
I Open-Sourced All My Business Ideas - graham1776
http://grahamwahlberg.com/business-ideas/
======
sivers
Love it. Two years ago I did this, and wrote a little something about it when
I started:

"Why my code and ideas are public"

[https://sivers.org/ws](https://sivers.org/ws)

I blogged about it to call attention to it for one main reason:

I wanted to see if anyone would "steal" the ideas.

Because it seems to be many (MANY) people's biggest worry about sharing any
ideas: that someone will steal them. See the comments in
[https://sivers.org/how2hire](https://sivers.org/how2hire) for example. Also
this from Jason Fried of Basecamp:
[https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/683809719782215680](https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/683809719782215680)

Anyway - it's been two years now, and nobody has stolen any of the ideas. It
could just be that my ideas suck, but I suspect that the worry of people
stealing ideas is nothing to worry about for any of us.

~~~
danieltillett
Derek I think you are right about why none of these ideas have been stolen :)

As a general rule you don’t have to worry about your ideas being stolen unless
you are lucky enough to have a truly brilliant idea [1]. The chance that you
have a brilliant idea is very low.

1\. By brilliant I mean an idea that checks more than 10 off my list.
[http://www.tillett.info/2015/08/30/ideas-are-not-
cheap/](http://www.tillett.info/2015/08/30/ideas-are-not-cheap/)

~~~
scrollaway
You sure about that scale? It doesn't seem particularly hard to check off 10
items off that list. I tried a previous failed idea, an idea I didn't follow
up on yet and an idea I'm currently working on and got 8, 10 and 12
respectively, skipping some items I don't have an answer for.

I mean I would consider all three of those good ideas, but I definitely
wouldn't call them brilliant.

~~~
danieltillett
What were the 12 that you ticked off? I would love to see an idea that hit 12
of them - I can’t think of an idea in history that has hit 12 if you mark
fairly.

From my conversations with people about this list there seems to be quite a
divergence in how people are marking off if their idea meets a criteria or
not. For example, people consider that their idea is not easy to replicate
because someone like them could not easily replicate it, not what a well
resourced team could do. It is very hard to find an idea that can not be
easily replicated with the right resources. I should do a follow up post on
how to do this so you don’t fool yourself into think your idea is better than
it really is.

~~~
nekopa
Please do a follow up because I'm working on an idea that hits 19 of the
points you list.

Last year me a 2 of my friends sat down in a pub one night and did a
brainstorming session for me (IT ideas) and 1 of the others (a writer - so
story/article ideas).

We were trying to do the 100-10-1 process. Harder than it looks, but me and my
other friend got 50 ideas each. Then over the next 2 days whittled it down to
5 ideas each to start work on. The 1 idea I am now concentrating on hits 19 of
you points, and I am actually quite excited about it, especially as I will be
the first power user, it scratches an itch for me.

I would like to see your list passed around some other successful people to
see what they would add, and whether or not more items could be added, maybe
including some negative items (ie if the idea hits this, minus a point from
the score) . Then think about what the real number of points needed for a good
idea should be. I am going to look back over my brainstorming list now and see
how some of the other ideas score on you list.

Thanks for putting it together!

~~~
danieltillett
I will do a follow up and flesh out the criteria in more depth so that
everyone is on the same page. I use this list to judge my (and other people’s)
ideas, so I know what each criteria means, but as this thread has showed there
must be quite a divergence between my judgement and others.

I would certainly love to talk to anyone about their ideas if they are meeting
19 off the list! Very impressive.

------
nof
How on earth does this constitutes as open source? So if I write out my
research results to the public, it is considered open source? What is the
source? The text is not a compiled version of some previous text. And if it
where (LaTeX) the underlying idea is still present in the "compiled" version.
No saying I don't like his ideas, but there's beside the point.

When open source becomes a layman term for productivity and do "like all the
cool guys in the bay", rather than one of ethics and critical reflection on
contemporary ideologies underlying technological developments and their
affects on society and the world as a whole.

BTW: this comment is open source...

