
Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund - pg
http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
======
Alex3917
Some things I want:

1) A way to ensure that each person can only create one account on a website,
without having to sacrifice anonymity.

2) A day planner that plans my day for me; based on my to-do list, what my
friends are doing, and also what's going on in the local area. Also, populate
the bulk of my to-do list automatically based on what my friends in the same
classes are adding to theirs. Plan social dates for me based on when my
friends and I are free. Introduce me to people I don't know but should know.

3) A way to get more people involved in Internet-mediated locally social
stuff.

4) A semi-standardized way for people to build up a reputation without needing
a college degree.

5) An IMDB for people who have won awards. I want to a quick way to find the
professors with the most citations in any given subject, the chefs in the area
with the best zagats reviews, the local high school football players with the
most touchdowns, etc.

6) An academic search engine targeting people who are college educated but who
don't necessarily have extensive experience with the inner workings of
academia. Right now there are really good ways of accessing journal articles
online, but really poor ways of learning what academic journals to look in.
There's no way to know which journals are respected and which aren't. No easy
way to translate plain English questions into the keywords that are used by
academics.

7) A way to turn recipes on the web into peapod orders. A way to turn the
customized diets that Weight Watchers or WebMD create into a peapod order.

~~~
gills
What's a peapod order?

~~~
jacobbijani
<http://www.peapod.com> Looks like an online grocery store.

~~~
tokipin
i thought it was some sort of mathematical sorting mechanism

------
dood
I'm passionate about online learning. I like James Burke's knowledge web idea
[<http://www.k-web.org/>], but I'm not terribly optimistic about their
approach/implementation.

The idea is to make a network of knowledge which enables self-directed
learning. Could incorporate tests/games, dependencies (to learn x, you need to
learn y, or even complete a subgame), external references for further reading,
and possibly a lot more. A great feature would be systems to allow
collaboration or lightweight teaching among learners (chat/forums/etc).

With a bit of thought it may be possible to make a framework into which
volunteers add a lot of the content, though editors/quality control would
likely be necessary.

If I built it, I'd be inclined to ignore existing public educational systems
and start from scratch, but if it hooked into them it may help growth.

~~~
brentr
I think the open source textbook projects in the works might be something that
could propel an idea like this forward.

Personally, I find the lack of high quality videos about physics, mathematics,
and computer science quite irritating. When I do manage to have some free
time, I like to watch videos, such as those from Nova. Unfortunately, one
can't find many free versions on the internet.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Producing such videos is _so_ much work.

Here's a concept: Make an online system that makes it easier to assemble a
team of geographically and temporally separate volunteers to upload video
clips, edit them into a sensible sequence, do voiceovers, and publish the
result. Like a Wikipedia for techie videos, though perhaps with a slightly
higher barrier to entry to prevent griefing. (Nobody wants to watch the James
Burke video that suddenly becomes NSFW in minute three... I mean, show that to
a kid accidentally and you could _literally_ go to prison.)

UPDATE: Hey, wait a minute, have I just invented Youtube's "This video is a
response to video X" discussion system?! Only with more geeks and fewer cats
on pianos?

------
voidfiles
I totally agree with the outsourcing of IT. My father owns a minor
distribution company. That deals with spa, pool, and bath parts. No piece of
software has ever come to make their life easier. I have been involved with
every major software purchase and I am constantly thinking to myself, I know
these people I could probably make something that would work.

The biggest problem I see is that hosted apps are great, but these guys need
the software to be up all the time. They may even have bad internet
connections. So I was thinking the best model would be to have a hosted
application, and then if the company wanted greater up time they could by a
box and put it at their location and it would take care of syncing with the
online counterpart. That way they could continue business while offline.

As long as you are taking care of integration, and migration you could
probably open source the underlying software and still make money on support
services. You could also make money selling monthly low cost licenses per user
like 10 or 15 dollars per person.

~~~
jerry5
I've sometimes wondered whether IT isn't becoming the 'core' part of a
business. I.e. the one that's most complex and drives the competitive edge and
success of a business. I have worked in IT in many different industries and
often enough found the 'business' part of the business to be easy to pick up
while it sometimes took ages and a lot of brainpower to get on top of the
technology. In other words, IT people can understand 'businesss' but business
people can't understand IT. So, in the future, instead of having a bank with
an IT department, we'd have an IT company with a bank department. They'd
probably switch sooner from banking to insurance than from one IT
infrastructure to another.

I think amazon is a good prototype for this. It's a tech company that also
sells books. They later added all sorts of other crap like electronics, then
stuff that they don't even deliver but where they just act as a front for
other retailers and finally they are now offering their IT services purely by
themselves (S3, EC2).

~~~
LarryV
I don't think IT will ever become that important. IT will just take its
rightful place next to Law Firms and Accounting Firms as a necessary part of
the business but not the core.

It is kind of surprising that IT, with its self references as fast-paced and
innovative has taken so long to realize its own inefficiencies. IT (in the
sense of internal computer systems for businesses) was greatly over invested
starting in the 90s because the executives of the time were so scared. I
remember stories of Hollywood executives who would ask their assistants to
surf websites they were going to invest in and videotape it. They would take
these video tapes home for 'research' the same way they would research actors,
directors and movies to invest in. They completely didn't get it. So what did
they do? They did what most people do when they are scared, they try to buy
insurance. This insurance came in over-investment in all things technology
both externally and internally, leading to huge IT departments that then used
their bulk to buy more technology and increase their internal political might
until all this over investment corrected itself in the legendary bubble pop.

I think when all is said and done, IT will be just like Payroll. When was the
last time you met a person who works 40 hours a week processing payroll? They
used to exist at every company - now everyone's checks come from ADP or
PayChex. IT will be done by an outside company and will part of the budget for
each person on the payroll. But of course I am a little biased...

Hmm, payroll - There is an industry to be disrupted...

~~~
jerry5
I have a vague idea what you mean by the 'inefficiencies'. I am wondering
whether these would have manifested in the first place if IT had been given a
more central role. It's a lot about motivation too, the 'central' people in a
business are usually motivated by being shareholders as well as employees at
the same time. If you treat IT as just another accountant they will find
endless means and ways to drag their feet and just generally pursue their own
interests which are generally opposed to that of the business. Being linked
into the flow of information, i.e. high level senior management decisions, is
important too for efficiency.

~~~
LarryV
Jerry,

I totally agree that things could always be better and that incentives are the
key to this. There is a business concept from the 80s called 'open book
management' where everyone in the company sees where all the money goes. This
is more transparency than even public companies have.

I think it could be a technique that would get everyone from accounting to IT
more involved in the business. I also think there needs to be much shorter
expectations of how long someone will work for a company. Hollywood is on to
something with the way they bring together small teams to make a film that
then disband and reform in a new configuration for the next film. I wonder
what would happen if every person in the company had to choose each year
whether they want to continue with the company. They would in effect have a
one year job. This might make their sense of urgency and priority for the 52
weeks within that year much more focused. It might also form a company with
much more dedicated people who really want to be there.

------
mechanical_fish
Help. Help. I feel like that guy in the _Sandman_ comics who gets cursed to
have nothing but original ideas, as rapidly as possible, day and night,
forever.

Seriously, this list is exhausting to read. It's like the topic sentence for
an entire century. I'm going to have to take it a little piece at a time.

~~~
swombat
There's no such thing as an original idea. Every idea worth having has been
had thousands of times already.

There is such a thing as being the first to give a real physical (or
commercial) form to an idea, though.

~~~
thaumaturgy
That's true, but I hear what mechanical_fish is saying, too. I suffer from
much the same problem: many elements on the list are things which I have
thought about to an extent that I've worked out every single step needed to
make them work. The problem is, I haven't the time to pursue everything I
would like to.

Let's take the "simplified browsing" problem, for example. I worked phone
technical support for an internet service provider for a while, and it wasn't
long before I saw the need for exactly such a thing. But, it runs deeper than
just web browsing and email: there is a huge, absolutely massive number of
people out there that need a simpler computer. They don't understand things
like firewalls and security, and aren't inclined to ever understand them.

The solution? Take a Linux distribution and hack it heavily; simplify the
desktop layout, hide all the settings, and set it up so that immediately after
booting, a full-screen web browser appears. The web browser defaults to a very
simplified portal page; the user logs in to their "computer" exactly once (on
the portal page), and from there they have access to simplified email (which,
for example, doesn't have things called "Reply to All"), chat, word
processing, and other services.

Thing is, the previous services that have tried to create such a thing have
done it wrong; they tried to release their own computer, hardware and all.
That doesn't work, at least not now. This would work though because you could
sell a CD which would make the installation process a breeze. You wouldn't
have a huge initial development cost for the operating system; a good Linux
hacker could probably make the necessary changes very quickly.

After, say, 6 months of development by a few people, and with the aid of a
crack marketing team, you could start distributing copies of this thing for
around $75. You'd be tapping in to an under-served market not just of senior
citizens but of every average family that's frustrated at using their
computer.

You could even build in a secure remote desktop protocol for the operating
system, and make tech support -- if you wanted to offer it -- the easiest it's
ever been.

So, there ya go. Probably a hundred-million-dollar idea, with most of the
framework. Lots more details, too many to list here.

Got time to build it?

~~~
greyman
"there is a huge, absolutely massive number of people out there that need a
simpler computer"

This is a good observation. Anyway, the issue here is, whether that massive
number will have some common notion of what the simpler computer actually is.

~~~
ph0rque
I believe it is possible to start with a metaphor that everyone educated
enough to want to use a computer understands: a book (my 1.5-year-old daughter
qualifies: she would love to push the buttons on my laptop keyboard, were it
allowed; she also loves to look at (picture) books). XO 2 is the right step in
that direction: see <http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006986.html>
for details. Once the hardware is in place, the software is a great
opportunity for entrepreneurs to design and build.

------
alex_c
I'm a bit surprised. Some of the ideas - ok, two of the ideas, dating and "the
next craigslist" - don't seem that far off from the proverbial pie-in-the-sky
"Facebook killer": the hard part is getting the critical mass, and everyone
wants to make one. [edit] #9 and 10, photo/video sharing and auctions, are
arguably in this category as well.

I also still don't get WebOS. There must be something to it, because a lot of
smart people are getting excited about the field, but I just can't see it
myself... can anyone help me "see the light"?

~~~
pg
One reason those are broad is that our own filters are. We're interested in
_any_ dating site that also includes a solution to the chicken and egg
problem.

BTW, by "Craigslist competitor" I don't mean a new Craigslist. I mean take one
thing Craigslist does, and do it better. When you later expand outward from
that, you don't have to expand into the rest of the stuff Craigslist does.

~~~
eugenejen
I just can't help not to relate these two things: Make a better "erotic
service" and "personals" than Craigslist is. But will YC fund such a startup?

~~~
pg
Personals shouldn't be a problem for investors. If the "erotic service"
section is what I think it is, it probably wouldn't be a problem if you had
enough other stuff so it didn't seem that was your whole business. That seems
to be the strategy of indy papers like the Boston Phoenix, for example.

~~~
eugenejen
Thanks, I think your answer to indie newspaper is correct even global-wise

When I was a kid, the biggest indie newspaper against government in Taiwan had
to support itself with those ads.

Freedom, democracy and smut can go hand in hand.

