Startup ideas spreadsheet
docs.google.com
docs.google.com
There's a lesson to be learned in all of this: don't think about ways to make money, but think about painful problems that you can solve for someone, and figure out whether a viable business can be created with that idea.
This reminds me of something Paul Graham called "sitcom startup ideas" in a recent post.
People should really be solving their own painful problems anyway (always better to be your own customer!) whose solutions can in some way be successfully and profitably exchanged for money.
Best startup ideas are about solving real problems. Some people care about problems getting solved, whether or not they are the ones doing the solving. Keep in mind that no one has enough time to try and solve all the problems at once. So if you see something wrong that needs to be fixed, and you don't have time to do it yourself (because you're busy fixing something else), why not just share it with people, so that someone else might work on it, thus helping to make our world a better place?
Maybe other people are better at implementing someone else's idea than me and I'm just viewing the world through Matt-colored glasses.
What if this is the writers of that new Silicon Valley comedy show soliciting ideas for their characters w/o having to pay writers!?
Sad thing is it's true.
Sometimes the problem isn't identifying the pain point, but identifying the competitors that are already solving it.
The thoughts I posted to Facebook, and the tweets I tweeted were fairly low-value content. I deactivated my FB account and stopped tweeting from my personal twitter account; if I never saw those tweets or status updates again I don't think I'd be worse off.
The value of old voicemails goes way up when the people that made them are no longer around.
Everyone's different though. Perhaps there is a market for automated "life" backups but I'm not part of that market.
I made a broad and sweeping generalization that they're not especially high quality ideas. I honestly don't believe the market is really there for a lot of them, nor that they can be turned into decent businesses even if there is a market due to monetization issues. (Yes, I know, actually charging people's credit cards isn't as appealing as a sexy exit strategy.)
In any event, shouldn't we draw lessons wherever we can, regardless of the situation? After all, I'd rather look at a list like this and have it reinforce the tenets of a good business model. It's easy to get caught up in the "what-can-I-do-to-make-money" trap, rather than create something that delivers massive value to people with credit cards and painful problems.
These actually seem pretty good to me. Obviously none of them contains enough information to tell if its a good idea because not enough of the idea is expressed in this format. But in the context of the format, it seems like a good list.
eg "Basecamp for travel planning" sounds plausible, but it doesn't tell you a huge amount about the service. If this was being taken on by people who know UI and have a interesting take on how travel planning could be simplified, I would not dismiss it.
The secret behind a great idea is actually the hours of research that go with it. You need to research the market very thoroughly, your costs and such and then suddenly it's an idea that's viable. Of course then comes the execution. But a an idea is not just good because it sounds good.
I think this table is missing some important columns. Consider adding these: - market size (in $) - time and cost for acquiring a customer - margin per customer ($ range)
Examples: Stripe for Norway, Twilio for New Zealand, etc.
But thinking about it a bit more, this idea can be split into:
1. Collaborative editing - Google Docs already allows this to some extend.
2. Document history - Tools like MS Word already does this to some extend. There is still a lot of room for improvement.
3. Using Git as a document store - Is Git really needed for this? Even if the system was backed by Git, would not it be better if the whole Git related parts are hidden from the user? Even if the system uses Git as the store, in order to present changesets that are meaningful to the user, the system will have to process the Git changesets. So why use Git?
http://www.grontmij.com/highlights/water-and-energy/Pages/pe...
The main problem at the moment is a lack of incentives to use it at waste water treatment plants, but I guess this will come with increasing Phosphorus prices. Still it would be beneficial to start recovering more Phosphorus already now but this is a political issue rather than an Engineering issue in my opinion.
[1] http:://slant.co/
(I personally have nothing to do with Slant just find it an interesting way to capture a debate like the ones in the spreadsheet into a more structured form)
Make a website to list, vote and discuss business idea should be first on the document. :)
edit: To clarify, there is a reddit dedicated to this; I think it's adminrequests. You can ask the admins to remove mods or close dormant reddits. It's standard procedure, no kneecapping or anything required.
Give your Twitter/FB/IMDb/last.fm usernames, and you'd see the list of people with common interests around you. You could disable this "social mode" when you don't want people bothering you.
The app would provide the perfect conversation opener, eg a recent news item about something you both like.
A big part of starting a business is ensuring that you do your market research right, know your competitors and identify what need you are fulfilling.
Some examples:
* "Share your wifi" - see http://www.btfon.com - this started years ago and is back by a huge telecommunications company.
* Checking browser and O/S versions - https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html
* Anonymous email - http://www.sendanonymousemail.net etc.
* Online image editing... http://www.photoshop.com etc.
RS
And since I can't edit: "Crowd-sourced shipping" has been done. http://www.uship.com in Austin has been doing this for 5+ years.
Mass-media conversion service:
Send in DVDs, CDs, tapes, records, hard drives, iPods, photos, documents, books, (almost anything), to have digitized. Make all digitized content browsable on a web interface.
Allow multiple data export methods such as web availability, as well as hard-drive send-in/purchase. Make data as accessible as possible. Think of the service like Earth Class Mail for digital archives.
https://www.google.com/search?q=media%20storage%20service%20...
Let me know if this service actually exists
- find you online, shop around to find the best service
- trust an unknown startup with their data
- pay a fair price
- put their media in a box, put stamps on it, put it in the mail
- keep track of an account & password
Although you say you want it yourself, I gather you haven't even done step 1 (there are several such services already). So find out how many people really want this thing so badly that they'll do all the steps. If those people exist, they'll be doing some painful version of it today.
What services are out there that do this? I can only find a handfull of conversion companies, but none which offer online access. These services seem to specialize on either video or audio, but what about both? What about documents or arbitrary digital media which I would like to consolidate?
And yes, I would trust a trendy startup with this task, much like I decided to trust Dropbox about 5 years ago. I doubt I am the only one who could be convinced with a nice website and a decent video.
Original: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190974 (almost 3 years ago)
I add to my idea notebook a couple of times a week without judgment of the idea itself. I do this as a bit of melon training, encouraging creative thinking. The fun part is reviewing these ideas. Finding an idea you had that resonates in someone else's successful startup is cool. More than anything else it reminds me that implementation is key, the idea is the catalyst.
This is superb. I'm sure all of us have an Evernote notebook, spreadsheet, or text file with startup or app ideas (if you don't, you should) but most of us also keep these lists top-secret for fear that somebody else will steal billion dollar idea #1023 right out from under us.
It takes alot of courage and openness to share your list in this way. For this, you have earned my respect and appreciation.
Thanks.
Are these just nice, potentially open-source able apps? I would agree with that. I think the valley, is suffering in realizing the difference b/w apps and companies! :)
"Lock your savings into the housing market, so you don't get priced out!" - REIT
Target market : "Socialists, Communists, Poor people "
WTF
That said, I don't know if you could start a company around it. Most of the point is the social aspect of collecting the money and deciding who 'wins' for a given week ( I suppose you'd do a lottery from a pool where winners aren't re-entered)
Basically just taking all the interest from the loans, and splitting it up as payouts in a lottery among everybody who has money saved.