~~~
LesZedCB
There is a precedent for open source data sets being called open source[1].
I've heard it before and I don't have a problem calling it that.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science_data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science_data)

------
Htsthbjig
I made some companies out of ideas that I had. I told everybody my ideas.

When I created my first company most people thought I was crazy when I told
them my idea. It turned out to be a brilliant idea that worked very well but
most people did not recognize it at the time, let alone put the resources to
copy it...

In fact, because I was young and naive I was enthusiastic about it, but
talking to people(specially experienced people) made you doubt in yourself.

Now I have friends that are also successful entrepreneurs, and it is a very
common experience among us.

Now I don't talk with lots of people about my ideas, I don't want to argue or
convince or whatever.This can make you to hang on on bad ideas by ego before
they are tested. I just test them in the real world as fast as I can.

Most of them are not good once you test them, but thanks to them you iterate
or discover good ideas.

------
polemic
Minor point: "open source" is not open source because you have the source.
It's open source because it's _licensed that way_. Adding a public domain or
cc-0 license to the page would achieve the same effect.

~~~
auvrw
good point, tho.. i'm really appreciative of lists like this b/c, while i
don't use spreadsheets, for instance, a i can immediately see why an "excel
imgur" is a seriously good idea. but then doesn't "open-sourcing" w/o a
creative commons or similar notice just mean that the first person who blogs
or tweets or whatever has a legal record that it's _their_ idea?

honestly dunno and would appreciate feedback from legally-learned.

------
d--b
Kudos for the last one: re-type the masters. It's brilliantly weird and
wonderful! Reminded me of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote)

~~~
graham1776
I love this one too. How fun would it be to re-type a chapter of Hamlet, a
Hemingway short story, a Walt Whitman poem? Also way more fun than the normal
"Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" prompts.

~~~
jameshart
Hamlet doesn't have chapters, it's a play. Sorry - pet peeve. It's like people
asking if you've 'read Shakespeare'. Makes as much sense as asking someone if
they've read Tarantino. Sure, you can read the script, but it's not how it's
meant to be consumed.

~~~
nekopa
You could've read his sonnets...

------
elcapitan
I guess most people here have similar lists, and it takes a lot of guts to
take them public, thanks for that :)

At some point I started to split them into technical ideas on the one side and
business ideas on the other side. That helps to deal with them in different
ways.

The technical ideas are usually stuff that would be helpful to have and that
solve particular small problems, but on closer inspection they just turn out
to be things you can just as well do with existing tools (usually like excel
or other tools). Or they are really just ideas for some kind of library or
service that could be a small OSS project. Most of those ideas are fun to play
with, but the fun would go away if I looked at them in an economic way.

The business ideas are the ones where I would immediately think about
competition, costs, etc. They are usually more fun to research and reason
about. And for most things that you could think about that don't exist yet,
the reason for that nonexistence is often much more enlightening and
interesting than the original idea.

------
onion2k
There's a whole website dedicated to ideas like these:
[http://www.halfbakery.com/](http://www.halfbakery.com/) Some of them are very
funny, some might actually make good businesses.

~~~
Chris2048
We need this for tech/software dev ideas. Halfbakery is too half-baked, to
much dreamy, semi-humorous nonsense...

A real "Is anyone interested in a starting FLOSS project on github?" idea site
would be great.

I seem to recall there was on I signed up to, can't remember its name...

~~~
Chris2048
It was "upboat.us",
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5916181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5916181)

------
rl3
> _Look Inside for New Hires

Company takes pictures of inside of their office so prospective employees know
the culture/space they are getting into. Hey Glassdoor this would be great for
you!_

Already done: [http://www.officelovin.com/](http://www.officelovin.com/)

------
captn3m0
I keep mine on GitHub[0], however mine aren't really business ideas and more
like long-term side-projects with very little scope for making money.