------
ryankuder
#3 New News: There has been a tendency to focus on mass audience news. This
inevitably leads to incremental improvements on news delivery. Think about the
news that matters most to someone running a household--it's inherently local.
But newspapers can't scale to deliver this kind of news and aggregators can
only aggregate what others can deliver. The real source of local news comes
from the people who live there discussing what is happening around them. We're
working on a neighborhood network that allows neighbors to share and discuss
what is most important to them, whether it's a shop where they had great
customer service, or the little league championship game, or traffic calming
issues at a particular intersection, or an event going on at the local park
this weekend. By putting neighbors in touch with neighbors to discuss key
issues, we think that there is an opportunity to redefine what "news" means.

~~~
mpc
EveryBlock.com??

~~~
ryankuder
I think that sites like Everyblock are part of the equation. But the real
question is how do you build relevancy? There are things neighborhoods talk
about and things they don't. How do you bubble up the things they talk about?
How do neighbors engage each other in discussion on local topics. That's what
we're working on.

------
mkamrk
I tried to read through the comments on this page but just gave up after
loosing track of the context and reply and reply-to-reply. Can someone as HN
make these comments appear as collapsed thread like in Gmail AND with a title
so if I am posting a comment I can add a title to it that defines the context
of my comment. There's probably a lot of value hidden in the replies here but
I am pretty sure there are others like me who find it tough to read through.

------
ejpusa2
I can't believe you miss the biggest market in the world. Is everyone in your
office under 30? It's HEALTH CARE, it dwarfs EVERY "INDUSTRY" in the USA right
now. Even the defense industry pales in comparison.

Hey, I have a zillion health care ideas! Google saved my life. :-)

~~~
Agathos
The health care market in the US is severely dysfunctional and will either
collapse or be dramatically reformed within the next decade. If your product
is dysfunctional enough to make money in today's market it'll be up against
the wall when the revolution comes. If your product is sensible then you may
be stuck waiting 10 years until incentives are aligned to direct money toward
sensible things.

------
cbrinker
At the root of many issues I think is interface design. I'm not just talking
about software, I'm talking about hardware. Computers really haven't changed
how we interact with them for a good, what, 30 years? Is the mouse and
keyboard really the best ways to interact with a computing system? Why don't
we have integrated HUDs in our glasses, all of our new cars (granted some like
BMW have them optionally on expensive models), or even on clothes and/or
accessories we wear?

It would seem to me first that maybe we should rethink human-computer
interaction in the first place.

~~~
danohuiginn
Yes. Here's one user interface that should exist but doesnt: marionettes.

An old-fashioned marionette lets the puppeteer control all four limbs, swivel
the puppet, and move it in three dimensions - using only one hand.

Connect that to a console and you have a killer game interface.

Alternatively, pitch it at high-end CAD people, and all those little tech
shops doing work for Hollywood.

I have no hardware background, so no idea how tricky this is technically. But,
conceptually, it seem like a no-brainer.

~~~
robfitz
there were a couple working builds of this at georgia tech while i was there.
they had one that was, in fact, a marionette. and one of the other fuzzwich
guys (devin) built a similar thing using computer vision and hand puppets.
both were hooked up to control characters in the unreal engine (primarily for
machinima, but you could sorta play the game with it too). it's fun, fast, and
kids adore it. so yea, definitely work being done in this area, and what has
been made thus far is certainly compelling. nothing commercial that i know of,
though.

~~~
danohuiginn
Fascinating, thanks. Here's a link I tracked down, in case anyone else is
interested:
[http://synlab.gatech.edu/data/papers/mazalek_ace2007_tui3d.p...](http://synlab.gatech.edu/data/papers/mazalek_ace2007_tui3d.pdf)

~~~
robfitz
cool, glad you found something. for the sake of completion, here are some
details & videos on the puppet show i mentioned:
<http://hailpixel.com/puppetshow/>

------
bluishgreen
Reminds me of Hilbert's list (<http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-
math/95/hilb.list>). I wish this list also has the same effect and influence
as that one.

edit: wikilink - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems>

~~~
rw
Hilbert's list was a little harder :)

------
SethFinkelstein
Regarding "23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia" - I investigated this
myself a while back. A viable BUSINESS is much, much harder than it looks. To
begin with, note Jimmy Wales's separate commercial company "Wikia" is already
in that field, and both Wikia and Wikipedia people assist in moving some
content from the noncommercial Wikipedia to the commercial Wikia. Let me be
clear, I don't say what they do is illegal (even if does raise eyebrows
sometimes). But it's a fact that there's already a very strong established
competitor, one with a huge amount of insider access that another start-up
would not have. Moreover, while it's obvious Wikipedia has a huge amount of
Google-juice, few people realize how difficult that is, and how many other
sites have floundered in the bottom of the search results. So what's likely to
happen is the start-up ends up with a website full of junk, or even worse,
gets penalized by Google for having content that's too similar to Wikipedia
and/or Wikia sites.

~~~
huherto
I would like to have a place where you can have an intelligent discussion of
wikipedia articles as well as being able to ask specific questions on the
subject of the article. Currently, AFIK, the only discussion allowed is on how
to improve the articles.

------
altano
Regarding #22, "A web-based Excel/database hybrid," have you ever seen
dabbledb.com? It's pretty much fits your description completely and I've
really liked it the few times I've had a need for it.

~~~
newton
See also <http://www.blist.com>, similar to dabbledb and pretty cool.

~~~
LarryV
These tools are great and I love DabbleDB. But I think the powerful version of
these same concepts is a 'Data Repository and Reporting' service. A service
that lets you suck in data from many sources (csv, Web Feeds, Database
Queries, Emailed Reports, SMS, mailing lists, etc). It would not be scared to
hold all this data for me and keep it secure (and would charge me for usage so
that people with lots of data pay their due). It would then give me a very
flexible "Crystal Reports 2.0" meets DabbleDB interface to relate, dedupe,
create conflict rules and schedule data refreshes. It would then let me create
beautiful reports that can be embedded in a CMS, emailed, published like a
Google Doc and versioned. If anyone is working on something like this, I have
lots of ideas of how it should work that I would be happy to share.

~~~
cridal
1) Do you think this should be specific to a particular business process (like
managing sales force performance, managing inventory, etc.) or open ended
enough to just consume data in whatever form and let the user mold the
application to their liking? I guess the short version of this question is:
Will they know what they want?

2) You mention admin web interface to the app. Do you think this interface has
a chance of being used by a non-IT people? Will business users have conceptual
appreciation for data quality issues (great majority of problems with data
analysis) like deduplication, incompleteness, errors, etc. Will creating clean
data repositories (and therefore QA) be the core of this service or should the
user be in charge at every point, allowing him/her to even get the "garbage
in" and, what follows, "garbage out"?

3) Would the ability to create private data mashups with data provided by the
service provider, other publishers, or publicly available be something of core
importance or nice to have?

I have a lot of other questions, since I've started working on a web solution
to this problem that would work in a way that is quite similar to what you've
described. I would be great if you could share your responses/other thoughts
further, either here or privately on my email (in the profile). Thx!

------
tx
Weird. The problem we're tackling at Pikluk is exactly what #2 is about, yet
we weren't even invited for an interview in 07 cycle. Something tells me we
should have polished our application more.

~~~
gscott
I agree, what I offered up hit several points on the list. I think it more
comes down to who you are. Like the people behind YouOS.com
(<http://www.youos.com/html/static/team.html>) are from MIT, CalTech,
Stanford. I can't compete with that, only they gave up and I haven't.

~~~
asciilifeform
> are from MIT, CalTech, Stanford. I can't compete with that

It isn't hard to compete with pompous twits riding on pure cached prestige,
_when competing on merit._ Though I understand that the YC application process
may not be entirely merit-based.

------
Giorgi
Search engine that concentrates on design? What that supposed to mean?

~~~
pg
I don't know. I was just saying that if you want to beat Google, that's their
weak spot. Or at least a big one.

Most people who read that one will think "huh?" But if someone reads it and
thinks "Damn, how did he hear about what we're working on?" that's someone
we'd really love to hear from.

~~~
Spyckie
The way to approach the Google problem is to ask, when have I been
dissatisfied with google search?

And you're right, there are very few weaknesses.

One of the startup approaches to the Google problem is to join forces with
them instead of competing with them. Provide a page that wraps google search,
but adds additional searchable items into the searchbar (search emails, todo
lists, events, facebook, google all through one searchbar).

~~~
pg
A slightly better question would be: when have I not found what I was looking
for in a Google search? Or even, when was the thing I was looking for not the
first search result?

If you use satisfaction as the test, you may be letting the present state of
things influence your thinking too much. E.g. I bet a lot of people were
satisfied with pre-Google search engines, and just took their limitations for
granted.

~~~
davidw
To make a go of that kind of thing in a startup though, you'd have to make
sure that it's something Google won't or can't execute on, something I'm not
sure I would bet on.

Part of the idea of 'disruptive technologies' is that they aren't incremental
improvements that the current leaders will just copy, but big changes that get
ignored by the current leaders.

~~~
pg
I certainly agree with that. The way to displace Google is to work on
something they despise as inconsequential, the way the "portals" in the late
90s did search.

There are lots of things they despise as inconsequential: stupid consumerish
stuff like celebrity gossip, cool design, things that aren't technically
demanding, etc...

~~~
iamelgringo
Sounds like you're suggesting tackling verticals that Google is ignoring.

The celebrity gossip industry is huge as anyone living in LA or who has bought
a Star/People/Enquirer can attest. I think that might fall under the category
of news, however.

I think that there might be a strength in ranking sites that have great design
as opposed to crappy design. All things being equal, I'd rather read an
article on a well designed page rather than on a page whose design is non-
existent.

------
asciilifeform
There is complete silence on one important topic: the reclamation of _design
space._

Every major technology that has been standardized upon has constrained the
design decisions of future thinkers in some way. Nowhere has this been more
true that the computing field. Certain problems (esp. re: the web) are
architectural and cannot be fixed without major demolition work.

Who will fund me (or anyone) to replace TCP/IP? POSIX? Who will even entertain
the thought of wiping the slate clean of the foul residues from a quarter-
century of The Wrong Thing?

Laughing? Enjoy slaving away, wasting your creative juices, while standing on
broken paradigms. Or start thinking forbidden thoughts.

------
codist
The problem is not coming up with good ideas, it's coming up with the time
(and thus money) necessary to bring them to fruition, and then create
something that lasts.

------
shipstone
Here's one I'd like to see:

Why not have a simple geolocation service that matched where you're going with
people in cars that will be going your direction soon? Twitter that you want
to go cross-town and in seconds you get a half dozen dynamically updated
commuters that are going your way. Combine this with point-by-point gps
instructions from point A to B, the commuter you select gets routing
information that allows them to stop at an intersection and honk to let you
know your ride is here. The service consists of three parts: (1) where you're
going (and where you are via GPS) (2) a back end database that can figure out
from all the real-time information who matches up (3) let you choose from the
options - maybe based on the kind of car, their reputation/reliability, etc.
Not too hard - in fact either Twitter or FriendFeed could be a big hunk of
this business.

If geolocation and routing allowed people with cars to pick up people with
minimum inconvenience, and if enough people with iPhone 3G-type phones could
get streamed updated directions, and if there was a simple way to establish
reputation, this could change how people commute and travel in cities, saving
a tremendous amount of energy.

Posted on this at <http://www.cartwrightreed.com/2008/07/off-topic.html>

------
sanj
I don't know whether to be enthralled or appalled that my startup's idea isn't
mentioned on "the list".

I'm going with enthralled!

