

New Startup Ideas Spreadsheet - jcs
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag-R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWRkbjNyUGRxS2JIV3NxYVdiaXc&hl=en_GB
To follow on from cdixon's recent submission (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190710), I suggest we put into practice the "opposite of secret" theory.<p>Feel free to add your own ideas and leave feedback on the others. Also if you see something that interests you, get in contact and make it happen!
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jcs
Inspired by the recent submission from cdixon
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190710>) regarding developing new
startup ideas and being the "opposite of secret", I thought we could put the
theory into practice.

Feel free to add your own ideas and leave feedback on the others. If you see
something you like, get in contact and make it happen!

~~~
apsurd
Good start, but I think this highlights the reason why around these parts
"ideas are worthless". Very very very few people are inclined to actually give
2 specks of a damn about some sentence written in some cell on some
spreadsheet.

What I'm getting at:

Show don't tell.

So how about a list of products/service prototypes that people are actually
building, and making that a starting point. I'd much rather take 10 seconds to
click around on an app, than read text in a cell as noted above.

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jpwagner
makes me feel bad for PG and and YC team: reading just those 20 or so
responses is painful.

~~~
lincolnq
Hmm. I think your comment sets a bad tone for the discussion, especially as
the top-rated comment. While I wouldn't want to back many of these startups as
they're written, I think some of them have potential to be grown into a viable
business idea, and dismissing them all in one shot just biases the whole
thread negatively.

I guess I'd just rather read constructive posts first.

~~~
jpwagner
Best way to get easy karma: say _hey-thats-not-fair_ to the cynical posts
(regardless of hilarity.)

~~~
lincolnq
I don't think karma is deserved for either of our posts. They both add to the
noise. But I'm trying to reduce the overall noise (in a way which has more
impact than downvoting) and you're increasing it. (voters: all the posts in
this thread should be at 0 or 1 and at the bottom -- please make it so)

------
Blasa
I put my idea up (about the group learning community), because I'd like it to
be made. Even if I'm not the one to make it. It scratches one of my itches.

~~~
imp
I saw that item on the list and thought that it resembled the website I
recently launched: <http://www.crunchcourse.com/> Is that similar to what you
were thinking? I'd be interested to get your feedback on it.

~~~
Blasa
That fills the same space as to what I was thinking about, cool! I'll have to
try setting a course up.

I thought of some form of karma might be needed to avoid people joining a
class and spamming the forum. But that is probably a issue for later.

More communication methods would be good. IRC server with a web client, and
per class chat rooms that saved the chat logs.

The major suggestion I have at this stage is to separate the module from the
class. So that different groups can follow the same module. Too many people
following the same class would generate too much traffic.

I'd also though it would be nice to signal that you were willing to run a
course if enough other people wanted to join a subject.

I also think that some way to create tests would be useful. Of course it
wouldn't be under exam conditions, but it would be a nice way of seeing how
you were doing.

You are basically setting up a community of some sort, which has the basic
problems of.

1\. Too quiet 2\. Too Noisy 3\. Attracts spammers/trolls

Be prepared to deal with these as you go forward.

~~~
Khroma
I thought of some additional ideas. What do you think?

\- Invitations

\- A "materials needed" list for each class

\- A public forum for general subject discussion

\- A calendar

\- Conferencing (with voice, video, images, chat)

\- Buy books or supplies if needed

\- For learning languages, there could be a service to chat with a fluent
speaker

\- To make tests, you can use something like Wufoo to make forms for tests

\- Background theme for classes

\- Progress charts

\- Grade checker

\- Mobile apps

\- OpenID/other logins

\- Citation helper

\- Look up quotes and verses

\- For whiteboard, maybe something with HTML5 canvas

\- Group mailing list

~~~
imp
Wow, thanks for the list. That's more features than I have time to add though.
For some of the bigger items like the whiteboard, I'm hoping people can use
other services in the mean time. Some of those items are being worked on now
though.