[0]: [http://github.com/captn3m0/ideas](http://github.com/captn3m0/ideas)

~~~
simi_
Same [1], but I'm considering deleting it, as most of them are shit anyway.
After seeing Assembly die in less than 2 years [2], I filtered my side project
ideas through a "do you see this running in 10 years?" filter, and I saved
them as bookmark folders [3].

1: [https://github.com/andreis/ideas](https://github.com/andreis/ideas)

2:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wUe7XO...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wUe7XOlyMZkJ:https://assembly.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=de)

3: here they are

    
    
      cask.space: website for brew cask packages - categories, info, screenshots, discovery, etc.
      "deep" ai: strong artificial intelligence - more of a career goal than a side project
      docsite: simple, standardized landing pages for doctor's offices, á la jameda or zocdoc
      games: tons of game dev resources and indie game websites - if I ever find time to work on one, I love game development
      peer interviews: p2p pair mock interviewing for interview practice - an interest of mine (github.com/andreis/interview)
      sidelog: a tool to organize [ideas for] side projects + collaboration

~~~
jxm262
I'm genuinely curious how,why assembly failed. I really liked that project, it
had alot of good people and potential imho.

------
andrewstuart
I know it's blasphemy but I think a really good idea should be kept secret.
Smart, motivated people will compete if the idea is novel and compelling.

The origin of the myth that you should blab your ideas is the fact that the
vast majority of ideas are not interesting.

But if you have DO one of those rare ideas that is new and interesting, why
the hell give it away? Build it and then people can know about it through your
nice implementation.

------
BatFastard
Idea's are like blank books. Unless you have passion for the idea, you are not
going to fill in the 400 blank pages with the details.

------
jlg23
This is brilliant! I wish more people would do that.

I'd add a fat, explicit disclaimer that you don't want anything if people
actually made a billion with those ideas (but might be happy if treated for
dinner ;).

~~~
graham1776
Thanks so much! I should add that disclaimer for sure. Take an idea and go
with it! Dinner is expected after your Series D fundraising round though...

------
brikis98
Nice! I maintain a list of startup idea lists [1]. If I get some time, I'll
add your list too, but if anyone else is feeling up to it, the repo is open
source [2] and I'd gladly accept PRs :)

[1] [http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/startup-ideas/](http://www.hello-
startup.net/resources/startup-ideas/) [2] [https://github.com/brikis98/hello-
startup-site](https://github.com/brikis98/hello-startup-site)

------
kalendos
It will be interesting to sum up those ideas into an awesome list[1][2] at
Github.

[1]
[https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)

[2] [https://github.com/tastejs/awesome-app-
ideas](https://github.com/tastejs/awesome-app-ideas)

------
matrix
Most lists of this type are silly, but for those of you looking for business
ideas, this one is actually pretty interesting. But caveat: make sure you get
out of the building and talk to potential customers first. Usually there's a
very good reason these ideas haven't been executed on yet.

~~~
graham1776
I'll take this as a complement. I've collected these "ideas" for the last 5-6
years, mostly out of complaints of stupid things I have had to do for my job.
So there is a "market" even though the market may only be me. I agree on your
second point too, these ideas are sitting in front of everyone's monitors
right now "gratis" because most likely have no business value and are better
suited for side-projects/hobbies.

------
kmonad
Oliver Samwer, while of course a controversial person, correctly points out
that usually ideas are cheap. Execution, however, is where things get real and
therefor hard. I tend to think that this is true more often than not.

------
tezza
The "Talk to the Picutres" books already exist[1].

A good one is Welcome to the Zoo by Alison Jay[2].

Also wordless picture books are popular amongst Rudolf Steiner teachers.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/wordless-picture-
books](https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/wordless-picture-books)

[2] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Zoo-Alison-
Jay/dp/184011973X](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Zoo-Alison-
Jay/dp/184011973X)

------
bewe42
When it comes to implementing ideas, I learnt one thing that has become
crucial for me: an idea needs to have a deep personal relevance in order to be
able to bring it to its fullest life.

