
Show HN: Idea Generator That Uses YC as Data - jtraffic
http://ycremix.com/
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coolandsmartrr
Softbank founder Son Masayoshi striked gold with a similar method. He created
a set of flash cards, drew 3 cards, and tried to conceive an invention from
the withdrawn keywords. Having drawn "dictionary," "electric circuit," and
"voice" IIRC, he ended up with an idea for an electronic dictionary that reads
up the words. He hired his professor at Berkeley who was knowledgable in
speech synthesizing for $50/hr. When the idea was realized as an invention, he
filed the patent and sold it to Sharp, a Japanese electronic conglomerate.
Having raised approx. $3 mil, he used that money to start Softbank. The rest
is history.

Source: Recalling from biography I read years ago

~~~
lifeisstillgood
In no way was the clever, difficult or value add part of this the CRC cards -
persuading Sharp to buy your patent for 3 million is just one of the things I
would like to know how to do :-)

~~~
coolandsmartrr
Apparently, his father attending the negotiations helped the yet-inexperienced
Son tremendously.

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philbarr
I wrote something like this a while back for creating Enterprise Products.
Just take some adjectives, nouns and adverbs, construct a sentence, and then
swap out the adjectives, nouns and adverbs at random.

I even added a ISO-<random_number>-001 compliant adjective. It came out with
stuff like:

"An isomorphic enterprise ready synergistic content management data platform
for the responsive ISO-5438-001 compliant mobile web."

Great fun until I showed it my boss and, genuinely, he started getting ideas.

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codingdave
The first result I got said that for every condom I bought one would be given
to a female entrepreneur in a developing country... then I realized that was
the description of the actual YC company, not the satirical bit.

I'm really not sure where to go from there.

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cabaalis
I like to think that I defer to others when I feel I'm out of my realm of
knowledge. But I can't possibly see how that is either (1) effective or (2)
not-insulting to the recipient. "Here, you can't be trusted to buy these
yourself, have a free one so you can get back to work!"

~~~
s17n
It's about making condoms available for free to women for whom buying them is
a non-trivial expense.

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yters
Then we can automate the creation of these products, a/b test in the real
world and feed the successes back into the idea generator. Endless automated
innovation!

~~~
moxious
To get these things funded, we'll need to append "using deep learning
approaches" to all of the business ideas.

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Govindae
Self-driving nuclear reactors and currated wine deliveries for developing
countries. Those are definitely ideas.

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SandersAK
I dunno if this is satire but it's pretty great. I for one, am ready to invest
in DoorDash for prosthetics and Greenshoe (cash for your every day needs) for
commercial banks.

~~~
0xCMP
#2 is the Federal Reserve. Good luck disrupting that! (Bitcoin is sure as hell
trying though)

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nsxwolf
Anyone want to join my startup or invest?

"Scentbird for github issues

Scentbird: The thrill of new scents. 30-day supply of any designer fragrance
every month"

~~~
tcmb
This is not so bad. A grab bag of bugs for you to fix. You get a random Github
issue assigned and need to fix it within a certain time. The ultimate
challenge to teach yourself new languages and frameworks. There's a pun with
Scentbird/code smell in there somewhere, too.

~~~
programmarchy
Stinkbug

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kamphey
Algolia for search

Algolia: Build Realtime Search. A powerful API built for developers, Algolia
delivers relevant results in your apps and websites from the first keystroke.

~~~
noway421
Search for the best search engines.

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netvarun
[http://ycremix.com/js/define_data.js](http://ycremix.com/js/define_data.js)

~~~
hbcondo714
I was going to post this too but feel bad pointing this data dump out since
this is a cool web app; it just needs better security :)

Interesting getscale, sanrights and spinalsingularity all have much higher
weights than everyone else.

~~~
TimJRobinson
> Interesting getscale, sanrights and spinalsingularity all have much higher
> weights than everyone else.

Much lower actually. They have e-05, e-06 and e-11 at the end. I think the
list is from most successful to least successful YC startups, but unsure why
those ones are at the very bottom.

~~~
jtraffic
Weights are inversely proportional to the Alexa rank for each startup's
website.

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lettergram
IDK how good this is (if it's serious lol):

[https://imgur.com/a/iRBZh](https://imgur.com/a/iRBZh)

~~~
shimon_e
Eventually oil workers will be replaced by code.

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jdoliner
I feel like I hit gold on my first try here:
[http://i.imgur.com/C7c3gvO.png](http://i.imgur.com/C7c3gvO.png)

Everyone loves plastic surgery, but how do you organize groups to go and get
procedures done?

~~~
JacobDotVI
You mean brosectomies????

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-vasectomy-party-snips-
chi...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-vasectomy-party-snips-chips-and-
dips-with-your-closest-friends-1500830029)

>It’s a Vasectomy Party! Snips, Chips and Dips With Your Closest Friends

>Pals willing to spend a few thousand dollars are getting together for
‘brosectomies’ at clinics that look more like club lounges; ‘I guess it’s from
the alcohol, but we had such a great time’

~~~
hood_syntax
Wow, the more you know. Never would I have imagined something like this, but
here it is.

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emeijer
Optimizely for groups and events. A/B testing in the real world :)

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chuckdries
> Grouper for groups and events

...I'm pretty sure that's just normal grouper

EDIT: I can't believe I didn't notice this is satire. This comment stands as a
symbol of my ignorance.

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icebraining
Some get recursive :)

 _Ctzen for primary care_

 _Ctzen: 311 for the developing world._

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SmellTheGlove
This is awesome. It's like Mad Libs for the 21st Century!

It does generate some decent ideas, too. PagerDuty for food and farming.

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rayalez
Now we can use it to autatically generate simple landing pages, and then do
reinforcement learning with the amount of signups they receive as a reward.

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jonplackett
This is brilliant and hilarious.

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bullen
Back button please?