------
wallop
Imagine it's 1998. Google doesn't exist yet. Would Larry Page and Sergey Brin
have added their big idea to this spreadsheet? My argument is that if you have
any idea that's worthwhile, you're not going to publicize it. It might make
sense to get feedback from a few friends. But you don't want potentially
dozens of other people trying to execute it before you have had a chance to.
Brin and Page are good examples of the fact that ideas in themselves can be
extremely valuable and are worth guarding.

~~~
tsally
_Brin and Page are good examples of the fact that ideas in themselves can be
extremely valuable and are worth guarding._

They're probably one of the worst examples. It was technical brilliance, not
their idea, that allowed them to succeed.

~~~
gcheong
Who's technical brilliance? Sergy and Brin's got them a better search engine,
but wasn't it the AdWords idea that originated at Goto.com that got them to
the Google they are today?

~~~
tsally
Adwords without Pagerank is useless. The pay per click and auction mechanisms
for Adwords are innovative in a sense, but Adwords is not successful because
of its technical implementation. Adwords are what people pay for in a literal
sense, but the source of Google's money is their search implementation.

EDIT: At this point their brand is also a source of Google's money. Today you
need both to compete in search.

------
dbz
I'm not going to lie. I literally said "Awww, Coool!" Then looked around to
see if anyone noticed because I felt like my inner child surfaced a bit too
much.

------
dkokelley
Got my idea up there: Crowd-sourced shipping _(Tip: It's row 62)_. Not sure
I'm the best person to go with this idea, but I would love to see the internet
make something like this work.

I know it's a little bit out there, but I think it would be a fun startup to
make something like this work.

~~~
ntoshev
Here is what the world will look like when you're done:

<http://tqft.net/wiki/Maneki_Neko>

------
spokey
The idea currently on row 17 "apt-get update/upgrade for music" is very good
IMO. I would use this service.

You could also expand it in various ways beyond tracking new releases for a
single band to make it more of a music discovery service, e.g., (a) tracking
side projects started by members of a given band or band "communities" where
there are several inter-related artists and bands that appear in various ways
in one another's work (like Broken Social Scene, Wu Tang Clan or The Bird and
the Bee) (b) tracking other bands/albums/songs etc. that someone had a hand in
(e.g., show me new releases that Pharrell Williams produced) and somewhat
obviously (c) tracking new releases in a given genre, which could be very fine
grained.

------
khangtoh
Got my idea up, hashpic.com. Hundreds of thousands of pics are being submitted
to Twitter/etc real time. Get people to #tag the pics, geo location is already
there. We do not host the pics, but we classify and help discovery of pics
using their hashtags. Think Delicious for pics.

Interested to collaborate on it, or has something to say about the idea, drop
a note on the community feedback column on spreadsheet! Thanks!

------
dzlobin
I don't mean to be pessimistic here, but a 50MM plant to recover phosphorous
from water or breeding hypo-allergenic dust mites?

~~~
DaniFong
What's pessimistic about them? They're hundred billion dollar scale problems,
surely one could recover some of that. Currently desalination plants are even
more expensive, and they don't do anything with the waste product. And
breeding isn't very expensive at all, though with dust mites it's tricky
because they're quite small and transparent to visible light.

~~~
dzlobin
The ideas aren't pessimistic; you're just preaching to the wrong choir. Those
aren't startup ideas, those are huge problems that need research and huge
amounts of capital. People also need cars that don't use gasoline and a
hundred other things we don't have yet.

But breeding dustmites? Sigh. Do you then on releasing them into the wild or
selling them door to door?

~~~
DaniFong
We already breed dustmites; just by accident. The incubators are homes, the
climate controlled by the choice of laundry detergent and thermostat. This
wouldn't be much different. A starting point is just measuring the allergen
content of the particulates.

In any of these projects the dominant cost is salaries, which are not so high
if you hire great young people who care about it. It only seems impossible to
those with a lack of imagination.

As for selling them, here a market for you: ecologists with asthma. These
probably number in the low ten thousands, they probably spend close to a
thousand dollars a year in medication, and four years in lifetime. That's
hundreds of millions in that market category alone.

------
nc
Crowdsourced startups anyone? ;)