------
azharcs
Really a great list on what is broken and why it needs to be fixed. Pretty
much everything on the internet is broken to a certain extent, that gives an
opportunity for early and existing Entrepreneurs. I really want to do
something with music and news, those two are totally broken which will
eventually destroy the industry.

~~~
adrianwaj
Regarding music, I've laid out a formula here:

"Using a solution of microformats, browser and OS media tracking, and direct-
to-creator payments, a new Web model is quite possible."

<http://cleanzap.com/grabbing-music-from-the-net/>

Basically, the creator applies metadata to their media, and lets it circulate
(P2P, fansites, internet radio - anything) wherever it needs to go from the
outset. A Creative Commons Attribution license is used.

Browsers, media players, or a special app tracks whatever is played locally
and a special app regularly prompts for voluntary payment at regular times.
Only 5% may pay - but in a global world with low production costs, that might
be enough.

<http://Musicbrainz.org> can be used to retag the files if the metadata is
corrupted along the way.

News can also be 'solved' the same way - track what's being consumed and let
the consumer voluntarily pay later. Few will pay, but in paying, other
benefits can be obtained, like the content creator being able to give previews
or special releases to their known audiences.

~~~
Tichy
I don't want a nag screen on my MP3 player.

~~~
adrianwaj
A monthly email with playback history would be better: and the option for a
voluntary payment to be dispersed proportionally to whom you listened, with
the option of being listed on artists' or creators' audience list.

To do that, one's web browser and media player would each have a plugin that
updates the central website's playback repository. Maybe an OS level app that
integrates with many possible playback apps without the user worrying about
specific plugins. Spyware free of course.

See this: <http://www.oddsock.org/tools/gen_fairtunes/>

------
dood
An idea for new news:

Start with the reddit concept: users submit and vote on links to articles,
blog posts and so forth.

Then, allow users to tag each link (or otherwise add metadata), and vote on
the relevence of the story to the tag. Also allow users to vote on the
trustworthiness of each link and/or each source or author. Could also allow
users to vote on other users, to get networks of trust.

Then you just take all that data and use it to generate personalised news, or
whatever else you want.

I also like Adrian Holovaty's ideas about a data-oriented approach to news:
[<http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2006/09/06/0307/>]
[[http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/06/_future_o...](http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/06/_future_of_journalism_adrian_h.html)]

~~~
gaika
Already implemented a few times, we have an implementation that is below
critical mass after months of running. Some key aspect of it is still missing
:(

~~~
dood
Jaanix isn't really what I have in mind, though it is hard to explain why. The
problem I think may be a combination of interface, the basic conceptual
decisions, and the chicken-and-egg problem. To get a site like this to work
may require a big initial splash of publicity, as well as a very strong,
subtle design.

------
Mystalic
This is one of the most intense links and discussions I've ever seen on HN/YC.
I'm going to have to take an hour at least to sift through 185+ comments
because I've already seen several valuable insights. Just incredible response.

~~~
lacker
Agreed! Here's hoping for more conversation-inspiring posts like this in the
future.

------
corentin
Google is supposed to organize the world's information or something like that,
but apart from their decent search engine I'm seriously not impressed by what
they currently offer (I can't even use Google Maps to plan walking trips!) Are
they really paying all those smart, elite hackers to play fussball and pool
all day long, and write overlong, boring, pedantic essays about technology
that no one really cares about?

I want a location-aware, mobile device (I don't really care whether it's an
iPhone, Pocket PC, Eee PC or whatever; just something I can carry in my pocket
or backpack, with good-enough battery-life, a screen, GPS and wireless link).
I want to ask this device: "I want to drink this brand of beer; where is the
nearest pub offering it? And please show me a map and instructions toward it.
And pictures of the inside. And let me listen to the music they're currently
playing, and let me know what kind of food they offer as well."

This kind of stuff (actually, it's mostly a software and "logistics" problem;
all the hardware and infrastructure is ready).

Also, I have a lot more down-to-earth problems: e.g. I want to clean my
bathtub/shower to a shine without using 10 different products and scrubbing
for hours. It turns out that no chemical company was really able to solve this
problem (seriously, I've tried everything). It looks like a stupid problem but
the market is probably huge, and I expect a few smart chemical engineering
students to be able to find a solution to this problem.

------
Donnie
We took exactly what you said under "9. Photo/video sharing services" and put
our own spin on photo/slideshow sharing. Presentation is key to us. We wanted
people to be able to build clean, but custom, slideshows. Make a slideshow's
presentation appeal to the users emotions on level apart from the photos
themselves. We've still got a long way to go, but the response has been
overwhelmingly positive so far.

<http://www.photatobug.com> if anyone's interested. :)

~~~
ryanb
I really like your site. I'm not sure about that name though..

~~~
subatomic
I really like your site too. I would like to see a slider so I can navigate
the show and like the poster above, I'm not sure about the name.

------
rich124
I'm sure I'm not that rare in my dreams. They might be unusual but I'm certain
others share similar hopes. I have an idea for an internet based service and a
faith that in its originality and focus that it could have real value,
especially within organizations, corporate or otherwise.

The plea comes from a sense of helplessness. I haven't programmed seriously in
30 years. My old skills with 360 assembler mock my ambitions. I have only a
general idea of what frameworks and binding types do and couldn't tell a block
or singleton method from a hole in the head. I'm not involved in the industry
and am as unconnected as they come.

I follow with desperate hope TechCrunch reviews of companies offering "anyone
can build" tool sets for web development only to lose hope at the limitations
of rich media presentation tools and form/database creators. I need rule/logic
driven input, association, display and export functionality along with the
identity, security and database functionality that frameworks might provide
(i.e. the equivalent complexity of a Digg 1.0).

I have a life with family, job and community responsibilities that make the
learning curve of modern internet development beyond what I alone can achieve.
I need a place to go with my concept that, accepting its value and in exchange
for a fair part of its potential, might work with me to fulfill my vision.

I need Y Combinator Plus. Help!

~~~
olefoo
Can you come up with a a one page description of the service/software that you
want to build; describing in detail what it does so that someone else can
implement it?

Can you afford to pay someone skilled to develop it for you?

If you are going to play the role of the idea guy, you had better be able to
bring more resources than the idea itself if you want to be successful.

~~~
rich124
I could provide a one page combination business objectives statement and high
level requirement specification, but a detailed spec would necessarily be
longer and more complex in format.

No, I can't fund the development effort. If I could I wouldn't need a Y
Combinator Plus.

I appreciate your observation about the seemingly limited value of just "the
idea itself", but that's just the issue I was raising. The clear vision of
why, what and how is indeed all I have to bring to the table.

~~~
olefoo
Here's the deal, if you can come up with a document that has sufficient detail
for someone else to implement the idea, then you could potentially implement
it yourself.

Modern web development is not a mysterious form of magic, it's most comparable
to a genre of theatre that relies on some very literal actors who will stick
to the script exactly.

I've seen people with no more than a community college class in web design
build profitable businesses online. That's one of the great things about the
current state of the art, you don't need to be a graduate of the right school,
or have the right background, you just need to be willing to put in a lot of
work and skull sweat.

~~~
rich124
Given your faith in the current state of the art, what tools would you
use/recommend to build either a simple Digg-like service or a threaded
discussion board.

~~~
olefoo
This week; I'd just grab the reddit download and start from there.

If I wanted to do something that was a bit more complex I'd start with Django
and use the comments application that comes bundled with as a base for the
functionality i actually needed.

But if all you need is a threaded forum you're better off with a hosted
solution like <http://slinkset.com/>

If you're starting from zero, pick up a programming language, and go to it.
Make mistakes now so that you can put them behind you.

------
mkamrk
This is a very good summary. I especially like the points on enterprise
software 2.0 and CRM, and the fact that they are mentioned separately as CRM,
in itself, represents a huge untapped opportunity. Right now there is nothing
other than Salesforce.com and a whole range of email marketers. These are good
technical applications but there are a lot of varied CRM business processes
that need to be addresses with a "solution" that is not just a one-size-fits-
all application.

~~~
auston
There is pipelinedeals.com and leads360.com as well.

------
foompy_katt
26\. Better video chat. Skype and Tokbox are just the beginning. There's going
to be a lot of evolution in this area, especially on mobile devices.

It's called "meeting people face to face". Oh, you didn't laugh...

But seriously, if you really want to take video/online interaction further,
why not put electrodes on your skin, and use a USB port to feed the data into
your conversation window, and the other folks can see how you are feeling in
real time? OK, that might be a bad joke, too...

------
swombat
We're working on a combination of 5 and 7. It's a good place to be, I reckon.
A lot of existing enterprise software is indeed simply appalling - both
internally developed and external products bought from companies that
supposedly have evolved in the free market. Most of it seems to be stuck in
the late 90's, when it was ok to have an awful unfriendly interface that makes
user endure pain for every minute they have to use it.

------
vlad
The idea I submitted and worked on for three years when I applied in 2007 had
three of those in one... I don't think anybody has executed on it yet, if you
want to read my Spring 2007 application again. (Though if I apply again, it
would be with another, more time-sensitive idea, which can also be split up
into several of your categories.) I'm not trying to brag, but I did outline
the exact way to beat eBay.

~~~
anewaccountname
>I'm not trying to brag, but I did outline the exact way to beat eBay.

And somehow missing out on a $20,000 investment stopped you?!? That is total
bullshit; you would have just taken out $20,000 on a credit card, because
beating ebay is literally worth billions of dollars.

~~~
vlad
Thanks for your feedback. From being rejected as a single founder, I decided
instead it would be better to get some work experience in order to save money
while continuing my college education in order to meet cofounders at work or
school for another idea that wouldn't compete against eBay, and apply to
YCombinator with a new idea, as stated (and with multiple founders). I think
that is an excellent plan, and far more realistic than putting myself $20,000
into debt at credit card interest levels. I would highly advise others against
doing what you describe.

------
Corrado
This is an excellent article and I'm glad you had the gumption to post it. I
started KangarooBox specifically because of #7 and #4, #5, & #27 came along
for the ride.

While working at a large restaurant company I realized that our issue tracking
solution was very poor and/or expensive and that Corporate America would pay
for a simple, effective solution. Hence I had the idea to combine commodity
hardware with FOSS and sell it with service (maintenance, disaster recovery,
updates, etc.) This allows everyone, large & small, to use "Enterprise"
solutions at a reasonable cost by outsourcing part of the IT department (or at
least the maintenance part :).

Anyway, my list is topped by something that would help me organize and manage
the many things in my life. These are really just different themes on the same
idea. There are quite a few websites that do some of these things, but none do
it really well. For instance, I still haven't been able to find a decent site
that allows me to track my automobile usage, maintenance, & info. Throw in a
useful, tightly focused user forum and I think you have a winner.

a) A pet/animal web site \- reminds me to order their medicine/food \- sends
birthday notifications \- genealogy builder (for professional breeders) \-
stores current info (pictures, ID #, name, etc.)

b) Household things \- Major appliance info (warranty, serial #, model, etc.)
\- living room paint color \- types of plants in the front garden \- insurance
info \- videos of a home walkthrough

c) Automotive things \- make & model \- info (color, VIN, etc.) \- insurance
info \- maintenance notification (time for an oil change) \- mileage, MPG
calculator

Later... Richard <http://www.kangaroobox.com>

------
samfind
2\. Simplified browsing. There are a lot of cases where you'd trade some of
the power of a web browser for greater simplicity. Grandparents and small
children don't want the full web; they want to communicate and share pictures
and look things up. What viable ideas lie undiscovered in the space between a
digital photo frame and a computer running Firefox? If you built one now, who
else would use it besides grandparents and small children?

We have built one! our website, samfind - <http://samfind.com> just launched
and we fill the gap for those who are less technically savvy. we concentrate
on making your homepage easy to navigate and create and give you access to the
websites that you use. The web can just be too darn big sometimes - and you
don't need it all - all the time.

