cycling selected by a director or actual DJs who almost always give a list of every song and artist used in their set.

8tracks.com is great for this.

Re #4: For me, music discovery is still a painful and unsolved problem. Its hard to put my finger on precisely what the problem is, but I suspect that part of the problem is that there is so much music out there that new releases drown everything else out.

To put it bluntly, how am I supposed to find the next Suba or Orchestra Baobab?

I get a sneaking sense that there are a lot of #2's on the not-so-distant horizon. Makes sense that social, mobile & location would converge in this manner.

I'll add my alpha to the list: http://poig.com - I love this space and am curious to hear what people think.

"Spontaneous event organization" was something somebody submitted on HN a little while ago. It had facebook connect as the login and everybody hated on it; but it basically threw "Anybody want to see a movie on wednesday" or whatever on your status and organized responses.

Do you have a link? I'd love to check it out.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1588553 I think.

This is what I thinking about #2. Given FBs currently available event setup and organization tools it would seem trivial for them to simply make it more prominent.

I guess there are people not on FB, but are those people going to be on this new service?

#2 (spontaneous events) is something the startup I'm with is building. If you are interested in being added to a private beta test, here's the link: http://vol.ly/?s=HN

#5 Allow me to edit the code of my Heroku hosted Ruby on Rails app with your iPad IDE using smart shortcuts and finger gestures and I will buy an iPad and your IDE.

I'll be releasing something in the next week that will definitely scratch #2 off that list. Stay tuned.

#4 exists - http://grooveshark.com

I love grooveshark too, but #4 is really about letting people who spend lots of time on something like grooveshark selecting music earn revenue by sharing the music they've selected.

I love grooveshark, I am a VIP and spend clean over 60 hours listening to it every week. However its not good at finding new music.

Its awesome at having/playing/sharing but no good at recommending. Especially small "local" bands, and off genre artists.

Or mixtape/opentape

I lolled at 4. Professional Human Music Reccomenders are called DJs.

#4 already exists: http://www.theonion.com/articles/desperate-pandora-employees...

There are ideas and then there are great ideas and then there are knowing how to implement the great ideas.

I like this list, but:

Human-powered Pandora

Isn't that last.fm?

I probably should have been more clear. The concept I was thinking of is more like a premium, maybe invite-only last.fm. This is really about empowering the people who really work hard to find good music and servicing the people who really love good music.

I could definitely see a use for this. While digital distribution is rapidly making record stores obsolete, there still certainly is a need for the guys behind the counter who knows way, way more about music than you ever will (think Jack Black and John Cusack in High Fidelity).

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