For instance an idea that I had a couple weeks ago was a dating site for people studying abroad.
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Further it would be tied into a recipe data store so a user could find recipes that they have the necessary items for.
There is another angle in which if it caught on the list could be provided to the local grocery store for fulfillment so the list of items would be prepared and boxed at the store and the user would then be able to pick it up, further if it became big enough it may support delivery services.
As well there are personal chef services in which a chef prepares meals for a few clientele, In this situation, the Chef could be provided a list of inventory on site that wold allow them to formulate meal plans based on inventory at the home.
Finally one way I though of monetizing it was to allow coupon marketing in which when an item was up for restocking an alternative vendor could target the customer with a discount for choosing their product over a competitors. Say a person generally purchases Kraft Mayonnaise, the coupon service would allow Hellmans to provide a coupon to the client in an effort to try to sway their buying decision over to their product or allow Kraft to provide one as a loyalty incentive.
My though was building a system that could be retrofitted into existing refrigerators and pantries would allow users to adopt the system without the need for large capital outlay, then patent the system and offer good royalty agreements to manufacturers of refrigerators, etc. to gain adoption in the next gen of kitchen appliances.
Realistically though, I will never peruse this idea, the capital outlay to just get the prototype hardware is beyond my means and all of the Angle Investors I know, do not invest in hardware based ventures they are strictly software guys so it would most likely require me to bankroll it. That coupled with my consultancy has pretty much just left it to languish in my mind as just a cool idea that I ponder now and then. I would live to build it, but I just don't have the resources needed to get it to the point where I could pursue investment. It's one of those ideas that requires significant investment just to get it to the point of getting real investment dollars.
EDIT: The main diff in our approaches was that I was going to scan UPC codes - not any special hardware outside of a smart phone or a barcode scanner I looked at having contract manufactured (in 2008 not many had smart phones that could scan barcodes).
It could analyze eating habits and recommend healthier meals...man that would be cool
I posted 5-6 times on HN about my idea with lot of expectation , sometimes i got 1 or 2 feedbacks but never got it to featured category, not many people given me much comments.
I struggled but kept working on it, I built a product and launched it week back in android market I had 0 marketing budget, no press release but still guess what slowly but steadily number of downloads increasing per day from 0 to 500 , people are giving me feedbacks.
Here is about what i built.
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I suggest you ,just follow your heart. At the end it will give you an immense pleasure irrespective of end result.
So what I wanted to make at one point was an internet "answering machine" that will log in for you when you log off and collect/log messages that you can check remotely or have e-mailed to you.
There is an offshoot of the Paleo crowd which generally eschews fruit. For example: