

Startup ideas that I’m sick of hearing about - thematt
http://robbieabed.com/5-startup-ideas-that-im-sick-of-hearing-about/

======
Harkins
"Find people around you app - Nobody wants to find people around them and meet
them. Trust me."

I've been runing a site the last five years for tabletop gamers to do exactly
this. It's busier than ever, I'm spending my nights and weekends hacking on it
to keep up, and I expect some of the features I'm working on now to make that
growth curve noticeably steeper.

There's huge chicken-and-egg problems in this sort of project, but that
difficulty is also why they're valuable.

~~~
zecho
Niche interest and a reason to socially interact with strangers. It gets
creepy when my wife checks into Foursquare and sees that the 'Mayor' and 8
other people are there, too. Who cares? She certainly doesn't. She just wants
points or some deal or something.

------
cheald
So, let me tell you about my great idea. It's an app for creating
social/dating networks for book nerds who can find other book nerds around
them, exchange old books, and participate in local group buying deals based
around shared interests.

We'll add a Facebook login and a couple of ads and be _millionaires_.

~~~
bwarp
That's the modern day "Del Boy": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Boy>

~~~
revorad
"This time next year we'll be millionaires"!

------
mc32
>Find people around you app.

This might be true in NAm. In other parts of the earth, it might be different.
There are different cultural barriers and different things which are
considered "normal" for meeting new people. I'm sure "dating" sites are
working on ways to integrate this feature into their offering. Or, let's say,
find 5 other people around me who want to play some 3 on 3 basketball, or a
squash partner, whatever.

>Coupon / Daily deals

Again, true in the US market. Other markets might be ripe for a newcomer. For
example, a team in SAfrica could develop something to fit the local market.

>Online Dating Sites.

Sites, yes. But there's still room for innovation. It's far from perfect.

>Book Exchanges for colleges

True. Will there be any physical books in the long run anyway?

>Apps that create Apps

Ok.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Or, let's say, find 5 other people around me who want to play some 3 on 3
> basketball, or a squash partner, whatever."_

I don't think that's really the "people around you" concept he's talking
about. There are _lots_ of social sites out there that will find activity
partners and groups in your city - Meetup being the most salient example. The
"people around you" services are the ones that go "user123 is 3 blocks away!".
Hyper-local, if you will.

I'm hanging out with friends at a bar, I couldn't give two shits that
cutegrrl123 is a block away and also likes chess. In fact, I'd be hard pressed
to think of a single moment in my life where "meet a random stranger based on
an algorithm" is a substantially more attractive option than what I'm doing at
that moment.

"user123 likes chess and challenges you to a game this week" might work

"user123 is two blocks away and wants to play chess _right the hell now_ " is
not a really good use case

This is a concept that really only works in your head - every implementation
of it has landed somewhere between "creepy" and "really useless".

~~~
Kuiper
_"In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of a single moment in my life where
"meet a random stranger based on an algorithm" is a substantially more
attractive option than what I'm doing at that moment."_

As someone who hops around the country a fair bit, I can definitely think of
one place where this would be an appealing option: airports. I am sometimes
able to find a random stranger to engage in conversation, but it's often a
crapshoot trying to find someone who's both willing to engage in conversation
and interested in the same subjects; I usually settle for just the former.
This actually doesn't work too poorly (I've found that on the whole, people
who fly tend to be more interesting than a typical cross-section of the
population), but I'd be more than willing to spend my hour-long layover with
an algorithmically-selected stranger. If I'm also able to find activity
partners, all the better; I'd be happy to start packing my portable chess set
and Magic the Gathering deck in my carry-on luggage.

------
yalestar
Automatic apostrophe correction algorithms? ;)

~~~
sbronstein
I agree, basic grammar is important, but ESPECIALLY important in your
headline.

------
staunch
More than a few investors said that about search engines in the late nineties.
Just because an area is overrun with competitors doesn't mean it's not
promising. There's signal in all that noise.

------
zizee
Has this blog gone down after only four comments?

I hope one of the startup ideas he is sick of is not reliable blog hosting...

~~~
libria
Text reproduced below:

I hear a lot of people with new startup ideas, and although it is great to
hear them – I start hearing the same one’s over and over again.

Find people around you app – Nobody wants to find people around them and meet
them. Trust me. It’s weird, and it’s been done. I don’t know why people think
that this is a need.

Coupon / Daily deals – If you are coming up with this idea now, trust me when
I say millions of people have the same idea and are executing on them. It’s a
saturated market, do something else with your time.

Online Dating Sites. Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing
dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.

Book Exchanges for colleges – We have craiglist for a reason, and it works
very well. Yes, I know books are expensive and people aren’t getting their
money back but it will always be an issue. A book exchange site is not going
to solve that problem. It’s saturated, so please avoid it.