Since I figured out that personal truth, I stopped searching for ideas from
the outside. A list like this can still be inspiring, but just because an idea
sounds good or seems to make sense, if I don't have any profound interest in
it, I know I won't have the energy and drive to realise its potential.

------
welder
> COLIVING - Like WeWork but for living.

Already implemented at
[http://www.buildcampus.com/](http://www.buildcampus.com/)

> STOP SLACKERS - Logs all employees use, anonymously. Found
> [http://www.rescuetime.com](http://www.rescuetime.com) which does this
> awesomely

Already implemented at [https://wakatime.com/](https://wakatime.com/)

~~~
duvet
Looks like Campus Co-Living no longer exists.

------
angryasian
"Housemax - Carmax for single family homes, buy it now price, close in 10
days, instant home liquidity."

Opendoor founded by Keith Rabois is as probably as close to this idea as
you'll ever get.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/02/26/startup-
opend...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/02/26/startup-opendoor-
wants-to-buy-houses-that-are-for-sale/)

~~~
graham1776
Good call. This idea was a little old and there are some new interesting
startups in this space.

------
afomi
Kudos. It takes a ton of courage to be open and share your ideas. It also
shows that the ideas may only be words on a screen. Execution is everything.

------
danieltillett
There are some good things on this list.

The real estate industry is a bit of a hobby of mine and the problem with
trying to bring it into the 21st century is there are some very powerful
vested interests who want to keep things as they are. It is also very local
which makes it hard to scale. You have to unlock a lot of value or have very
good local connections to get any where.

~~~
graham1776
Mine too, we should talk. I agree after having worked for both small startups
and large corporate REITS. Most of my ideas are incremental vs monster
changes. Eventually though someone will throw enough money or the government
will start to regulate it enough for innovation to start.

~~~
Cshelton
I'm a lead developer for a well funded CRE asset management SaaS company. We
are launching this year and have sold a lot. A good number of the big...and
biggest, names are our clients. I guess we would mostly fall into the 'mint
for CRE' category, except property/assets are just a piece of it. We go all
the way up through loans, deals, equity, the cap stack for each thing and the
entire portfolio. All with realtime reporting/analytics, data integration from
anywhere (extremely simple to use, unlike most systems...), chart of accounts
roll ups, etc. It has been a TON of development time (close to 3 years now)
and is a massive system.

I think we'll see some more adopted standards in data schemas and APIs with
governmental organizations that will really change the CRE world. Underwriting
and securitization is a huge opportunity for when that becomes more widely
adopted. I'm sure you're quite familiar with the securitization process of
today and how crazy it seems...excel workbooks and binders full of reports
everywhere is a nightmare.

Argus is such a big player, however they won't get disrupted all at once in my
opinion. So many processes, reports and data is intertwined in it, it'll take
some time to unravel...but yes, big opportunity.

All in all, many of the 'ideas' in CRE are well known, it's getting the
industry on a macro and micro scale to adopt new practices and solutions that
are actually good. For example, think of all the CRE loans out there...to get
detail information on them ( thousands and thousands..) you really have to pay
big money to someone like Intex or something. And then parsing that data even
more to be useable at scale is a whole other undertaking.

I'm interested to see how the 'crowdsourcing' CRE world develops. That space
is pretty wide open with big but unestablished players.

I've got many ideas for stuff I want to do down the road, let's talk.