We think those who are more technically savvy can get into samfind as well. We
have built widgets and gadgets for the firefox set who would like to place
their samfind homepage onto the start page of their choice.

sam <http://samfind.com>

------
jmatt
It's likely that the biggest startup ideas won't be on this list. But, it's
still a great list.

I also think the idea of measuring and comparing complexity should be
included. Even though this is arguably a pure math problem... A software
startup will likely be involved because 1) any useful implementation will
likely be software based 2) It'll be useful to most businesses in the world 3)
most hackers know math.

[edit: wording]

------
drowe67
Re 27 (hardware/software hybrids) there is a good example: The Free Telephony
Project: <http://rowetel.com/ucasterisk>

A community has been working on Open Hardware designs for IP telephony -
embedded Asterisk boxes. The technology is now in mass production, and several
commercial products are being spun out of the original, community based work.

------
t0pj
_Start by writing Basic for the Altair._

Priceless.

------
tom234
On "new news:"

I'm not concerned about how the newspapers and producers like MSNBC and
Washington Post create the story. The main problem is how do the search engine
or whatever can search that news. The problem with Google News is that google
is crawling and indexing all the webpage news like it was a webpage and it is
not very up to date. If there was a fire right now, you won't see that in
google right now. On the other hand, RSS is a different topic. First of all
not all news producers have RSS. My main question is, if there is a flooding
happening right now, what is the best way to find that information. You can't
use google now, because they haven't crawled and indexed it. I'm thinking of
news search/aggregator realtime. Another nice thing would be if I search
"flooding" it should display many news sources so that I can get some
perspective. What is the best way to approach this problem. Crawling and
indexing is not the way to go I think if it is needed to be instant.

~~~
ckjohnston
This is dead on. But it looks like, to some degree, Twitter Search is solving
this problem. Twitter is able to do this because, luckily, Twitter has a base
of users that are willing to supply the instantaneous news.

As a real-life example, a couple of weeks ago there was a minor earthquake. It
was my first time experiencing one so I searched on Google to see what the
deal was. I couldn't find anything. Then I turned to Twitter and saw tons of
posts coming in about the earthquake.

------
nperriault
To me you've forgotten the most important thing to achieve: true SSO and true
web of data where you own your own (I mean data portability). Just imagine a
true synchronizable address book on all the devices you own, with all your
friends and family. Maybe the semantic web will help, but the industry must
play the game, too...

------
benbeltran
About two years ago I wanted tot make a craigslist competitor for my area...
But it was just me alone so I never kicked it off. I've been wanting to revive
it though. I made some preliminary designs. (the design tests are oooold and
in spanish though).

<http://nsovocal.com/lalista/> <http://nsovocal.com/lalista/login.htm>
<http://nsovocal.com/lalista/registro.htm>
<http://nsovocal.com/lalista/list.htm> <http://nsovocal.com/lalista/ad.htm>

Maybe it's good time to pick up the project again with a proper business plan
and design :P

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure I buy the SWOT that Graham's proposing for Craigslist or EBay.
There are ways that both suck, but there's an absolutely enormous network
effect they're riding on.

~~~
ericb
I agree, although when you're funding 20 startups at a time, I bet you start
thinking about throwing some scratch-ticket ideas into the mix. It's unlikely
they can pull it off, but with a basket of longshot, astronomical payoff
startups, if one pays off, you're in great shape.

~~~
pg
If you're young enough to try several times, this also pays off for individual
founders. I think one reason Sam Altman had no second thoughts about taking on
such an ambitious project was that he was only 19.

~~~
dcurtis
Had Sam Altman done other projects before Loopt?

~~~
pg
Not that I know of. He wouldn't have had much time; he was a sophomore when he
started Loopt.

~~~
benbeltran
Well then I guess I'm at a good age to think about a proper startup. I just
finished sophomore year :P

------
neruophilic
As a science undergrad, I would like to see science-based video games. Though
I appreciate being able to rotate computer animations for clarity, or placing
electrons in their orbital, I have to imagine a video game that required the
upkeep of biochemical/physiological systems would be more effective than rote
memorization. I am sure that some of us remember the movie "Innerspace"; why
not start young gamers on inner-body adventures based on real science. I hope
this idea is already being pursued. It has been a dream of mine to author some
anthropomorphic children's books about a whole range of biological topics.
However, I hope in the not-so-distant-future parents will be telling there
teenagers, "you can't go out with your friends until you pass the influenza
level of 'Innerspace Invaders.'"

~~~
neruophilic
I just found a game called "Immune Attack" about obviously the immune system.
I haven't played yet, but from what I can tell, players control a
nanobot/artificial immune cell that is fighting off parasitic invaders. The
Federation of American Scientist are working to push the development of more
games. I also discovered that some hospitals have an E.R. game that prepares
Doctors and Nurses for...you guessed it emergencies. I think this is a start,
however I imagine that entities creating for profit are likely to consistently
produce the better products.

------
antidaily
Motivation re:dating site - the very simple (and quite ugly) dating site,
Plenty of Fish, earns $10M a year.

~~~
aston
If anything, that's demotivation, at least for real hackers. Plenty of Fish is
popular because of marketing/SEO techniques and throwing successively larger
iron at traffic, not because Markus Frind was a technical genius with a clever
idea. Very different path to profitability than most of us want to take, I
think.

~~~
run4yourlives
Speak for yourself.

If you want to be a technical genius get a grant and grow a beard. I want to
use the skills I have to support my family and enjoy life at the same time.

------
foompy_katt
8\. Dating. Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will
appear.

This problem falls under the classification of "critical mass" problems. I
think any solution that works for one of these types of problems, is likely to
work for the others. "Critical mass" is when the problem is not in coming up
with a good alternative, the problem is that having a critical mass of users
for your solution is going to be an important part of the value you offer to
your customers.

I've never been able to flesh this out enough to the point where I was sure I
had a solution that would definitely work. But here's what I came up with so
far: make a website, and a company, whose focus is solely on building critical
masses of users for those "new alternatives". It would consist entirely of
methods and social software that could be used to build critical mass.

For example, users could state how many other users would need to be using a
new service, before they would try it. Or how many of their friends were doing
it. Then, you inform them when those numbers are reached- when the 100th user
is there, the 1000th user, etc. (whatever they named), the third user after
they posted, etc. Ideally, you would have enough people who've registered
their herd-desire, that you could set off a chain reaction from 0 to the
number needed for viability.

Unfortunately, that probably wouldn't work for anything but what attracts the
most savvy users. I think you might have to pay people to form flash mobs.
I.e. people go hang out on the website, and they get a notice of "if you're
interested, go to this dating site and fill out a profile, and earn $5. Each
other new user you find earns $1 for you". Especially the more social it is,
the more it would work to have a flash mob thing going on, where there's only
one opportunity at a time. Then you hope that a temporary critical mass
sustains itself- that if it's good enough, people will stick around and the
rest of the nuclear reaction can complete itself.

To some extent, what I'm proposing is the Mechanical Turk thing Amazon does,
but for user bases. And you'd probably have to do a lot of user verification.

~~~
Tichy
Is the critical mass really a problem for dating sites? In Germany, the big
dating sites simply spend a lot of money on advertising, which seems to work
well enough. Also, I would expect that people frequently switch dating sites,
so new sites should have relatively good odds of attracting new members.

~~~
foompy_katt
I was just going off of what Graham wrote- "But no one wants to use a dating
site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem.
So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating
that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get
around the chicken and egg problem."

Since I have no specific familiarity with dating sites, all I could suggest
was a vague, general approach. Of course a big dating site might have a lot of
money to advertise, but a small one probably can't afford it. But that's
obviously one possible way to get some users.

~~~
ideas101
may be i'm asking a stupid question but can someone clarify what is the
chicken and egg problem with dating sites?

~~~
gaius
It's difficult to attract people to a dating site that has very few members.
You have to implement a non-tech solution, such as a huge mass-media
advertising campaign (e.g. Dating Direct have ads in the breaks in _Gray's
Anatomy_ ), which is hugely expensive. Or you have to have a viral idea, like
OkCupid offering quizzes to LJers and getting them to create profiles as an
aside.

------
foompy_katt
28\. Fixing email overload.

I have an integrated solution which might also fight spam, and which would
relate to contact lists / social websites. I.e. if someone is in the contact
list of one of your contacts, their email gets treated as not-spam, and if you
had an automated ranking algorithm for email (emails with frequent
correspondents go towards the top, email from contacts is second tier,
newsletters go towards the bottom, etc.), it could go towards the top. Or, the
email comes from the friend of a friend of a friend, it's considered to not be
spam, and put in the middle.

I'm not suggesting you be able to see your contacts' contacts, but something
akin to the six degrees of separation application in Facebook. This could get
computationally intensive if you were checking for enough degrees of
separation. But it's obviously doable, if the Facebook application can do it-
and if it were too CPU intensive, maybe some people would choose to pay for
the service.

This would also fight spam even if it were only applied in a small number of
email inboxes. Because, if it sees that emails from an email address aren't in
the first six degrees of contacts of any of, say, the first 10 receivers, it
could inform ISPs that all future emails from that address are suspected spam.

This is the idea which is most off the top of my head, so be wary of it :).

Another idea- add a reddit-like button next to emails which lets you move
stuff up and down in your inbox. This would serve dual functions- letting you
sort emails and to-do items by priority (a right click on the button would let
you move stuff up or down by 10, 50 places, etc.), and it would also tell your
filter what you prioritize (which contacts, which key words, etc.- like, PG's
filter might notice he likes emails with the SIP "Lisp" in it).

That wraps up my ideas that are relevant to PG's list, as far as I can recall.
If anyone has any questions about any of them, let me know. I've fleshed out
most of these much further than you see, I just don't feel like doing a 50,000
word writeup as a comment. If you want to contact me privately, my email
address is ben dott seeley att gmail dott com.

------
biohacker42
I've been thinking about a better Wikipedia. It is silly for them to keep that
style and decide what's worthy when they are not dealing with dead trees and
limited shelf space.

I think something like a PGPedia, where articles are signed by the author and
ranked much like this comment system would be great. There would be no editing
of articles, just re-submissions. And nothing need ever be deleted, just down
moderated.

You could search PGPedia by what's top rated, or by what famous uses have
highly rated, what does Stephen Hawking think of articles on gravity, etc.

I expect encyclopedia style article to be top ranked but they would also link
to longer more in depth articles, and those to even longer articles.

I just don't see any way to make money from that?

------
aneesh
Microsoft Office will eventually lose its throne, but I'm not sure I agree
when you say that a startup can do better at making an online version of
Office than Microsoft can. Microsoft has built-in advantages: they have an
existing codebase for Office, they've been moving towards putting Office
online with products like Sharepoint and Groove, and they have a lot of
experience and knowledge in selling to enterprise clients. Maybe a well-
executed startup can win in the consumer market, but it will take something
special to beat Office in the enterprise. For all their convenience, Google
Docs and Zoho are nowhere close to Office-killers for enterprise customers.

~~~
cturner
A decent client-server model of office could definitely take it down.
Sharepoint is ridiculously heavy for what's needed. It has too many features
and doesn't present the key ones easily. Document production is conceptually
simple in people's minds. Even I have found it awkward to adjust to
appropriate use of sharepoint (and I still hate it).

Office users need something that places a genuinely excellent wordprocessing
frontend as a frontend to a repository. Within this you'd have to facilitate
good search, allow for data flexibility. Generally at the moment you need to
be able to produce views of word processed documents as PDF, single-page HTML,
multi-page HTML (oh - there's a style need I missed in my other comment), XML
and IP-based API. The frontend needs to effortlessly handle massive documents
without compromising the frontend and it needs to be possible to edit all of a
document at once, or sectors of it. All this can be coordinated with a smart
approach to use of the existing filesystem model.