~~~
rafd
I've been toying with the idea for a while, but there are still many obstacles
to overcome: a) Efficiency (communication, administration) There's a reason
most startups have 2-4 founders, and why certain open source projects
eventually collapse under their own weight b) Dividing the profits. How do you
measure User1233s? contribution vs. User252s? c) More minds =/= better product
An enlightened leader (say, Jobs) is sometimes better than a democratic
process. Also, massive collaboration tends to result in lowest-common-
denominator results (ex. Digg, Reddit)

..but then again, a lot of these problems could be solved with some sort of
(online web app?) system: a) Basecamp tweaked for massive collaboration. b)
StackOverflow-esque reputation system + karma + uservoice demand
identification? c) No suggestions here yet, but HN seems to be doing a pretty
good job at engineering away the Digg-problem.

------
mixmax
I've always thought good ideas were a dime a dozen. Maybe I was wrong.

------
jayair
I would be really like to see the HN community do a project collectively. Come
up with the idea, design, develop and launch it.

It probably sounds more fun than it is going to be. But it should be cool.

~~~
maxklein
The problem is that whoever owns the domain or the password to the repository
owns the project.

------
amazonfx
I have to add my idea to the mix. It's called the Pixelator. It's a site where
you can upload photos of people and it returns to you the same photo but with
all the faces pixelated.

~~~
dkokelley
Not a bad idea, though I don't know how it would make money. Maybe you could
choose which faces get pixelated, and then sell it to online newspapers,
facebook, and Google street view.

------
jasonlbaptiste
im sorry, i love you all, but this list is filled with some really bad stuff.
After reading more thoroughly I'm assuming a lot of it is just people messing
around Such as:

 _100% return lottery.

_ pandora for chatroulette.

 _Wordpress.com 20 years more advanced, for video blogging.

_ Public Takeover - Use capitalism to control the ills of capitalism, one
share at a time. Use crowdsourcing and social network effects to take over
public companies by linking all socially-responsible minority shareholders.

*Dog Walking 2.0 - potential acquirer 37 signals?

~~~
JayNeely
"Wordpress.com 20 years more advanced, for video blogging" is one of mine. I'd
love to hear critiques of it. I realize the "pitch" is bad, but did you read
any of the other sections?; I'm trying to convey that it's not just a hosted
platform for video blogging, but that there's some technological innovation
involved as well.

~~~
dnsworks
The problem with video blogging is that it doesn't have the same mass appeal
as text blogging. As uncomfortable as people are with their grammatical
abilities, they still blog, constantly, no matter how much we hope they
wouldn't. As for video blogging, the barrier to entry is a lot higher, and
self-consciousness about "public" speaking and appearance severely stifle the
potential "market".

~~~
JayNeely
Great points. Maybe video "blogging" isn't the right term. There's definitely
a lot more video content being produced these days, but little innovation in
the platforms supporting it.

~~~
dnsworks
Part of the problem I feel with home-produced video is just the poor quality.
A good number of us use macbooks with that awful little camera in the absolute
wrong place. It's probably hard to do, but a video camera in the center of the
screen would do wonders. And lighting tends to be an issue. I've been thinking
of building a multi-pointed light meter (profably in software) and using that
to control 2-4 strings of adjustable LEDs that would be to either side, plus
maybe the top and bottom of my macbook pro. The idea here is that software
could do a good job of adjusting the lighting for better quality.

------
pjharrin
I would be interested in discussing ideas with people, however it would need
to be in a more private setting.

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coryl
Participated :D

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mtrimpe
Whao ... sharing a Google Doc with that many people is a really interesting
experience ;)

~~~
khangtoh
"Viewing in simple list mode due to high traffic to this document" Looks like
Google has imposed some limits

~~~
Sephr
It's not limited; it's just defaulting to a simpler view. You can go to
spreadsheet view from a link at the top.

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t3rcio
The 6th idea is great.

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dnsworks
Body Doubles for Rappers is the clear winner here! It's not quite as
scaleable, but it would be a great boutique service. BDFRAAS

~~~
dnsworks
Bah, since somebody deleted the BDFRAAS entry, I've saved it here for
posterity: [http://mhalligan.com/best-entry-from-a-hackernews-startup-
id...](http://mhalligan.com/best-entry-from-a-hackernews-startup-idea-spr)

