
Business ideas: proving ideas are a dime a dosen - clyfe
http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html
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pavel_lishin
> A village in china that paints portraits of pop culture icons as various dog
> breeds. Look, Obama as a GreyHound!

If your ideas are retarded, of course they're a dime a dozen.

~~~
hcho
How does selling ringtones of a frog singing to club music sound as an idea to
you? Let me introduce you to Crazy Frog:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Frog>

Retarded ideas make money too.

~~~
jamesteow
I sure as hell didn't think limiting people to 140 characters was going to
make sense.

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AretNCarlsen
I believe that was originally a technical limitation, and only later did it
become evident that there is a business value in offering partially-literate
individuals a medium that caters to, while providing plausible deniability
for, their slow reading and writing speeds.

Twitter has little or no technical reason to be so limited, of course, but
doesn't want to alienate the tldr crowd.

~~~
beza1e1
Technical limitation: SMS are 160 characters. 20 chars for username and 140
chars for message.

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espadagroup
Ideas are a dime a dozen, but great ideas are not. Some ideas are better than
others, and some are much better than others. It would be easy to argue that
someone who could consistently come up with the much better ones would be
worth just as much if not more than a great executor.

~~~
marknutter
Great ideas are only great in hindsight.

~~~
espadagroup
I really don't think so. If in at least your own mind it is not a great idea
then you shouldn't do it to begin with.

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marknutter
Why on earth would anyone pursue an idea they themselves didn't think was
great?

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puredemo
Make money.

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hugh3
I don't understand all this pooh-poohing of these ideas.

None of them is _great_ , but the point is that every one of 'em (well, all
the ones I've read) _could_ be, if executed correctly, a perfectly viable
business. Picking out a few at random:

 _Presentation Consulting - Teach companies how to improve their
presentations_

That's not a bad idea. Is somebody already doing it? Possibly, but that
doesn't mean you can't do it too.

 _Online flower shop with one-hour delivery_

Sounds tricky, and you'd need to restrict it to a couple of major and dense
cities, but again there's no reason it's not a viable business. Market it
correctly by encouraging men to send their ladies flowers spontaneously, and
you could surely make some money.

 _Build Your Own Back Pack Shop_

Damn you, random numbers! I don't much like this idea, but there's gotta be
somebody out there (schoolkids, I guess) who would love to build customized
backpacks for themselves. Great idea? No. World changing? No. Profitable if
you get the product and the marketing right? Sure!

~~~
jdietrich
> Build Your Own Back Pack Shop

Timbuk2 have a successful business offering customised messenger bags.

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Alex3917
For what it's worth, here is the subset of the ideas I came up with from that
list:

[http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2009/02/68-free-
bus...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2009/02/68-free-business-
ideas.html)

The point of the exercise is that most people think of five or ten ideas, and
then go with the first decent idea they come up with. But if you actually
force yourself to come up with 100+ ideas then it's more likely that your idea
will legitimately be a good idea. Which is important since the first .1% of
the work you do on the project has a large influence on whether the next 99.9%
will make you either millions or zero.

Fred Wilson also recently said that he would use one of the 999 if someone
made it, in case that means anything to those perusing the list.

~~~
wrs
Quickly scanning the list, I see we did #712 as an intern project:
<http://www.elmoreclub.com/> I'll be looking for Fred's steps soon!

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run4yourlives
>A paperless hostpital

may as well have suggested an lunar-orbiting space platform that launches
rockets to mars...

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systemtrigger
Corollary: Some ideas are vastly more lucrative than others. Which is why it's
useful to spend a week listing your top 999 ideas. Execution is a PITA so
choose carefully.

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mlwarren
Interesting list but the notion that "ideas are only valuable when someone
(like you) makes something happen" can only go so far. If you have a bad idea
that you make happen it doesn't automatically become valuable.

This story might prove that ideas are a dime a dozen, but one can argue that
good ideas are not.

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mikk0j
My favorite, #469: "A YouTube VC firm, that will invest money in people who
are willing to do stupid stuff on video in hopes that the video will go viral
and they will make a profit."

Could happen, in today's angel investment climate...

~~~
saraid216
Rebecca Black?

~~~
rospaya
She gave money to somebody to film her doing stupid stuff.

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DrCatbox
I have read a couple of hundred of them and thats the most useless ideas I
have ever seen.

Most of them seem to be a solution to really mundane everyday consumer quirks.
None of them attempts to use basic human needs such as need for communication
and approval. Its just "somebody could do my laundry" and "somebody could
write something on a website".

