
Ask HN: Holy Crap I need an Idea - agentargo
I have a unique opportunity on my hands, but lack the ammo to execute with.<p>In my senior projects class at CU-Boulder I have been given the go ahead by the professor to forego the standard curricula of CSCI 4308 and create my own project as long as it has "substantial business influence". This of course directly translates to building a startup.<p>I have six months, a team of five senior cs-majors, and the support of the university, but there is still a glaring hole.<p>I don't believe I have a good enough idea to run with.<p>Some that I have been contemplating are a comedy-mashup site (basically a last.fm for stand up comedians), a Haskell web development framework (which I asked for feedback for in a previous post and was pretty much told not to do it) or trying to edge my way into point of sale restaurant software/hardware.<p>I am not sold on any of these and am looking for some inspiration because I only have a couple more days to write a formal proposal or else I default into the standard class and must take a project from the industry.<p>Any ideas that are within the scope of this project?
======
tansey
Two free ideas that I just pulled out of my list:

1\. Promoter Marketplace - A site where people can buy/sell product
promotional services for local areas. Examples include a club promoter who
gets paid based on the number of people at the club on a certain night, or an
energy drink promoter that gets paid to hand out cans on exam week. Allow for
people to list their rates and let past clients review them.

2\. User Manual Creator - A site that lets people easily create user manuals
for their products. Most manuals seem to follow the same set of steps: list
parts, show numbered steps with pictures, provide alternate language text,
etc. Let users upload pictures/text for each step and then you create a
printable manual that can be folded up and neatly placed inside a product box.

They aren't my A-list ideas, but you get what you pay for. :)

~~~
petervandijck
I kinda like 2.

------
faramarz
Why don't you build an airbnb for Tools and Equipments. In winter, I'd pay to
borrow someones snow blower once a week instead of buying it out-right.

People with specialized machinery will flock to your system if you manage the
bookings and payment processing, and make it easy for locals/neighbours to
meet each others needs.

That's something I would personally find value in, but it might not be so
technologically challenging for a group of cs majors.

I'll shoot out more ideas if I think of any. You've got the ideal situation on
your hands, get busy!

~~~
jayliew
Competitive landscape:

1\. rentalic.com - US startup, based in Silicon Valley, founder appears to
have technical and business chops and some social networking cred. Some
traction, and imho, the most promising.

2\. neighborgoods.net - LA-based, founder does not appear to be very
technical. Limited traction around the LA area.

3\. zilok.com - EU-based, looks like they are trying to reproduce their EU
model of the same thing to the US market. Some traction. Because of their EU
background, it is likely that they may not understand subtle nuances / user-
behavior/perception of US market, which may be their biggest challenge.

p.s. I've been thinking about this problem for a while.

~~~
faramarz
Thanks for the break down. I've been intrigued by this opportunity for the
past two years. Even purchased Localfindr.com in hopes of doing something
about it but never developed the concept further in my head.

Definitely a sector to watch!

~~~
jayliew
I would challenge you to ask yourself this: Look at one of the competitors,
say Rentalic.com. What would you do different than them, product-wise, and
marketing-wise ?

------
failquicker
Solve a problem. That's it. Make a solution that will put a salve on someones
pain.

It sounds like all of your other ideas are trying to take advantage of a
percieved hot space or were just "neat ideas".

Start making a list of all the problems you have observed and figure out how
your proposal could help address them.

Get your team together and brainstorm.

~~~
failquicker
By the way, I love the Hemingway reference in the SN. Feel free to email me
and I will brainstorm with you.

------
jdietrich
999 business ideas, courtesy of Seth Godin and his folks.

<http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html>

------
thaumaturgy
Distributed, decentralized, redundant, encrypted online file storage with the
ability to share information with specific groups and individuals.

From the user standpoint, a user would access their content primarily through
client software that would ask for their id & password (or perform other
authentication). The authentication process fetches a small file from the
network and decrypts it using the user's identification. That file then acts
as a key to find and access the rest of the user's content in the network.

From a network standpoint, every client system has access to an amount of data
proportional to the amount it's willing to store for the network. Data stored
on the network is chunked down, encrypted, and stored on multiple nodes.
Piecing together encrypted data without being able to read the contents of a
user's index file should be considered Very Hard.

Something along these lines could really change the computer industry, and I
think it's within the realm of possibility for a university and 5 CS majors,
if they're sharp and motivated to work on it.

