
Ask HN: What are other "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas"? - IgorCarron
In his recent essay,  (http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.... ), PG discusses several frighteningly ambitious startup ideas. The question revolves around other ideas that PG did not discuss, Here are the one he discussed:
1. A New Search Engine
2. Replace Email
3. Replace Universities
4. Internet Drama
5. The Next Steve Jobs
6. Bring Back Moore's Law
7. Ongoing Diagnosis
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bdr
Replace eBay. Their interface is crappy, they don't help with fulfillment, and
the reputation system could be improved. In general they seem stagnant.

~~~
karolisd
How do you solve the chicken/egg problem with replacing ebay?

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threejay
There are tons of forums with a buy/sell board. Might be a nice place to
start.

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DanBC
People keep doing dating type websites. That market is frighteningly full. But
I'm surprised people haven't seen the state of the "penpals for prisoners"
market - there are lots of websites and they are all, without exception,
appalling. Not just a bit clunky, but really really bad.

To turn that from a dull idea (it's been done, it just needs to be done
better) you'd add in some human rights stuff, and some prisoner reform stuff.
If you wanted to push some boundaries you'd use it to include schemes that
befriend, and monitor, paedophiles.

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11755527>)

Add in some work / education programmes (using some disruptive technology to
deliver the education; because you have a captive market.) and you've got a
nice socially aware start up.

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breathesalt
Obtainable but challenging products I would pay for:

 _Transportation:_

1\. A two-seat, 80+ mi/charge, <= $5,000, autonomous EV. Should be simple and
modular enough for self-assembly (basically Ikea for EVs). Insurance for this
would be next to nothing.

 _The following should be franchises in every city that matters:_

2\. Co-working space, learning space, and living space franchises for <=
$5/day each per customer.

3\. A vertical, autonomous farm franchise for <= $5/day per customer.

4\. An autonomous, scalable manufacturer-as-a-service with a simple API (like
Heroku for manufacturing).

 _Web services, Hardware, and Software:_

5\. Email will change, but not on a deep technical level. The winning service
will just let its users do everything they wish they could with email now but
can't. If such an email service were created, it would replace most social
apps/services and affect the rest profoundly.

6\. I don't think we need another Steve Jobs--but a few more PGs wouldn't
hurt.

7\. A way to prevent talent acquisitions and to encourage entrepreneurship in
a broader population outside of tech. The economy could definitely be more
distributed and diversified than it is today.

8\. An inexpensive OS and accompanying tablet tested and proven to work for
old people. If any demographic needs the power and grace of the internet, it's
old people. The interface and functionality should adapt automagically as you
get older.

9\. A subscription based service for the EV I mentioned earlier.

10\. A web service that creates DRM/copyright free songs based on songs you
like.

11\. Every time I say this I get down-voted but I would like a search engine
as good as Google, but lets you explore a realtime graph of anonymous or
aliased queries passively or actively; collaborative searching would
definitely be a feature. This solves "A New Search Engine" and "Internet
Drama" at the same time.

12\. Replace the FDA.

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AznHisoka
Keyword popularity prediction. Not Google Trends, or Google Insights. They
show what keywords are popular after the fact - months later.. I want a tool
that scour social networks, Twitter, forums, blogs and gives you a list of
keywords in a specific niche that have been mentioned a lot in the past 7 days
or so.

~~~
spydertennis
this is interesting. you could add alerts to show when something has an XX%
rise in popularity. for example the explosion in keywords. basically creating
stock market types graphs for keywords?

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utunga
fixing the monetary system - how about that for ambitious ;_)

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michael_fine
What's wrong with the monetary system?

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samstave
The Fed, Central Banks, IMF, Fiat based.

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michael_fine
Any proposals on how a startup can fix that?

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debacle
Micropayments that actually work.

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IgorCarron
other ideas expressed on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/Startup-Ideas/What-are-other-
Frightenin...](http://www.quora.com/Startup-Ideas/What-are-other-
Frighteningly-Ambitious-Startup-Ideas)

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kirk21
Discover (the characteristics of) every item in the universe.

~~~
huxley
Made me think of Douglas Adams: develop an app to personally insult every
sentient being in the universe ... alphabetically.