Note: I didn't edit this at all, it's probably filled with grammer
errors...but it's late and don't care =p

~~~
graham1776
You are so spot on with many of these points, you really have a firm grasp on
the industry. 1) Would love to hear about the startup you guys have been
painfully building once its launched. 2) There seem to be a healthy # of real
estate folks on HN. We should figure out a way to build a little community out
of it. Start with emails? 3) Yes we should collab down the road. Shoot me your
email?

------
MWil
I'll probably never get Jake to admit it, but until proven otherwise, I think
being vocal about my own ideas is part of how CaseText came to be - and that
was absolutely the purpose of putting it out there. If not me, then whoever.

edit: Have talked w/ Jake several times personally since they formed.
Sometimes when I'm antsy I beg him for a job as consultant!

------
positivejam
Just a word usage nitpick:

In your "Hacker News for Moms" idea description, you say, "Higher quality
posts and articles than the _dribble_ that most moms read on their Facebook
feeds" (emphasis mine). I believe you mean "drivel" here. Many parents _do_
deal with their fair share of dribble, but that's something else entirely.

------
jxm262
I did the same thing on a trello board. Had some friends collaborate and add
some potential projects too. Perhaps we could make a site which allows groups
to form around these and contribute? Could tie it into trello, github, etc. If
anyone would be interested in collaborating and building something like this
send me a message :)

------
rokhayakebe
I actually did Stumble Upon for Ecommerce recently

[http://sovayn.com](http://sovayn.com)

~~~
graham1776
This is great exactly what I was thinking of! Keep expanding and get it out
there!

~~~
rokhayakebe
Agreed :), Will Do.

------
davidiach
One of my ideas was to create a site where people can share their business
ideas with the world and others can find them and use them.

I would contribute some of my ideas to such a website and there's a good
chance that some people might be interested in reading/using them.

Anyone interested in building such a website? :)

~~~
pknerd
Even Google created something similar.. maybe for internal ideas.

------
quaffapint
Was recently approached to work on a commercial real estate idea similar to a
lot of yours in the idea of making things easier and more modern. I know
nothing of the field, so it's interesting to read your ideas on it and see you
share some of the same sentiments.

~~~
graham1776
Would love to collaborate or talk over the phone. Shoot me an email!

------
peteretep
I feel like no-one has managed to build a small-business CRM (like his Shoebox
CRM) effectively yet. I run a one-person business and I'm still using a
colour-coded Excel sheet to try and figure out when I should bug sales
prospects.

~~~
blowski
> I'm still using a colour-coded Excel sheet to try and figure out when I
> should bug sales prospects

What are the problems with doing that?

~~~
peteretep
Like keeping your company accounting in an Excel spreadsheet, too easy to make
mistakes, forget how certain features you've built work, and doesn't scale
beyond a single user.

------
slantaclaus
Just looked up "Dark Ages" in App Store prepared to pay <= $5 for it. Oh well.
(I lack self control, need more stuff like this. Also, need something that
stops me from texting certain people during certain hours, etc)

------
ruffrey
The sqwiggle for moms one is easyish with WebRTC. I made one in an afternoon.
[https://github.com/respoke/yodude](https://github.com/respoke/yodude)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
So spend the next ten afternoons _selling_ it ... am told that's the hard part

------
desireco42
So people publish this, but for some reason, either these are high quality
ideas, or they resonate with me better, but I really like them a lot.

Since it is open, I might do some and who knows, it might even work.

~~~
graham1776
Would love to collaborate if you are interested! Let me know.

------
elcapitan
Reading the list I watched myself clicking on quite a few of the link-like
titles, as if there was an actual project following the link. So there's
definitely something to them ;)

------
joshcanhelp
I did too!

[http://www.joshcanhelp.com/ideas-1/](http://www.joshcanhelp.com/ideas-1/)

------
edem
[https://x.ai/](https://x.ai/) might be similar to Clara Labs.

~~~
dmortensen
x.ai is a Machine Learning company. We'll price at FREE to $9.

Clara is an software powered outsourcing company. They price at $200 to $500

------
brightball
I've thought about doing that too. Would be a fun way to get them all out
there.

------
pknerd
Quite a good list. I specially likked Comment App and Pictorial book for kids.

------
hanyoon
Awesome stuff! Glad to see that we had a handful of very similar ideas.

------
zem
i really love the "talk to the pictures" idea! would translate beautifully to
a tablet app too, so that you could get a constant stream of new content
(ideally creative commons).