~~~
stoney
Interesting idea, but I wonder how many copies of my data would need to be
stored across the system to guarantee that at least one copy is available when
I want it?

Many people don't leave their personal computers switched on all the time,
especially if they go away for a few days, then there are network outages,
people deciding to leave the network, ...

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yeah. I think some of that would resolve itself as the network grew.
Otherwise, whenever I've spent much time thinking about it, I've figured that
it should be possible to have a nearest-neighbor node notification protocol.

Node A declares that it's quitting to Nodes B and C (or Nodes B and C are
suddenly no longer able to poll Node A); Nodes B and C both check the chunks
that they know Node A had, and see if there are enough redundant copies of
those chunks in the network.

There's a lot of "and then magic happens!" in this idea, but I'm pretty sure
it's do-able. The worst part of it by far is doing node searches on a
completely decentralized structure.

------
nudge
Why don't you ask the people in your team? They're more likely to give more to
the project if the idea comes out of a discussion of theirs, rather than
something you just present to them.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Although you also face the possibility of disenfranchising someone who thinks
their idea was way better and should have been picked.

------
paulgb
Two things I would love to see:

1\. Kayak.com for ground transportation. Trains, buses, ferries, etc. are a
pain to compare prices and book right now. Admittedly there probably isn't as
much of a business case for this.

2\. A music site where I could collaborate on a playlist with my friends and
listen to the music at the same time. Currently there are sites that let you
share playlists, but not listen at the same time as other people.

~~~
duke_sam
#2 is partially handled by rdio (<http://www.rdio.com/>) you can create and
share playlists and any number of people can listen to them. Not sure about
collaborating on playlists but considering the heavy social aspect of the site
I would be surprised if that feature never arrived.

~~~
alexophile
Yeah, when you create a playlist on Rdio, you can choose collaboration
options: anyone can edit; only followers can edit; nobody can edit. And, as
far as I know, there's no limit to the number of concurrent listeners.

------
jaxn
I would poll your professors for a pain point and pick one of those as a
problem to solve. May sure it is something they would pay to solve (even if
that just means out of their university budget).

1) It would provide you with a "customer" who is close by and you can interact
with heavily. 2) There are likely more professors with a similar problem and a
similar willingness to pay for it. 3) If you are successful, you will be
giving back to your community that fostered your opportunity.

------
pg
What do you wish someone would start a startup to build for you?

~~~
ryandvm
I guess I should expect that parsing the English output of programming
language designers would be difficult.

~~~
joshwa
Needs more parens:

    
    
      (what
         (wish you 
           (someone
               (start startup
                  (build (lambda for you))))))

------
icey
An augmented reality app for furniture stores. The store would include
something like QR codes in their catalog which shoppers can cut out and tape
on their wall or place on the floor. Then the app renders 3d versions of the
product when viewed through a phone.

It'd be pretty awesome to see how a chair or painting would look in a room by
getting a live rendering of the object actually in the room.

~~~
fragmede
As an example, the USPS does this for boxes.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc>

------
ehsanul
Make an app-store, but for web applications.

You can fill it to begin with using affiliate links to existing web apps. Once
you get a decent number of people using it, you can allow people with new web
apps to advertise there, or charge for subscriptions to be listed there, or
take a cut out of every sale/signup. Many ways to skin this cat.

~~~
olefoo
Also provide extensive curation and guidance. Whether through analytic
indexes, "best of" pages for different categories, or a questionnaire for
visitors to fill out and get a personalized set of recommendations.

------
golateef
I've got a startup that's just starting to gain traction (~$4,000 in SAAS
license sales, pipeline of more customer prospects). I've taken a tiny amount
of angel funding, with a larger angel round pending more product validation.
I'm a single, non-technical founder looking for a techie or two who can help
build out features. I'm also just to the North of you in Nebraska, well within
driving distance. Email if you'd like to chat.