The storage format needs to be textual to facilitate source-control and
version diffing.

With the office space it's important to separate the things that users care
about from what they don't. They care about the lovely frontend and a small
subset of features. They don't really care if it backs on to a powerful custom
engine. They care about features in the big-picture sense, but would not
necessarily demand that they be offered in the frontend if they could be
better achieved through another mechinism. Fortunately Microsoft have provided
stunning tools for third party developers who want to extend Word and Excel
and there are masses of good docs around on it.

Office can be done, but the people doing it need to look at the problem itself
rather than trying to beat Microsoft at their own game by producing yet
another crap monolithic arbitrary-format grinder. Think wiki but with a
fantastic frontend (and by that I don't mean some horrid javascript GUI in a
browser that is unresponsive and chooses to sometimes lose your data).

------
Robleh
Ok, one of the things I am working on is a music startup so I'd like to
challenge this:

"The answer for the music industry, for example, is probably to give up
insisting on payment for recorded music and focus on licensing and live
shows."

This is almost blogosphere orthodoxy now. If anything the wild success of
allofmp3 shows that people will pay if the price is right. The price point is
wrong, not the model. High volume + lower price = Increased total revenue.
This is the point we make when we meet with the labels.

"But what happens to movies? Do they morph into games?"

No they don't. Which is more popular the new Batman film or the new Batman
game? There’s plenty of room for both.

------
mleonhard
17\. New payment methods

I've been studying problem #17 since 2002. I've got some great ideas that I
want to implement, but I don't know if they generate revenue quickly enough to
make a successful startup. There's a big chicken-and-egg problem in this area.

Most of my effort so far has been on how to facilitate micropayments using
only existing widely-deployed crypto such as TLS & SHA. I have a solution that
should work for transfers involving two online banks. Transfers involving
three or more banks are significantly more difficult to do while maintaining
safety and liveliness.

Please contact me if you're interested in this area.

------
chriscaffee
My companies have a solution for #1, both videos and the music insustry in one
bold move. This will not be made public until Fall of 2008. Go to
www.archivemovienetwork.com to get a sense. Our demo under NDAs is more
impressive than you ever thought was possible on the technolgy end. The
business model this Fall will immediately prove movitization of a highbreed
PGC/UGC model with the potential for completely revitalizing the music
industry IF they partner with us. We will be attempting this throuth our
lawyers at K&L Gates.

In the fall you will be able to contact us. Come build the future.

------
attack
This should give everyone a boost in coming up with good products. Thanks
guys.

------
theoutlander
#25 - A craigslist competitor.... used to be <http://expo.live.com>, but it
seems like even Microsoft couldn't compete against them! If you log in today,
you will see the following message:

Windows Live Expo will discontinue service on 31 July 2008. In preparation,
the following features are no longer available:

    
    
        * Create a new account.
        * Post a new listing.
        * Extend a listing.
        * Upgrade a listing to a premium listing.
    
    

All current listings will remain on expo.live.com until they expire.

------
rhayward
I would take issue with point 16 (on Google and design).

I don't work for Google, but I do have a lot of respect for the company. I've
never perceieved any 'design' problem.

In terms of their interfaces, I think they've probably spent a huge amount of
time on design, and got it exactly right. Simple, sparse and functional.

From everything I've heard, the 'design' of their software and system
architecture is also top notch.

I can't see exactly where you're going with the whole design dependency thing.
Search and design seem like very different things that shouldn't 'depend' on
each other.

~~~
emmett
Google's products succeed because they're technically brilliant and well
executed, not because their design is massively better (see: iPod, iPhone).

Google avoids _bad_ design by the simple expedient of making everything sparse
and functional, which is the way to go if you're not a great designer.

------
foompy_katt
13\. Online learning.

Well, if educational materials were either cheap because of my idea for #17,
or the government were putting educational materials in the public domain
(that would be a good place to start, in my opinion, before branching out),
that would help.

I'm in the middle of an article about reforming the education system (how the
institution could be restructured). It will be posted to
anamazingmind.com/blog (a friend's blog) when I'm done. It would definitely
create new educational markets, and online education would be a big winner.

------
brandonkm
I think all of these are great ideas for startups to pursue. The wide range of
ideas presented in this write up show how diverse the problems on the web are,
which presents plenty of opportunities for startups to fix them. #12
particularly stood out to me. I think that with the direction a lot of the
resulting startups will take, new ways of advertising should follow. This one
of the areas where theres room to innovate the most, because theres more to
advertising on the web than "ads by goooooooogle".

------
jondillon
"When the only sources of news were the wire services and a few big papers, it
was enough to keep writing stories about how the president met with someone"
-- Wire services produce thousands of articles everyday from all over the
world but sadly only 20% of the content that moves on the wire is ever
published. Papers have a believe that their audience is only interested in who
the President met with. I don't think its new news that we need we just need
better methods for getting the interesting stuff out

------
ThanksBud
Great post. I feel that we may be trying to answer 2-3 of these items at once.
Would this discourage an incubator such as YC to steer clear simply based on
the complexity of the product? Can a project be too big for a 3 month
incubator? Our company is further along than we can properly indicate and we
will be able to get far in 3 months but I am wondering if people think that
this is a negative mark on incubator programs. Thoughts?

------
jmalmberg
Paul,

I read this post with interest. I'm working with a company that has a new
payment system that you may be interested in. Their technology can turn any
mobile phone into a secure point of sale. In addition, we've found that their
backbone allows us to send any type of content to any cell phone without the
need for an agreement with the carrier.

I'm also working with a couple of other companies that have some of the ideas
you mentioned you are interested in.

If you are interested talking, please contact me at jim@iBuyTechPatents.com.

Best regards,

Jim Malmberg

------
foompy_katt
2\. Simplified browsing.

I got nothing on this, since I'm not in the target market. Btw, my pet theory
is that smart people will have the best luck inventing commercially successful
solutions, if they focus on jobs and activities that hardly any smart people
do. Like, bagging groceries, and data entry. I've done both of those, and I
had plenty of germinal ideas on how they could be improved or automated.

The corollary to this would be that it's hard to be a big new success in Web
2.0. Tons of smart people are avid Internet users, and they're interested in
that. Unless you're towards the apex of that group, coming up with a market-
shaking new Web 2.0 idea will be tough. This is also the reason I left quant
finance- given how many smart people were competing with me, I could much more
easily invent something useful for other people (which feels better and is
less stressful), and make a fortune that way.

But here's the browsing idea I'd like (I don't know if this has been proposed
already- I hope it's technically feasible): cluster links. This is where you
click on a link, and it opens a whole lot of links at the same time. Like, a
link to open all the links on the front page of Hacker News in new tabs or new
windows. Or all the links in one of PG's articles. Or a link which opens all
the links from the bibliography of an article. Or a link which opens Google's
top 20 search results.

For someone with a lot of bandwidth, and not listening to music online, and
browsing from home, automatically opening 30 windows at once is not going to
cause any problems- just close whichever ones look uninteresting. I open an
awful lot of links every day, and my fingers get tired. Make it easy for me.

If there was some sort of a risk (like a spam link that has 200 links), make
it so a warning window opens if, say, more than 40 windows would open (or a
number chosen by the user)- allowing the user to individually decline or
accept links, or give a batch OK/reject to all of them.

Corollary: this might be a useful idea in, like, software help searches. A lot
of times it's hard to tell which help page would be useful when I do a keyword
search- why not be able to open all the results at once? I hate wasting time
making a decision about "is this worth opening or not?" when usually it would
be easier to make that decision when it's already open. If the summary is so
great, put it at the top of each opened page.

~~~
samfind
How does this suit you:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=251821>

~~~
foompy_katt
I like it :). Good luck!

------
spongefrob
<blockquote>If we say we're looking for x, we'll get applications proposing x,
certainly. But then it actually becomes harder to judge them: is this group
proposing x because they were already thinking about it, or because they know
that's what we want to hear?</blockquote>

Why is this important? I don't recall reading anywhere that Y Combinator takes
on responsibility for a persons motives when starting up a company...

------
rshadrin
Paul: Great ideas all. Might I suggest you look at a hybrid spawned from
13/14; that is online learning and performance measurement. This issues are
both synergistic and antagonistic. Having spent half my career in schools and
the rest in corporate education, I have some insights I'd like to share with
an eye towards creating an initiative worth considering.

Contact me directly at rshadrin@thinktopia.us and 845 788 4180.

------
ceruleanbill
Good lord, that was insightful. And damn fun to read. Exactly the sort of
thing I'd want to see in MIT's Tech Review magazine, or similar venues.

------
cousin_it
Hey people. Number 22, "a web-based Excel/db hybrid", was my previous pet
project before openphotovr.org. I built a couple versions, showed them to some
people, got some good responses, didn't put it online because of laziness and
overwork. I'm willing to give free advice to anybody willing to tackle this
problem. Also Kragen Sitaker used to work on this, you could try to contact
him.

------
henning
Most of these seem really hard to do.

I'd rather make a small little application that tries to do something far less
ambitious than decapitate Microsoft or Ebay.

~~~
Herring
About half of them are hilarious. "Solve the chicken and egg problem". He
should have added "solve the teenage angst problem". You don't solve it - you
endure it.

Ah youth. I wish I had known about YC when I was more idealistic.

------
EnriqueAllen
I would love to read each and every comment, internalize them, check out
related websites, build out my mental models, and reach out to you but I just
can't right now as a new week begins. Therefore I have to save this for digest
on my phone during transitions. Anyone use a cool tool that helps deliver
content like comments based on your schedule and attention capacity?

~~~
pageman
mindmapping tools? :)

------
foompy_katt
30\. Startups for startups.

I think Y Combinator doesn't take its model far enough. What I'd like to see
could be called "Human Resource Investment"- investing in people, not startups
per se. This would be structured as a debt and/or equity deal. You find a
talented person, and invest in them using money, technology, education, and
social resources. Then you charge a high interest rate (for the reliable
people), or make money off of a % of all their future income (for the high
risk types) for the next 30 years or whatever (in addition to the principle).

The advantage to the investee that this has over credit card debt and other
forms of debt is that you don't require anyone to make debt payments until
they are making over a certain $ figure per year. This way nobody has to worry
about going bankrupt, becoming poor, or social shame. They also get access to
major institutional support, which is difficult for people to get (and
social/institutional support is one of the few things people are generally
missing in their lives, if they don't go to church). No longer do the poor,
inexperienced, young- but energetic and talented- types need to scrap for
everything.

The advantage to Human Resource Investment, Inc., is that even if there is a
high rate of delinquency, just a few Zuckerbergs and Grahams and you make a
fortune. You also can make money off of them, even if they fail a few times,
since it's a long-term contract, rather than a project contract. This way
other VC firms don't make money off of Y Combinator having educated someone
with a failed venture, and then they do another, successful startup with
Sequoia or whomever.

You also have access to a large pool of talented people with whom you have a
good relationship, and you've already evaluated, who would make good potential
hires for startups or whatever other companies you are affiliated with. If HRI
were savvy enough, you could lock up most of the available talent the VC world
relies on, before anyone is taking a percentage of the money they're going to
eventually make.

Think of it as government for profit- you choose the people to invest in,
helping them enormously (as government services are supposed to do) and you
make a profit with "taxes". Given that governments have to invest in everyone,
and are inefficient to boot, yet still roughly break even, I see no reason why
a private company couldn't do the same thing, but focus on talented people, do
a good job of it, and make a nice profit.

I've done the math before, and the conservative estimates I used worked out to
a very handsome profit. But it gets complicated, and it depends very much on
the assumptions that are made. If anyone wants an example, I'll be happy to
provide it.