Apps that create Apps – This might be the techie in me talking, but for some
reason I can’t stand these types of solutions. yes, they are good for non
techies, but i’m not sure how much value they are creating in the end.

------
sumukh1
I really hate stealing page views from the owner, so when the site comes back
up, I'll take this down. (just reply here if it does) In the mean time here's
the full text:

[begin]

I hear a lot of people with new startup ideas, and although it is great to
hear them – I start hearing the same one’s over and over again.

> Find people around you app – Nobody wants to find people around them and
> meet them. Trust me. It’s weird, and it’s been done. I don’t know why people
> think that this is a need. Coupon / Daily deals – If you are coming up with
> this idea now, trust me when I say millions of people have the same idea and
> are executing on them. It’s a saturated market, do something else with your
> time.

>Online Dating Sites. Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing
dating site, it’s next to impossible to jump into the dating market.

>Book Exchanges for colleges – We have craiglist for a reason, and it works
very well. Yes, I know books are expensive and people aren’t getting their
money back but it will always be an issue. A book exchange site is not going
to solve that problem. It’s saturated, so please avoid it.

>Apps that create Apps – This might be the techie in me talking, but for some
reason I can’t stand these types of solutions. yes, they are good for non
techies, but i’m not sure how much value they are creating in the end.

[end]

~~~
nchuhoai
its up for me

------
joelhaasnoot
"Book Exchanges for colleges"

Don't be too fast to discount this one, maybe not for the US, but as a Dutch
student, this is definately something that needs to be built... Something
social (friends of friends will often have the books you need) and easy. We
have Amazon, Bol.com (Amazon clone), Marktplaats (craigslist/ebay crossover),
but none are a perfect fit for textbooks.

~~~
DarrenMills
I agree. I'm a co-founder with a start-up that just joined a prominent
accelerator, and we do two of the five things listed: book-swapping and daily
deals. While my opinion may be slightly biased about book-swapping because of
that, I have done a ton of research into the market and there is definitely a
market-pull for something that allows simple, intuitive book-swaps. Obviously,
it has to be safer and simpler (or at a decent fiscal advantage) compared to
craigslist, ebay, amazon etc, but I think that it is do-able with the right
business model, team, swapping algorithms...

You often hear about this idea (and maybe the other 4 as well, but I can't say
from personal expertise) because there _IS_ a need for a service like this and
entrepreneurs know that. But I see two main problems that keep these book-swap
start-ups from succeeding, and keep these ideas from going away.

First, there's a TON of variation in the way you can setup this business
model. There are dozens of different ways to make your money, a handful of
drastically different customers you can try and target, and endless ways to
setup/code the swapping process. Not every solution will be successful; most
will be unsuccessful.

Second, I don't think this idea works as a stand-alone product for a start-up
because of a handful of factors. One such example: book swapping "season"
(start & end of semesters) only occurs a few times a year. For a start-up with
cash flow like that (or none), each "book season" is going to be swinging for
the fences, after months of work, and hoping you can grab the attention of the
market during the only few weeks they might care about your product.

Sorry if I was vague at times, I didn't wanna get into details.

------
nohat
I don't know. The thing is all these might be saturated, but at least three
are problems that still aren't solved, but have a lot of value to people.

------
sek
Is anybody else annoyed that you can't zoom Facebook Comments? I have this
problem nowhere else, not even on Facebook.

~~~
rplnt
Works fine for me. In Opera that is, but I tried Chrome and it worked as well.

~~~
sek
I use Chrome, the letters stay the same.

~~~
waitwhat
(it's not just you -- same problem here on Chrome 16)

~~~
rplnt
I have 16 as well, but Windows. Maybe that's it?.

------
itmag
_Unless you are building a hack on top of an existing dating site, it’s next
to impossible to jump into the dating market._

This is interesting. How would you create a hack on top of an existing dating
site? Make a deal with said dating site? Provide an unsanctioned plug-in (eg
Greasemonkey)? Something else?

~~~
joshz
One example, not built on top of a dating site but last.fm, tastebuds.fm is a
social network/dating site based around music. Old discussion here
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1992801>

~~~
itmag
Cool!

I am assuming last.fm has an API and/or is scrapeable without having to log
in? Neither is typically true for dating sites.

~~~
joshz
They have an API and devs need API accounts. I don't know much about dating
sites but I'm guessing they don't have APIs because exposing the type of data
they store would be pretty creepy.

------
1tw
"Find people around you app - Nobody wants to find people around them and meet
them. Trust me"

Install Grindr on your phone and you'll find that a huge number of people are
very interested indeed in finding and meeting people around them.

------
richcollins
_Apps that create Apps_

Could have said the same thing about "apps that create blogs" or "apps that do
financial calculation in tabular format"

------
zem
so have any of the used textbook sites gained significant traction?

------
theDaveB
I love Codea on the iPad and that is a App that creates Apps (using Lua).

Dave