I think the benefit to you is a real-life business that has a business driver
(me) with business connections and already has some market validation. I've
got a completed business plan that you can pull from to create a great case
study. My technical advisor can also give you guidance from someone who's
"been there and done that" (and will prevent me from making requests that are
technically unsound). Instead of starting from scratch, you have a base to
build on.

------
shimon
> ... or else I default into the standard class and must take a project from
> the industry.

What about if, instead of speculating on a business idea to implement in
isolation, you found some of these industry partners, and asked them to
describe something they need desperately and would pay for? If you can't do
that before your proposal is due, make that research your proposal -- get
familiar with the process of gathering needs and learning about a market.
Deploy your team on iterating implementations, from paper sketch to running
system. If you can get a customer or two to sign a non-binding letter of
intent saying they'll buy your product if it does X,Y, and Z, you'll have
accomplished something that's beyond most startup-oriented hackers.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
This is one of the best ideas I've seen so far!

At the very least, you'll learn something about practical development and what
it takes to get a real-world project off the ground. If you can can both get a
good grade and make some money, so much the better.

------
garrettgillas
I would try looking here (if you haven't already):
<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

~~~
imack
A slight addendum to this, show this list to someone you know who isn't a
techie. I mailed this list to my parents and was amazed at what their problems
were in many of these fields.

I've always figured that people outside the 18-35 male geek demographic have
itches that need scratching that we can't even imagine.

------
kljensen
A Mint.com for managing your frequent flier miles instead of money. It alerts
you to deals, expiring miles, and ties-in with the infinite affiliate programs
for travel in order to generate revenue. (Credit to my mom on that idea.)

~~~
superchink
Does anything like this exist (that's actually helpful/usable)?

~~~
kljensen
Not that I've seen, but haven't done much research.

------
jderick
Here's a couple:

TV chat system - used to find (local?) people watching the same show you are
watching and form a chat channel (on mobile phone?)

Personalized news site - kind of like YC or digg but using netflix style
machine learning algorithms to customize

A free version of 'vault.com' (reviews on employers, salary surveys)

Find a haircut (paste your picture, sort of photoshop different hair on it)

Underserved search terms: find some way to figure out what terms have a lot of
search traffic but very few good results

Easy quotes for local business (eg, find a plumber). Enter in "my pipe is
broken" and get a bunch of emails with quotes.

And one meta idea: a website for people to share startup ideas and form
startups

~~~
yurylifshits
> Underserved search terms

This is what Associated Content does. And they are in Denver, just next to CU-
Colorado. AC is currently looking for cool algorithms for discovering
unsatisfied demand for content.

------
samratjp
First of all congrats on convincing your univ to go with you on this.

Here's the biggest problem/asset I see with your scenario - the five seniors.
If you really want to do something of significance, you better be damn well
organized with your timeline. Another problem I've seen with school projects
(yes, I speak from personal experience in the recent past :) is that it
doesn't matter if you're willing in to put in the extra mile, but your
teammates may not. If it's a grade they're going to be after, be careful,
because that's all the finished product would look like. Seriously, your idea
isn't so much important as getting along with your teammates.

Also, forget about a technical challenge as a sole basis for the project.
Instead, focus on what pg says - what do you wish a startup would do scratch
an itch of yours so well that you won't hit the back button :) Remember, your
customers don't have to sit through your final project presentation, they can
hit the back button anytime!

Alright, the ideas: 1) Look into the higher ed space. I am willing to bet that
your univ is already spending boatloads of money on crappy enterprise
software. I just walked out of lunch with a friend in the higher ed realm
confessing about YC funding amount of money spent on calendaring software
alone. Per Year! I am sure with six months time, you could rewrite iCal in
javascript.

2) Well, put on walking shoes and talk to your friends about what's missing in
their lives? But, really ask yourself what someone could build for you?