~~~
mjallday
They are only useless if your goal is to address one of the basic human needs
you mention and even then maybe they do. "Someone could do my laundry so I can
complete my research paper on curing cancer"

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cruise02
I'm sure I saw this here first, but "Ideas are just a multiplier of
execution." <http://sivers.org/multiply>

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arethuza
"Microbrewery with high-octane beers with boutique labels that cost as much as
good wines"

32% beer at £35 a bottle:

<http://www.brewdog.com/>

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gigantor
<http://flippa.com>, where you get a stream of business ideas that are mostly
proven to work. Due diligence required as usual to identify scams, future
market demand, revenue/effort, competition, profit margin, etc.

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dpcan
This list is actually pretty awesome. I had my doubts, but wow, very nice.

Funny: #120 A travel company that arranges people to stay at others houses.

~~~
saraid216
<http://www.couchsurfing.org/> ?

~~~
lurchpop
or <http://www.airbnb.com/> ?

~~~
fredoliveira
by travel agency he probably meant someone who takes the home-finding job off
your hands.

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ThomPete
Ideas matter. So does luck, timing and many other things.

Not ideas like "I want to create a backup tool" but rather ideas like "I want
to create a backup tool that allow the user to simply drag and drop the files
they want backed up into a folder on their machine". In other words ideas that
are followed by an insight.

When people walk around saying ideas are a dime a dosen and execution is
everything they forget that execution in itself is empty. You need to execute
on something and that something is ideas.

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ulisesroche
#8: A gadget to cook beans/lentils/vegetables/rice for the same amount of time
(quicker than what can be done in a slow cooker.)

Ah dang, I was just about to re-invent the microwave too!

~~~
ctdonath
Naw, the microwave is still pretty much a one-thing-at-a-time device. Do one
thing after another, and the first is cold when the next is ready; do them
together, and you either have to pop stuff in at different times or some stuff
will be over/under-cooked when it ends.

Methinks the idea was something crockpot/rice-cookerish which you dump all the
stuff into at once, say into different sections of the cooker, and it ensures
everything finishes cooking at the same time even though everything cooks at
different rates. Lower/higher temps for some things, delayed start for
others...

~~~
ulisesroche
...and twitter integration! Let's get rich!

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pacomerh
Ideas that are based on making money for the sake of being rich are the worst.

~~~
fragsworth
But that's kind of the main reason why you start a business, you know, to make
a lot of money.

Otherwise you're talking about charities.

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masterzora
Really? I've talked to a number of entrepreneurs who are in it because they
have an idea they'd like to see happen or they think it's fun or to try to
leave a mark on the world or a number of other reasons where the money is only
a side effect.

~~~
pacomerh
Well put, money happens when you scratch an itch that is keeping you from
sleeping basically. Many people got lost somewhere in the way and think of
ideas as machines that will squeeze wallets and make them rich. All people I
know that made money actually solved a personal necessity or where so excited
about wanting to see something happen that their own genuine excitement
attracted natural attention from people that where at the same time excited to
see that.

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lichichen
Also see

<http://www.ideaswatch.com/>

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scottkrager
968\. Make a Triple Snuggy.

What exactly is that? I'm scared.

~~~
run4yourlives
Considering there is also the "double snuggy", this idea is pretty much 7
minute abs.

~~~
rokhayakebe
The magic number is 6, not 7.

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nbashaw
My response: <http://www.nbashaw.com/2011/06/09/ideas-matter-too.html>

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rokhayakebe
Yeah, but you know they aren't giving away their most valuable idea.

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hmottestad
Typo. Dosen -> Dozen

~~~
wickedchicken
Not to mention "hampster," regardless of how "Hampster Dance" was spelled

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rkon
I built a paper airplane and sold it for a penny. Therefore, airplanes are
only worth a penny. Quick, let's all go get our own Airbus!

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Shenglong
_Rent-a-wife – a woman who cleans, cooks, does laundry, picks up dry cleaning,
mail, etc but without the emotional relationship._ I'd rent...

~~~
skz
This made me lol. They interchanged 'maid' and 'wife.'

~~~
Shenglong
Yeah exactly, haha. Just one of the more entertaining points