~~~
jerry5
This is pretty much what universities do, especially the more elitist kind.
Alumni don't have a contractual obligation to pay x% of their income, but in
practice they end up making donations to their alma mater for the rest of
their life.

However I don't like this idea at all, it's what creates elitism and closed
circles in the first place. Our society already is institutionalized to the
hilt, I wished people again found their natural ability to create trust
relationships, from scratch.

~~~
foompy_katt
"I wished people again found their natural ability to create trust
relationships, from scratch."

I completely agree with this. I don't honestly feel people of good faith need
to deal with complicated rules or institutions. But not everyone is willing to
go that route, so this is an idea which might serve the other 99%.

First off, it might be the case that anyone could be worth investing in (in
time, money, energy, expertise, caring). I think if done right, it's true for
everyone. I don't really have it as a goal that just the "talented" people are
invested in. Just that that is the obvious place to start.

And I think that if someone who is talented is already well-connected or has a
rich family, this would probably have little use for them. But, for someone
who is ambitious and hard-working but starting out from a low place, this
would be a boon- they need some kind of support, more than anyone else. If
they could find others willing to create "trust relationships", presumably
they would do it, since that is obviously a better deal. But few seem to
manage it :/.

~~~
jerry5
> I completely agree with this. I don't honestly feel people of good faith
> need to deal with complicated rules or institutions. But not everyone is
> willing to go that route, so this is an idea which might serve the other
> 99%.

I sometimes wonder whether it isn't that 1% that carries the weight of
society. And the Internet lowers the barrier to creating new trust
relationships from scratch. If you were interested in that sort of thing, be
my friend.

~~~
foompy_katt
Yes, let's be friends :). I'm grateful somebody mentioned "trust
relationships". That's a good start. My email address is ben dott seeley att
gmail dott com. Email me some contact info, and I'll mail you mine.

------
run4yourlives
Paul: You may not see this, but I thought this was one of the best articles on
HN in a long while, perhaps ever.

Thanks for sharing you insight with us.

------
3putt
pg, we are a startup company with patents which address personalized search
and semantic advertising. We are also a music startup www.yooglimusic.com with
many tools to support independent artists (emotion sensing tool, commerce
engine, and promotion). All no cost to the artist.

Perhaps you can give us some advice on a raise - $20K doesn't cover two weeks
burn rate.

~~~
pg
I see three red flags just in this brief message: high burn, lack of focus,
and overemphasis on patents. The high burn is the most urgent problem. That
will severely constrain your options.

~~~
3putt
We have 11 people working with us (5 of which are compensated),and expenses
related to music data contribute to the burn rate. The search company and the
music company are separate corporations and operate accordingly. Our CEO is
Rich Marino (former President of CNet Networks) and he feels the patents
provide value to IP as an asset. Still interested in options.

~~~
pg
I think your best option under the circumstances is to raise money from a VC
fund.

~~~
phony_identity
Based on his golf-derived username they should get along well.

------
zemote
#13. <http://www.edmodo.com> Microblogging for Teachers & Students :)

------
mmudassir
Hello,

How one can submit the Proposal and the ideas? I think I have something that I
am working and would like to see if you guys are interested in to it? So I
need a rough-guideline and procedure to submit my idea to you guys (by the
way, we are in the process to Patent our idea as well).

Thanks,

Mudassir Azeemi 408-644-7054 mmudassir@gmail.com

------
jaskew
9\. Photo/video sharing services 13\. Online learning

<http://freescreencast.com>

------
slydell
Would you fund start ups for operation in the Caribbean? Im from Guyana which
is located on South America and is culturally, politically etc. a Caribbean
state. Right now Jamaica is the tech hub in the Caribbean so I've been
planning on moving there but I'm currently working on a few ideas by myself.

------
fleaflicker
_Something your company needs that doesn't exist_

Don't forget the more obvious something _you_ need that doesn't exist.

~~~
ricree
True enough, but companies are generally a lot more willing to shell out money
than consumers are, so long as you can convince them that your product will
save them money.

------
miketan
For Number 29) with TeamPages (www.teampages.com) amateur sports teams can
create a team website in less than 4 minutes where they can post their
schedules, news, scores, photos, videos, and documents. Please feel free to
send me a message to mike.tan@teampages.com for more information.

------
kleneway
I love this post! Over on my "A Startup A Day" blog, I've decided to take the
next 30 days and dedicate each daily idea to address the broad ideas outlined
on this post. Should be a fun challenge, feel free to check it out over at
www.astartupaday.com.

------
greyman
>> 23\. More open alternatives to Wikipedia.

Yes, deletionists - this is really one flaw of Wikipedia. The other is, that
entities are persecuted for editing articles about themselves.

What about just to copy the current articles on Wikipedia and specify another
rules for editing?

~~~
ig1
In a large part the deletionist tract is due to information being
unverifiable, non-notable stuff and self-edited stuff both often falls into
that category. Verifyability I think has been a key factor in keeping
wikipedia at a reasonable level of reliability.

If you remove the verifyability requirement you could quickly spiral into a
mess. So if you want to be inclusionist you'ld probably need to keep that
requirement - but that would also probably kill a lot of your extra content.

I think if it could have been done it would have been done now, all the
mediawiki software is available, you can even get off-the-shelve hosting for a
couple of hundred dollars. The fact that it hasn't been done successfully
seems to indicate that there's no demand.

------
pixcavator
Regarding #27, is there anyone who is working on image processing for digital
cameras?

~~~
busyant
Apple (or someone like them) needs to make a digital camera with iPod
simplicity.

I bought my parents a digital camera a few years ago and it might as well have
a plutonium core the way my parents deal with it.

Primarily they hand it to me on social occasions and say, "take some
pictures...I don't know how to use this thing"

Just a simple camera with these features and nothing more:

1\. on/off button

2\. zoom in /out

3\. take picture

4\. review pictures

5\. delete picture

6\. transfer all pictures to walmart via wifi (you walk into the store, press
a button and walmart slurps them up).

I'd do it, but as pg says, hardware scares me.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
You can get rid of a lot of those buttons too. Have it be instant-on so you
don't need a power button. Just snap the photo. Get rid of the zoom. You can
move yourself in / out physically if you need to be closer. Forget the delete
button too. Flash memory is expansive enough that you shouldn't have to worry
about it on the hardware.

Make the camera have a shutter button, some simple way to view the pictures
you have taken so far, and do all the rest in software in some sort of
picasa/itunes-quality app.

~~~
busyant
i debated on keeping the zoom feature or not. yes. you can really strip that
sucker down and have an iphone-like interface (i.e. touch w/o real buttons).

------
aredkin
All ideas are very good. I think like I thought about 50% of this ones. Did
you feel the same? Particlularly enterprise software, it's sooooo bad, and its
a huuuuge market, but seems nobody dare to make something new, or I'm wrong?

------
theJoker
I´m no expert, but check out <http://webconverger.com/> in regards to your
second idea. That software would work nicely - perhaps nicely enough to help
with idea #18.

------
kola
On New news (#3): [http://ihobbes.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/attracting-
mainstrea...](http://ihobbes.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/attracting-mainstream-
news-consumers-on-the-web/)

------
sachinag
Hmmm... wasn't planning on applying for Winter, but we're working on the
auctions one. (Although I think auctions is the wrong way to look at - looking
at marketplaces in general makes more sense.)

------
jod
Forgive my density, and it's true I haven't had this problem in ages, but what
in the world is the "chicken and egg problem" that dating sites presumably
have? Would you please clarify a little?

~~~
run4yourlives
In order to attract users you need to have plenty of users, hence, how do you
do the former without the latter?

------
foompy_katt
3\. New news.

I think users of Slashdot/Reddit/HN/Digg might like this, especially those who
are longing for an eternal September, since it's primarily an idea regarding
keeping chat forums from degenerating: given that we can readily see the
interesting, well-behaved, consistently high quality participants on other
forums, why not simply invite them to a new forum or news aggregator site, and
limit participation to those people? We can all think of names off the top of
our head- byrneseyeview, for example. I'm guessing there are a lot of these
great posters who would love to participate in an environment free of trolling
and other bad behavior, which might be more easily maintained by controlling
the population than in having lots of moderators and complex valuing
algorithms. Just as important, make the forum public for viewing- I know that
there are thousands of people like me, who rarely participate, but love to
read great discussion.

To this you might say- "but what about those people who could chime in with
something interesting, who are barred from participating?". For this I suggest
making a "ghost forum", a mirror copy of the elite forum, but which allows
anyone to participate in pseudo-tandem with the comments on the elite forum
(i.e. elite posts show up there simultaneously, but anyone can write anything
in response). This would further make it possible to see who would be a worthy
addition to the elite forum, at the same time as the forum administrator could
scour other sites for any new, consistently high-quality discussion
participators.

This idea could easily be commercialized, with participators earning some
money as well. People love to watch good discussion- just look at the large
number of TV and radio chat shows, and magazine group interviews. Or, more
direct to the Internet experience- the fact that there are generally about 100
readers for every 1 writer. Or, the number of times I have read on Reddit
"what keeps me coming back to Reddit are the commenters". If the discussion is
interesting enough, I am sure that there will be enough eyeballs that it must
be worth something. Or the forum could simply be left standing as an excellent
public institution- I believe something like this could be an excellent
teaching tool, something to demonstrate "this is how you participate
constructively" for the readers.

Ironically, I recently wrote the above paragraphs (except the intro),
intending to email it to PG, since I thought he might be interested. Never got
around to it. The idea could be extended to the news, and to submitting links.
Some people are pretty consistent in their journalism, or their quality taste
in links/news. My personal belief is that it all comes down to the people
involved, more than to any set of rules, since no person is as simplistic as
even the most complex set of rules ever devised. Useful people are self-
regulating, and dysfunctional people are hard to moderate, no matter the
number and type of rules, or how much authority you have.

My great personal hope for the forum idea, if it is ever implemented, is that
we might finally see constructive dialogue between people of opposing
political viewpoints (the same goes for any other subject in which few people
talk to the other side). There are some people capable of debating
constructively with their opponents, but on every forum I've ever seen, it all
goes to hell because of trolls, or mob rule downvoting the dissenter into
oblivion.

But if you narrow the debate down to the people who can manage to disagree
without being disagreeable, there might be some hope for progress. I think
that until average people can learn to debate opponents constructively, our
politicians will never do it, because even if the politicians wanted to, their
constituents will pressure the politicians to behave like the constituents
would.

------
noodle
its depressing, i've had some ideas that i think are good that touch on some
of those areas but i'm not applying to YC because i don't have the time to
make it up there for a few months. :(

~~~
Tichy
How can you not have the time? Make the time... They give you some money, so
it is not like you'd go completely bankrupt.

Time = Money...

~~~
noodle
because i have personal and financial responsibilities that prevent me from
doing it.

------
aronado
Wow, thank you guys so much for sharing your thoughts here. Excellent idea to
share what you're looking for rather than keep it a secret.

I especially like #30 Startups for Startups.

------
scottpurdie
I want a site that lets me create niche sites based on the digg style. A Ning
type of creator for cooperative news.

Also - Useful apps for Facebook, Mobile or Offline without needing to know
code.

Scott Purdie

------
hongxiaowan
Point 16

Wordpress + Yahoo Boss Search Engine API = designed Search Engine

<http://hongxiaowan.com/2008/08/hongxiaowan/116.html>

------
alain94040
>30\. Startups for startups. The increasing number of startups is itself an
opportunity for startups. We're one; TechCrunch is another. What other new
things can you do?

fairsoftware.net?

------
billroberts
Yes, the development of the web is definitely not over! Lots of great ideas
there. At swirrl.com we're working on something like Paul's item 22, with a
bit of 5 thrown in.

------
stef25
would a solution to the chicken & egg problem of dating sites be to populate
it with people's profiles they already created on social networks like fb and
myspace?

------
Fuca
I think I just came up with a solution for the dating site, and will give it a
try.

What I have not solved is I live in Mexico, and this will require an office or
staff in major cities.

------
jimvoorhies
@ #28 One of the easiest ways to deal with email is to tag the emails. If
you're in a project-based org, put the project title as the start of the
subject.

------
DeBorahBeatty
I'd love to see more funding wishlists for non-tech ventures such as
innovative coaching/entrepreneurial training that do not include IT as a
backbone!

------
jamesjyu
#30 is too meta. Will we eventually have startups that help startups make
products for other startups that make products for other startups?

It's just not scalable.

~~~
jacobbijani
I disagree. It _is_ meta, but not too meta. You're right, startups helping
startups that help startups will fail. I think there are still enough startups
for ONE round of meta. There's nothing that says it will go beyond that.

~~~
anewaccountname
Since ycombinator would presumably fund companies with this idea, doesn't that
make them a startup that helps startups that help startups?

------
fgrinda
With regards to #25, this is what we are trying to do with OLX (www.olx.com).
We are getting a fair amount of traction internationally.

------
michaelwolff
great wish list, but amazed that there is nothing about work. here we are just
about to enter a major global recession, and millions of people are going to
be looking at different ways of getting work - for instance being able to find
work anywhere in the global economy without having to move from their homes.
but now there is a solution: see www.ki-work.com

------
foompy_katt
This is going to have to be a multipart comment, I wrote so much:

1\. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom.

My idea for this is included in a more robust solution for #17.

17\. New payment methods.

Here's the $100 billion dollar idea (if it could be pulled together). Make a
new credit card (or work with an existing company). Consumers would sign
agreements to exclusively use that card (more financial info could be asked
for, though). In exchange, the company takes all the data about the purchases,
and any other (anonymized) info the company can gather about the customer's
financial situation and habits (the more info the customer gives the company,
the better the prices they are given), and uses artificial intelligence to
make predictions about how much a person would be willing to pay for
something. In exchange, the customer agrees to accept the price the credit
card company charges, without knowing the price ahead of time (not to be
higher than the listed retail price). The retail establishment chooses the
minimum price they will accept.

Example: a customer buys a room at a fancy hotel, which would normally retail
at $400 per night. You know that the customer never pays more than $150 for a
hotel room, and there don't seem to be any other indicators that this is a
special event where the customer would pay the full retail price. Your AI
estimates that, based on his income, recent expenses, and past hotel habits,
he would be unwilling to pay more than $200 for the room. The minimum the
hotel will accept is $150. You charge him $190.

The customer just got a great room for $190, and as long as on average you
save him money on his purchases, he's happy. The hotel just made an easy $40+
extra profit for a room that would have gone unused (if they were closer to
full capacity, they would raise their minimum acceptable price). You charge a
% commission, and also have the exclusive card of the customer, worth a lot.

As long as the predictions are reasonably accurate enough in the long average,
everybody wins. Hotels, airplanes, buses, sellers of copyrighted goods (music,
movies, books, software, games, etc.), and any goods sold with a sizable
profit margin (prescription drugs, etc.), make more money by selling more of
their "excess capacity". As long as the average price per unit sold is not too
much lower, relative to the extra number of units sold, they win. The customer
wins with goods and services that are never more expensive than retail. And
you win by charging a %. This is basically a technological solution to the
huge problem of "how to capitalize on every strata of the market, for the same
exact thing".

If someone tried to buy stuff through a "cheap buyer", the data would quickly
mount up on that, and you can call fraud (or retroactively charge them more
for everything they've bought recently, since they are now demonstrating
evidence of heightened income- that'll be in the contract).

Based on my past experiences with AI, and what I know about AI as it's already
applied by credit card companies (for fraud, etc.), and the kinds of AI done
with "store loyalty" programs, all of this is quite doable. It just has to be
pulled together.

The only problems I've been able to find with this idea are that a) I'm an
environmentalist, and don't care to see people able to buy even more junk (but
maybe they'll spend more time on stuff like music, which isn't bad for the
environment), and b) some rich people might get annoyed that others are
systematically paying less for the exact same goods and services as they are
paying for. But people are used to poor people paying less for education,
health care, etc., so this might not be a big deal.

c) if you think that sellers might significantly raise the retail price, to
try to make more money off of the upper part of the customer strata, you're
wrong. Anyone that tried to do that would be undercut by competitors who would
be willing to sell at a normal retail price, to win over all the high-dollar
buyers. That would still be the biggest part of the market (since it's around
90% of the current market, and the market for people willing to spend less
than retail is obviously a limited market). The only sellers to watch out for
are those with monopolies on crucial products, since it would be hard for
other sellers to indirectly compete with them.

But is there a solution that is simpler and targets well to music, movies,
etc.? What about selling, like, a contract for 100,000 songs? The buyer
provides a little information, and if they look like they couldn't afford that
many songs individually (college students, etc.), they get a flat rate to
download 100,000 songs of their choosing (maybe $10,000, paid in installments
over many years, if they're a college student). Obviously few people could
afford or be willing to pay 99 cents per song for 100,000 songs, so if you can
do a decent job estimating the maximum music budget for someone, just charge
them that rate and give them everything they could possibly desire (which
would also solve the problem of paying 99 cents for something you never listen
to after the first spin).

The main problem with this is security- making sure those 100,000 songs don't
get ripped off. If the music companies could make security that actually
WORKED, I think it would be a pretty good idea. Even most people who currently
download stuff for free would pay at least a little for hassle-free downloads
of copies they know will work.

There is a governmental solution, also, which I will go into later. It would
be much better for the overall good of society, I think, and it would be the
simplest way to go. It's just not the commercial solution I'm guessing PG is
looking for.

~~~
gnaritas
"If the music companies could make security that actually WORKED"

Except they can't, and they won't, and in the end, no one can. As some
security expert once said.. "Trying to make something digital non-copyable is
like trying to make water that isn't wet." No matter what they come up with,
history has shown it'll be cracked in no time and become worthless.

~~~
foompy_katt
Right, I don't think it'll ever happen. But if it did...

------
PhineasGage
If newspapers are so out of touch (#3), why is that you linked to one in your
post citing its vital coverage of Octopart (#7)?

------
vbatcu
For #12, I personally think that blogupp.com is that new form of advertising,
which in fact doesn't look like advertising

------
fbjk2000
We have enterprise software and sales of the new - we call it sustainable -
quality. PLS Check us out at www.pro-mis.com

------
chris123
Nice list. We've got #8 and #9 covered, including the part about how to launch
it. That's not hard, actually.

------
cturner
I'm working for (somebody else's) startup at the moment and happy with my
positioning there, but I've got thoughts coming from a number of these.

> 1\. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom.

I built songseed.com with the intention of creating a community for artists
(perhaps with careers in other fields) who care about the music and aren't
hypnotised by the Big Lie that artists get the sign and then make lots of
money (something that happens successfully very visibly when it happens but so
rarely that it's an extreme statistical oddity).

I'm obviously sending the wrong message in the way that I promoted it, because
I found artists to be not very receptive at all to the idea of them giving
away their music. IP is a big thing to take on as well. It's basically
protection of the educated elite at the expense of consumers in general, and
musicians are therefore very likely to be part of the grouping that benefits
from it. (this isn't the language I use when discussing it normally - the
about page covers that)

Some feedback has focussed on the basic and not particularly pretty UI. My
theory is that content is king, and that craigslist never needed fanciness,
and I hate javascript where plainness will work.

Then I got stuck because I couldn't find a cofounder I was happy to work with
who was interested in it and I'm not very effective when I have to work in
isolation. I also found that the dayjob I'd been doing in the meantime had
landed me in another spot I'm quite happy with (software messaging and foreign
exchange banking - I'm interested in both fields) and so I've neglected
songseed.

> 2\. Simplified browsing

I've been working on something to do with this just today. I have a feeling
that Apple are going to create a platform on the back of Safari, and we have
the new MS and Adobe thin platforms coming through. I've been playing around
an idea for a while of creating a browser interface but one that doesn't
require HTML or Javascript or DOM use for writing applications. I'm getting
closer to realising this. I'm currently chipping away at the idea of an
interface that works and is quite nice in the browser, but where you can
develop an equiv. rich client frontends for it.

> 7\. Something your company needs that doesn't exist.

Yet another thing I'm working at. Basically all document production systems
you get at the moment suck because they don't handle styles well, except
Microsoft Word which sucks because it's so heavy (offers features that allow
people to do damage). This is quite incredible given how core document
production is to what we do with computers.

Anyway - long story short - I've recently made a release of what I've been
working on there at songseed.org. Lot of work to do yet. I want to develop a
locked down word frontend to the engine.

> 17\. New payment methods

Two thoughts:

\- some sort of system that allows you to buy bonds on one-off contracts
happening in a liberal country like switerland which would allow you to engage
in contracts your gvt wanted to restrict you from engaging in

\- some sort of trading system that mixed FX with a whole bunch of wacky
synthetics to allow you to easily take positions on things which are normally
more complicated. This would be interesting. FX APIs are a developed field as
well so there's lots of software liquidity that you could hook into to get
started.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Basically all document production systems you get at the moment suck because
they don't handle styles well_

What about Latex?

~~~
cturner
You're right in that: LaTeX doesn't suffer from that criticism, and LaTeX is
pretty cool, particularly in terms of the quality of the output you get. This
system will very likely end up with a LaTeX filter for print rendering.

Limitations of LaTeX for what I want:

1) It does too much - I want to be able to have documents generated once and
then offer on multiple outputs. I can't do that if people use features of the
platform that go beyond the 'web renderer'. The featureset you need for the
save format of a document production system is actually very low. You need to
be able to capture five grades of headings, support two types of emphasis,
ordered and unordered lists that can nest, tabular data. I don't think
anything else is needed. So in this sense, of existing technologies docbook is
a lot closer to what I need than LaTeX.

2) Whatever system you end up coming up with, it needs to be able to support
Microsoft Word as a frontend because users are sold on that interface,
although they really don't care what goes on underneath. While I could have my
Word plugin generating LaTeX, it would be much more sensible to have it turned
into an intermediate format of simple XML and then transform into LaTeX for
what it's good at.

Good suggestion. It does have a place in the plan :)

------
aurelia
For your point (16) I think that searchme.com are doing a phenomenal job

------
randome
I'm sorry but most of those ideas seemed pretty lame... come on now ...

------
bonforte
You have funded one company that is helping to "fix the inbox", Xobni.

------
scottcover
I've got a friend working on #28 with his product called awayfind.com

------
btipling
This article was great until it said Craigslist could be improved.

~~~
theoneill
Surely Craigslist's own developers think that. Do you think they think they're
done forever developing new features, and that all they have to do from now on
is replace broken disk drives?

------
goodspeed
so many ideas, so litte time :)

------
foompy_katt
5\. Enterprise software 2.0.

This might be partially solved by my commercial idea for #17. But, that idea
breaks down for things which are only rarely sold. And it would be very
difficult to apply to corporate buyers, who have varied and changing needs and
behaviors.

This is where the government could take the lead. The govt. could declare all
patents and copyrights, or just certain classes of them, to be public domain
immediately upon creation. Then the government would (anonymously) track usage
of all of them. It would then take that info, and estimate how much the
creator would have earned in the typical monopoly market patents and
copyrights have. And then pay that much to the creator.

Example: a company makes some enterprise software. Once released to the
government, it can be downloaded by any company, from a government website.
The government collects as much data about usage as possible. They find that,
say, 50,000 companies are using it as their primary software. In a normal
market, they estimate the company would have earned $25 million for the year
for that many users. That's what the developers earn. If they think the data
is undercounting (or the government thinks the data is overcounting), it can
be arbitrated.

Advantages of this approach are myriad and overwhelming- the first country to
adopt this approach will have a major competitive advantage over all other
countries, because all their businesses and individuals will be using the
highest quality software, health care drugs and devices, manufacturing
processes, etc. The collective cost to society, paid via taxes instead of
private expenditures, would be roughly the same, since the government would
only be trying to pay the creators the same amount they would earn under the
old market.

For the creators, while revenue would be the same, profit margins would go up,
since their marketing and administrative costs would mostly disappear.
Basically, they would get paid more for focusing on what they do best-
creating useful things. No longer would they need to be experts on numerous
other aspects of distribution.

For the taxpayers, instead of paying for one copy of software, and that's all
they got, they would pay the same amount in taxes, but be free to try any
software ever made. Apply the same logic to anything else that was covered by
copyright and patents, and you will see that's quite a deal, don't you think?

For those crying "socialism!", well, yes, I am suggesting the government
increase taxes in order to gain a valuable common good. But this would
actually reduce the amount of bureaucracy people have to deal with- no more
DRMs, RIAA after your butt, piracy warnings before movies, dealing with
insurance bureaucrats (once prescription drugs and medical devices are public
domain, there is much less need for insurance and other complicated stuff,
because medical care becomes much cheaper (without creating more government
regulation of healthcare. Yay!)), unnecessary business administration, etc.
etc. etc. The government would only be monitoring usage, and paying money.
That's a pretty light hand.

12\. Fix advertising.

If "fix advertising" means "eliminate advertising" (OK, that's my definition),
the idea above would eliminate most advertising. Once the content of
newspapers, magazines, TV shows, online web content, etc., is free (the
creators being paid by the government), advertising has lost its function-
anyone would be free to publish an advertising-free version of something.

This would do wonders for the psychological health of humanity.

~~~
ig1
nationalizing all of the media doesn't sound communist, it sounds like
dictatorial fascism.

~~~
foompy_katt
The government would not have any role in producing or censoring media. Just
paying for it, according to what is listened to the most, seen, read, etc.
This would actually result in a flowering of original media; successful
artists could get paid without having to rely on big businesses to distribute
their work, and people would be free to remix music, re-edit video and text,
etc.

And in a sense there would be no "censorship of the wallet"- when anyone can
read science papers, books, etc., there's a lot more intellectual freedom.

Hopefully I've allayed your concerns, at least in theory. The government has a
hand in almost every walk of life, and not all of it takes a fascistic turn.
The Founding Fathers even used government to make patents and copyrights
possible :).

~~~
yummyfajitas
Um, to determine what is listened to the most, don't they need to track the
listening habits of every American?

Ignoring that, do you really want guys like Al Gore (want to censor Prince),
Hillary Clinton (wants to censor GTA) or John McCain (wants to censor the
Sopranos) having the ability to stop payments to artists they don't like?

~~~
foompy_katt
You raise a valid point. Implementation counts for a lot, as it does in
everything, I suggested the data be anonymized. So, the govt. knows how many
people have downloaded something, but not who. If that is being abused or
music is being censored, I'm obviously not in favor of that.

My argument for why nothing should be excluded or censored, is that it isn't
presently censored, and since fans of every type of music and media pay taxes,
it should all be covered. And I'm certainly not suggesting politicians have
any influence over that; I'm suggesting putting that in the hands of judges or
arbitrators.

But, the whole idea is really to figure out a rough idea of what the artist
would have earned under the "old" (present) market. That might be doable
simply by tracking radio play, pop culture references, BitTorrent shares,
downloads, how many remixes get made, sales numbers from concerts, Youtube
views, etc. That would not be very invasive at all.

By the way, government courts are already frequently called in to assess how
much one company owes another for something, or the market value of a service,
etc. So the government already does this- however good it already does it, is
probably the baseline on how good it would be implemented without any unusual
data.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Anonymized, sure. But of course, they need a back door to track child
pornography and terrorists. Both McCain and Obama seem to agree that spying is
awesome.

And I understand you promote doing this in a content neutral way. Perhaps it
will be content neutral at first. Then Bill O'Reilly (a popular Fox pundit) or
Oprah play "objectionable" songs, and point out (correctly) to their viewers
that their taxes are paying for it.

(Some examples, selected from one of my favorite artists.)

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=8hPvtuu9CbM>

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=R37H38bMVec>

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=lk06_ll_vgo>

Remember, it's for the children. If we don't do it, little johnny will grow up
to be a gay cannibalistic terrorist! Censorship is another thing McCain and
Hillary can agree on.

~~~
foompy_katt
I really appreciate your concern, and I'm with you on the anti-censorship
bandwagon. But, widespread censorship is not popular with a majority of the
public- if it were, it would have already been done. They can't even make
pornography illegal. The O'Reilly's of the world could just as easily argue,
"Our copyright laws make it possible for them to make money. Kill their
copyrights!!!". But lately, the most they've ever managed to accomplish is
getting meaningless "Parental advisory" labels on CD and game covers.

Anyway, it wouldn't really be "their" tax dollars paying for the music you
like, any more than it would be your tax dollars paying for their Christian
music (remember, there's no discrimination in what's purchased). Faced with
also having their free Christian music taken away, I'm pretty sure they'll
ease up in their opposition. It's better to think of it as your tax dollars
paying for the music you like, their tax dollars paying for the stuff they
like.

I hope that if ever a law like this were to be passed, you would continue to
be concerned. But, I gotta say I always find it annoying when people criticize
what might otherwise be a wonderful idea, by arguing that some people might be
stupid about it, so we shouldn't do it. It's time to stop being so afraid of
stupid people.

Government pays for and administers roads, the military, the justice system,
and a host of other things that are much more abusable than our entertainment.
They don't completely mess up all those other things, and I don't think it's
likely to go badly when it comes to music. Given that the worst thing the
government could do would be to not pay for certain things, meaning the
artists would have to sell the music just like before, that's not exactly
devastating.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Widespread censorship is already here. One example: the following (completely
truthful) ad is illegal 29 days before an election:

 _AT &T has assisted the government in illegally spying on you. Barack Obama
did what George Bush asked him to do: he voted to give them immunity for their
crimes. Is that "Change we can believe in"?_

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

~~~
foompy_katt
This has nothing to do with entertainment, or the kind of censorship the moral
conservatives would be interested in. It's way off topic. It's not even full
"censorship"- there's nobody stopping the creators of such an ad from putting
it on Youtube, for example. It just can't be broadcast on TV.

To address your comment somehow- the law you cite is probably
unconstitutional. It was struck down by the Supreme Court once before, before
being modified and passed again. I doubt the present form is constitutional,
since it obviously does restrict speech.

Ironically, you, me, and the far right are the ones who most agree the law is
bad :). Conservatives hate that law much more than do liberals. The
conservatives' argument is "money is speech".

------
inboulder
sophomoric, I'm not sure why this appeared on reddit.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I'm not too thrilled about this having been posted to Reddit either, but
fortunately so far not very many Redditors have bothered to post a comment.

------
TweedHeads
How about fixing the domain fuckfest we have today?

Most of these ideas will end up with stupid names like lulzdatr.com or
bizzwarezz.com

~~~
vaksel
Thats because .com is the king of the internet. The users know dot coms, the
term is a mainstream one. And frankly the whole company name doesn't really
matter, what does yahoo have to do with search? What does eBay have to do with
auctions? Just get some creativity and come up with a word that sounds like a
real word and you'll be fine.

~~~
Leon
Saying .com is the king of the internet sounds like a response from
marketing/management. I suspect it isn't all that important and that this will
probably be dropped in favor of a practical solution in the future.

~~~
vaksel
# of .com websites making at least $1mm/yr? 9999999999999999

# of .us/.info/.me/.biz sites making at least $1mm/yr? 8

Yes its marketing, but that's because consumers pretty much got taught that
one of the major ways to see if a business is legitimate is to see if it has
the .com extension. Blame all the affiliate spammers who put up the crappy
sites on the .info etc domain names to try to make a few bucks by using the
bulk method

~~~
ra
put simply, .com is a brand

~~~
dcurtis
No, the thing you put before .com is part of the brand. The .com just adds
legitimacy.

~~~
pchristensen
That's part of the value of a brand. If I see anything that's .biz or .info,
it might as well be .ru for how much I distrust it.

~~~
abossy
craigslist.org, anybody?

~~~
theoutlander
Yes, but guess what? Craigslist ended up buying Craigslist.com because it was
a porn site and majority of the people ended up there because of habbit.

~~~
abossy
Oh, wow! That's unfortunate, yet slightly amusing.

------
mroman
I find it encouraging that (as is often the case) pg's thoughts and ideas
resonate with my own - bigtime. 4, 5, 7, 19, 21, and 27.

Thank you for yet another stimulating and encouraging read pg.

I look forward to getting to the point where I can take on some of those
problems, as I am still quite larval at this point.

------
pageman
pg, I have working beta for #1 pls. email me at paulpajo [at] gmail

~~~
aasarava
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but YC's model is built around working with
very early-stage, yet-to-incorporated businesses. A team that had already
built a product to the point of beta, or that had been working on one of the
ideas on the list for the past three years as someone has mentioned here,
would probably not qualify, right?

~~~
pg
Actually we especially like groups that have already started.

<http://ycombinator.com/faq.html>

~~~
pageman
hi pg - we are already on version 2.0 (already have a subscriber base through
version 1.0) - the thing is the dev team is here in the Philippines - our
founder is in suburban Detroit - any suggestions? we have a small time window
of less than 45 days - to make this happen - I'd be happy to share the details
via email.

------
jerry5
Hm, seems like pg & co. want to have all the big problems of business and the
economy solved for $15,000. I guess if you're only funding kiddies with
amounts equivalent to the allowance they get from their parents, all you get
is kiddie solutions. As soon as $15m are on the table, call me.

~~~
gscott
(Catfish Jerry?) You know they get you started then put you in front of the
right people to get the 15m. But there are too many people beating down the
door to get in, but email me I have several things going on that can provide
you with more income then you can spend.

~~~
jerry5
As for my personal projects, see the answer to rms below.

As for anyone else's projects, even though they promise to put you in front of
the right people eventually, you have to have some small-time prototype to
show before they put you through to the bigwigs. Whether you use the $15,000
offered to create that prototype or already have one doesn't matter I guess,
however what does matter is that for improvements in ERP/CRM/WebOS/somebigtech
there aren't any small prototypes that could represent the idea's viability
better than a PowerPoint presentation already does.

So how about judging the idea just by its presentation itself? The other
problem is that PG/RTM/TB aren't exactly industry veterans themselves. Any
Dilbert in the country has a better clue of how things work in, say, the
corporate world than a painter and a university prof. They wouldn't recognize
a better CRM solution if they sat on it, and neither, I am assuming, have
friends in the right places that they could consult on the matter. So seems
like inventors would be better off beating down the door to the real guys.