------
ShabbyDoo
"trying to edge my way into point of sale restaurant software/hardware"

Having ventured into this realm, Just Say No. Or, at least don't think about
the problem like, "Restaurants pay much too much for POS systems...I could
build something cheaper and better." Contact me if you want to know more or
would like an intro to some people in that space.

Having said this, here's what I want.....

I just bought what is, at least for me, a kick ass USB microphone from M-Audio
for $60. Even as the world has become more accepting of telecommuting, the
conference call still sucks from an audio standpoint. Skype seems optimized
for modems. [Still true?] POTS lines are, of course, awful. Instead of
compressing my voice from a cheap microphone into a 2Kbit upstream, what if my
voice was recorded with a good microphone and sent upstream at, say 64Kbit?
What sort of set-up should I have so that I can collaborate with someone and
have the same audio efficiency (meaning, I don't have to expend brain cycles
on a bad S/N ratio) as being in the same room?

On a much broader scale, I think that there are huge opportunities for
companies who can produce better A/V collaboration tools, and I think that
audio is much more important than video from an efficiency of human
interaction standpoint. I'd be willing to spend my day in studio headphones
and speaking into a mic -- much like a radio DJ -- if it meant I could have
effortless conversations.

~~~
cpr
Gosh, when using Skype with a decent headset with a good mike (e.g., a higher-
end Shure), the audio is crystal clear--just like being in the same room.

------
dpcan
I like the comedy website idea. If tracks or "bits" were tagged it would be
even better.

"clean", "family", "kids" (for example)

And then I could hear Bill Cosby's cookie jar bit, or Bill Engvall's I.G.Joe
bootcamp bit, I'd be in listening heaven.

HOWEVER, I know for a fact there used to be something out there similar to
this. I think it was called "haha" or something like that. I don't know if it
exists or went away, but I used to use it back in 2005 (I think).

How about a StackOverflow.com for Indie Game development?

~~~
thenduks
StackExchange is working on that last part already.

<http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/>

~~~
dpcan
I just got goosebumps. This is what I've been hoping/waiting for.

------
cing
Is there a site where I can crowdsource my documentation within some privacy
agreement? Let's say I have tons of undocumented code written by a previous
employee and I'd like to pay someone X dollars to document each
method/class/etc.

I tried searching for "crowdsourced documentation" and "paid code
documentation service" but I couldn't really find anything. This might be a
lucrative idea?

------
jackowayed
One idea I've had that I'll never get around to actually doing anything with
is playing with Amazon's Spot Instances. I think that the cheap cloud
computing they offer can open up some new possibilities and also just save
people money.

I think the best idea that I've had come out of it is some kind of spot
instance guide where someone could say "I need this job done by 10am Monday.
It'll take ~5 hours on 10 large instances. Get it done for me as cheaply as
possible while still having a 95% chance that it gets done in time." You would
know enough about the patterns of spot instance pricing that you could
instantly estimate the cost for them, and they could play around with the
confidence that they want of it finishing as they see the price vs. chance
that it doesn't get done trade-off.

Now, there are definitely some issues with that idea. It may be a terrible
idea. But I think there are opportunities to build businesses like that that
exploit the cheap computing that spot instances offer.

------
icey
Hmmm. Here's a problem that I'm going to end up building a solution to if
someone else doesn't do it first (and by all means, please do it because I am
lazy and have enough projects to last me for the foreseeable future):

A CRUD application generator. You go to a page and define all of your models
and basic rules. The models get defined in very simple terms - you give each
model a name, and then define each field with dropdowns that define what each
field is. If it's a foreign key, you select that in the dropdown. You can
select validation for each field from a catalog of validations (phone number,
email address, string min length of 5 chars, whatever).

Offer addins for commonly needed functionality - for example, I end up using
authentication in just about every project and end up having to do a lot of
work to get it up and running. So you could have plugins like authentication,
private messaging (which would require auth automatically), a ticket system,
whatever.

Also offer the ability to choose a theme before generating a project.

So a user can go to a site, define their models, add any addins they want and
pick a theme.

Then in the final step, they choose a language and framework they want
everything generated in: Python / Django, Ruby on Rails 2.3.x, Ruby on Rails
3.x, Python / Pylons, Scala / Lift, ASP.Net MVC; whatever templates you've
gotten built.

When it's done, they get a compressed file (zip or tar.gz) that contains the
generated application and some programatically created documentation that
explains where everything is, how to change the important parts and how to
deploy it.

There are lots of ways to make money with something like this:

* Charge for addins per project

* Charge for premium themes

* Charge a small amount per project (I like this option the least)

* Provide automatic hosting a la Heroku for projects - this would let people with a basic idea but no programming chops get something up in an hour or two instead of trying to find someone to explore the idea with them. For this you'd want to limit it to a subset of frameworks so that you don't have to have a lot of different production environments.

* Use a fremium model where people can generate x number of apps a month for free, but over that limitation charge some amount per month. People will try to get around this by registering with multiple email addresses if the product is good, but that's a great problem to have!

Although it sounds like you're probably somewhat freed from a profit motive
while you're building this, which helps significantly. From a dev perspective
it would be fun to learn enough about all the major frameworks to generate
sites in them.