~~~
unixhero
A folder on your tablet which you open with the gallery app is more than
enough to do this already.

and... Why does this need to be an app?

I feel that many people are brainwashed by Apple dogma.

~~~
zem
just so you can wrap a nicer user interface around the index. it's the
difference between a book and a bunch of papers loosely pushed into a folder
in a stack of other folders.

------
jcsnv
>COLIVING

This one is currently being done! hicommon.com

------
miguelrochefort
If these low-value ideas are worth sharing, then I have 1000 ideas to share.

~~~
rfrey
Looking forward to your post.

~~~
miguelrochefort
I'm not going to post such a list. What value would it generate? Such obvious
ideas don't need to be said.

Moreover, these kind of ideas are a distraction. People go and implement them
as if they were all unique and disconnected from one another. I have known for
a while that we need to tackle all of these ideas as a single one.

I'm building a system that will solve 80% of all problems these ideas could
ever be solutions to.

------
hotcool
I did something similar. I packaged up business ideas I wasn't executing,
along with a domain name, logo and mini-business plan. I call them
"StartJumpers": [http://startjumper.com](http://startjumper.com)

~~~
tapp
This is clever. I'm curious if you've sold any?

~~~
hotcool
Thanks tapp. A few inquiries, but no sales yet.

------
marincounty
I liked the hacker news for moms.

I throw in hacker news for Horologists. (I'm working on this now.)

Hacker news for collector car enthusiasts.

Hacker news for Jewelers.

When I was younger, I wanted to make/sell a chewing gum that that had an
alkaline natural substance in it; something that would neutralize the acids in
you mouth. Something you could use after eating lunch, or something sweet?

I imagine just chewing any type of gum would stimulate salivary glands, and
subsequently reduce acids? I noticed a European country came out with a gum
that claimed to netralize oral acids, but I lost track of it.

In high school, I hooked up a old military flight suit to my motorcycles
alternator. It kinda kept me warm, but I didn't know enough about electronics
at the time to make it really work. Later I wanted to better the idea, and
sell the suits. Never did anything. I now see many different electric
jackets/suits for motorcyclists. (I was so sick one year in high school. I
remember showing up for class freezing, and wet, but I loved that old Honda.)

I kinda passed up a chance to get in on that plastic tooth pick/dental pick
business. It wasen't my idea, but I worked for the inventor. I think if I
treated him better, he would have brought me in. He handed over everything to
his son, and financed everything. I really took off. At the time, I though he
was just spoiling his kid, but he knew it was a great idea. He was an older
Dentist who decided to market these dental tools to the public, and the
plastic dental pick was genius, but horrid to our current enviorment. They are
the pull tabs of my generation.

~~~
sago
> Hacker news for X

Isn't this reddit? Subreddits, in particular. Sure mainline reddit can be
banal and toxic, but there are a lot of valuable subs.

------
eddd
I don't mean to troll, but having ideas is nothing. Of course projects start
with ideas but if the creator of the idea didn't pursue given concept -
neither should you.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyL9EC0S0c&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyL9EC0S0c&feature=youtu.be&t=835)

~~~
Scea91
Why shouldn't I? What is the reasoning? Sorry, I don't have audio here so
maybe it's mentioned in the youtube video.

~~~
eddd
If the creator didn't find the idea interesting enough to actually put the
project into life, it will be probably better to come up with your own
project. Of course it has nothing to do with being inspired by someone else.

~~~
Scea91
but this is so faulty. There can be hundreds of unrelated reasons why he
didn't put the project into life. And even if he didn't find it interesting
enough it doesn't mean he has better judgement than you.

