This project posts one new startup idea every day for a year | Hacker News Reader

This project posts one new startup idea every day for a year

billiondollarstartupideas.com

104 pointsmikeberv34 comments

A service where you agree ahead of time and whenever you need a dental appointment instead of emailing you they just kidnap you with a panel van and you wake up later after the procedure.

Toothly: Anxiety free dentistry.

Any services to deal with my anxiety about randomly being kidnapped?

Twist: They kidnap you in your sleep with anaesthetic gas.

Twist or premium plan feature? ;)

Interesting. So you don't even have to know that you just had surgery. You could just go to sleep as you would normally, wake up, and everything is better. if anything you'll probably think you just had some weird kind of dream because of the anesthesia.

Sounds straight out of golden age of dystopian novels.

This will really mess you up psychologically and question your reality and your agency for a while.

Working life already has the same effect on me so no worries :)

Wait, I've seen this show... isn't this the opening credits of The Prisoner?

Now I need a startup to help with insmomnia.

Yes. Guardr. Someone will keep a close eye on you using lots of fancy technology.

(but they sell your data to Toothly)

Some useful reading/viewing on this subject:

Ideas are just multipliers: https://sivers.org/multiply

Idea vs Execution: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-is-more-important-th...

Timing is an important factor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpx7gpSqbY

Like https://nugget.one/ideas?

Ah! Ideas are cheap. Implementation is hard.

This is why patents are stupid.

But patents are supposed to cover implementation, are they not? (I know they are completely messed up and don't work properly for that purpose currently)

Patents are not required to cover implementation details, and in fact, it is not even required to lay out any detail of the mechanism. As an extreme example of this physicist Leo Szilard was granted a patent on nuclear chain reaction in 1936, three years before it was discovered scientifically. It was sufficient for the British patent office that if such a mechanism existed, it could release large amounts of energy.

This may be an extreme example, but it illustrates that implementation details is not a requirement for a patent. This is also the case for a lot of software patents. They are broad enough to cover nearly anything, but not detailed enough to be useful as a description to build useful technology.

In the US, a patent requires enablement (ability to make it). That can be squishy, of course, as it doesn't require a working prototype.

https://www.upcounsel.com/difference-between-patentable-and-...

One new stupid startup idea every day.

ice cream trucks but for toilet paper

I'd invest

Mobile supermarkets with base requirements (TP, Sanitary Napkins, Water, various Food stuff). Drive around take requests through a perspex wall, stick items in a secure box and push through to outside truck.

This concept has legs if ask you me. Wish i had the capital and time to try it.

I was thinking of that recently as Covid-19 idea, but of course you need to have it ready before hand.

They do exist at festivals. (minus the hygienic aspect of course)

In my country this is still common in countryside without the secure box. Various "themed" trucks go through small villages and you can hail/stop them to buy stuff. They also each have their theme music so you know which one is it.p

Ideas are incredibly cheap. Execution is hard as someone else pointed out. Beyond that, a random AI crapsoup of techonerdmangled words would give a pretty good "billion dollar idea":

AI ML crypto spaceship

Nano modular ML-based DNA aggregator

Crypto but actually is useful

And some of the most important ideas require the most boring execution:

- safe, clean toilets for the next billion

- all-display walls, e-paper that can act as lights too

- instead of self driving cars how about simple government intervention to provide sensors on roads for augmented-driving cars?

- continuous study of flu via most populated areas to predict flu vaccine 6 months from now (Bedford lab but super charged and automated)

- and finally, 5$ hospital saline solution

These seem stupid and naive but I believe they are some of the most important "ideas" and again without any execution plans.

Those ideas may be important. but they aren't valuable.

Valuable ideas are protectable.

Valuable ideas are quite often, unique and relatively secret(for example, secret in your industry).

Often valuable ideas are not just a one liner. That's just lazy. But they're a deep, complex understanding about something.

Valuable ideas allow great amplification of execution, where a small amount execution can create large rewards.

And let's say you're just mediocre at execution. But you have valuable ideas, often.

Couldn't you join a startup, help it succeed and possibly rewarded handsomely ?

Couldn't you join a big co., and become a very useful employee and be rewarded for it ?

Nowadays, the ideas/execution dichotomy seems to be repeated more or less blindly whenever ideas are discussed. (I do hear you and what you say above though - not blaming you for this, just responding with what arises in me. I'm not saying the following to devalue execution - just to devalue the dichotomy.)

I suppose that this is/was originally a well founded defense against, for instance, people being overprotective about their business ideas to a degree that it was undermining actually getting the implementation done.

To me this seems to mask the fact that not all ideas are made equal. There may be a mountain of user research behind one idea, and another may be just a spark of "wouldn't it be cool if..."

As long as we're working with information, all we're ever doing is in one sense or another dealing with ideas. If we only respect the work of those who deal with the business game or with the bits & bolts, we will keep ending up with poor user/client experiences. Understanding the ideas inside the head of the user often is the difference between a functional product and a brilliantly enjoyable one.

Curious about the saline solution problem, it appears 0.9% concentration is available for roughly $10/L on internet marketplaces, likely can be manufactured much cheaper, but getting it for that price in a US hospital might be a challenge.

My point is the insane supply chain costs that permeate the insurance, hospital and medical manufacturing industry. I used the saline solution as an example based on an LA Times investigation that found out saline solution is charged 1000$+.

Again a very hard problem as it involves innovating across the board in boring ways.

It seems that most of these startups are in the space of what I would call low-tech, i.e. smartphone apps and websites.

Are you implying anything by "low-tech" or just an observation?

I'm not sure I'd call any of these billion dollar ideas, but some of them are interesting nonetheless.

Some are really interesting, to be honest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com