~~~
fakefakefake
If you're willing to go without Python/Ruby, then a hosted Drupal (and it's
trove of modules) is perfect for this. Acquia (which includes Drupal's
founder) was founded to fill this space.

~~~
icey
Thanks, I hadn't heard of Acquia before. Unfortunately I personally need the
ability to build out apps in different frameworks because I'll almost
certainly be extending their functionality beyond CRUD operations and I'm not
personally fond of Drupal.

However, I'll definitely be checking it out for simple throwaway stuff.

------
nandemo
How about a website for people who want to lose weight? I know this kind of
thing already exists, but there are still lots of overweight people out there.
I figure the existing ones don't attract all the target population, or they
don't work for whatever users they can attract.

Incidentally you will be helping people to get laid.

~~~
petervandijck
looseweightgetlaid.com Like it. Combine it with a dating site: the more weight
you lost, the more date connections you get access to.

Or it might be evil.

~~~
oz
That should be loseweightgetlaid.com (1 less 'o').

------
mdonahoe
"find a small problem, and start with a smaller problem inside of it"

Also, dont make a product that helps you generate ideas.

------
bgnm2000
I've always thought it would be fun to build a "ramen profit" tool suite.

I.E. a suite of tools for startups to see how close they're coming to
achieving ramen profitability and what else they need to do to get there. Also
some tools to help grow the startups. Working with partners like
37signals/lesseverything/and other startups.

The business model could be something like this: offer the tools to the
startups at a freemium rate model, make commissions each time they sign up
with different partners...

As I was hoping to build this some day (but will realistically never get
around to it) - I will mention that I own the domain RamenProfit.com and would
be more than willing to contribute my design skills to the project.

Let me know if you're interested. (email is in my profile)

------
grandalf
I love the idea of tying in comedy somehow. So much of the "funny" content on
the internet is pretty lame, and I think there are a lot of amateur comedians
who would love to test out new jokes somehow.

So I suggest you do two brainstorming sessions, one sober and one intoxicated,
with the aid of a huge whiteboard, and explore the comedy concept (and other
comedy concepts) further.

Imagine if you could do a live video stream of a person's comedy act, but make
all watchers plug in a mic so that the crowd laughter / applause could be
captured and mixed into the experience, both as feedback for the performer and
as crowd noise for those watching it.

Comedyroulette? :) It could pair one commedian with a 20 person audience with
one way video and n-way audio.

------
kloncks
Two things.

1\. Don't worry about the idea. They tend to change a lot. Pick something that
interests you, roll along with it, and if you don't like just move on to a
different idea.

2\. I'm a college student too. One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is IP
and the University. Talk to your professor about this carefully to make sure
that your IP is yours and the University doesn't get any claim, just to
alleviate headaches from happening later. In some schools, if you use the
college's money or resources to create something they legally can claim a
piece of it. Make sure you know about these details before embarking on any
business venture.

~~~
agentargo
1\. I most definitely agree and was the approach I took to my professor when I
met with him, but he needs a solid idea to start with to make sure that we
don't do five half-assed things throughout the semester and end up with
nothing to show

2\. The Sponsor organization (my team) gets all the rights to the products as
is described in the proposal documentation "The sponsoring organization
retains the rights to the resulting software. Also, sponsors may require
students to sign non-disclosure agreements, as long as the agreements"

------
garrettgillas
Personally, for that type of time/budget size, I would probably start a
company that make mobile (android) widgets. I would like to see full screen
ones made with more to offer than the ones that are out there.

Things like niche news portals (gaming, restaurants, real estate, music
industry, auto news, etc...), stock trading info, local offline shopping
sales, etc...

Basically, the stuff that has been done in this area is pretty crappy imo and
you could take it quite a bit further. The development for something like this
shouldn't be too tough either compared to making normal mobile apps because
you're mostly just aggregating existing data.

------
tomwalker
I also think that you have put the horse in front of the cart.

Start an idea pad- this can be a note on your phone or whatever, and whenever
you have a problem with something or think "I with I could...." then write it
down

------
Potter
Not thought about these much, but I have them jotted down on my ever-growing
ideas list. They're a bit dated.

1\. Bluetooth analytics. A lot of people are broadcasting their BD_ADDR and
don't know it. Give shop owners some way to see recurring visitors - or
perhaps even track how they move around the shop.

2\. P2P file distribution for businesses. Your users install a client and get
paid a small amount per hour (which changes depending on demand). Businesses
needing to distribute a large file pay you to host it on your 'botnet'. I
don't think ISPs would like this an awful lot.

------
DEADBEEF
An idea I had was a site where members can make a list of all their
possessions and how much it'd take for them to part with each item.

They then have the opportunity to search the stuff other people own and see
much they'd want for it, and can make offers if it's something they'd be
willing to pay the asking price for.

Basically a classified ads site for stuff you aren't really bothered about
selling, but would do if the price was right.

Don't know how you'd monetize it though as most transactions would probably be
done cash, in person.

------
kk3
I don't make music but I love music. This is a way to potentially help every
indie artist/label in the world.

I have an entire database of music industry listings. These types of databases
usually cost lots of money and therefore independent artists have been
excluded from using them. We're talking 50,000 listings spanning across the
united states and canada. Lots of independent labels and artists I've spoken
to are excited by the prospect of having the most comprehensive music industry
contact database available for free, to anyone, any age, anywhere in the
world.

The database is legit and put together by myself and a friend who is music
industry major.

THE PROBLEM:

The programming behind it sucks. It should be re-built from the ground up,
using the database as the starting point. The search is horrible and doesn't
pull the results that users expect (even though the results exist!). There
should be more community features. The best way for this type of database to
stay up to date and accurate is for users to contribute. Users can also talk
to each other about what works and begin to talk about their experiences with
different contacts.

Business prospects: \- advertising \- premium accounts

There's always advertising, in this case the ads are to a very niche crowd, so
that always helps. There's also reasons why a business with money, like an
indie label, might want a premium account.

To be honest, this probably doesn't have a big chance of making a lot of
money. My hope has always been to make it simply sustainable. The upside is
that you are literally helping out every independent musician and label in the
united states and canada that wants to be heard. You're helping the underdog
expose their music to the world.

If community participation grows, it's easy to start allowing people to post
listings from countries other than US/Canada. And that would be awesome.

There's quite a few interesting technical challenges this site is facing and
currently no one is stepping up to face them. The code, project, and database
is yours if you want it. Maybe we put it all under an open license? I'll even
continue to help with design/front-end development (photoshop/html/css/js) as
that is my strong point. Programming is my weak point.

<http://www.indiedirectory.net>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why free? The value seems to be all in the database. You'd better have some
brilliant FE on that if you don't want people to simply rip your db and
compete with you.

------
LeBlanc
Don't worry about the idea too much. If you find a good one, great, but this
project will probably be an awesome experience whether or not you have a great
idea. Taking charge of a project and executing on it, even if the idea is
mediocre or down-right bad, will be incredibly educational and useful.

So... if you have have a choice between 1) doing the project with a bad idea,
or 2) doing a project for industry, I would definitely pick #1.

------
mattcrest
Develop an alternative to TicketMaster that you can white label to MLB, NFL,
etc. They could be making millions of extra dollars a year if they had their
own system. Why not create the system for them and skim a portion off the top.

[I'm a designer and have no idea what would be involved in making this happen,
or if it's feasible from a business perspective. I'm also in Denver,
so...would love to hear what comes of your project]

------
Caligula
Since you have the support of the university you may want to consider building
something they would want to use. This way the university could be a lead
user.

Try to talk to who ever procures management software, BI, CRM, payroll and see
how much they pay for what. See if there is something you can do significant
better/cheaper. Also ask them what they wish they had.

------
rwhitman
A while ago I had a discussion going in a thread on HN about a crowdsourced
medical diagnosis tool. Sort of a Stack Overflow for chronic medical
conditions.

I haven't seen anyone do it right yet, here's the thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1399953>

------
philh
I don't know if something like this exists: write a highly distributable
script to solve some problem, then pay to distribute it over a large network.

To get the network, you could create an app like SETI@home which pays people
for their idle cycles.

Mechanical Turk, but with lots of computers instead of a few humans.

------
TWAndrews
Coincidentally, I've got a great idea, I'm going to be moving to Fort Collins
in about a two months and was going to start recruiting developers.

I'd love to get in touch with you to see if there's a fit. Is there a good way
to exchange contact info on HN without publishing it to the wider world?

~~~
agentargo
You can reach me at tmbuckheroux -at- gmail -dot- com

------
markkat
This is something I've been wanting to see:

Virtual animals/monsters roam the earth (probably relegated to streets/parks
for property issues), and with your phone app, you hunt them, collecting
trophies/treasure.

You could join safari parties with friends to hunt the scariest of monsters,
or to share resources.

Fun fun fun.

------
durbin
Read The Map of Innovation by Kevin O'Connor, founder of DoubleClick.
[http://www.amazon.com/Map-Innovation-Creating-Something-
Noth...](http://www.amazon.com/Map-Innovation-Creating-Something-
Nothing/dp/1400048311)

------
ahuibers
Make an improved version of etherpad! This was a great project/company, that
~ended when Google bought them. Would love to see someone run with this.

------
clayturk
Not to sound negative, as I appreciate your situation, but you do realize that
their are tens of thousands of people who do try and come up with startup
ideas everyday; they call it work. I'm sorry, but I don't think you are going
to get much here, especially just so you can skirt some classes. Best of luck
though

~~~
heyadayo
I think you missed the point: The poster has a rare opportunity to work with
five engineers to attempt to build a company, and he'll even get class credit.
He could just fake it and do some dumb proposal, or he could take it
seriously. Asking advice of domain experts (hahaha) sounds absolutely
sensible.

------
mmaro
<http://www.halfbakery.com/>

------
quizbiz
Ask your student peers about what gets on their nerves.

------
iloveyouocean
Could you provide a way to contact you directly?

------
wccrawford
It occurs to me that the professor is teaching you something. Good people are
a dime a dozen. Good ideas are much scarcer.

~~~
trustfundbaby
I think you have it the wrong way around.

------
CoachRufus87
just curious: are there any intellectual property risks (with CU-Boulder)?

~~~
agentargo
Nope, this is from the proposal disclosure "The sponsoring organization
retains the rights to the resulting software. Also, sponsors may require
students to sign non-disclosure agreements, as long as the agreements" And in
my case, My team and I are the sponsor

------
Detrus
Good ideas take a while to develop. You need to be familiar with the domain to
execute them well, care enough to put in the work.

What domain are you familiar with? HTML/CSS/JS? Backends? Programming IDEs?
Text analysis? Surfing the web? (UIs, journalism, communities etc..)

I have some ideas.

1\. Community designer - you'd start with a forum, then add features like
up/down votes, ratings, tags, following, blocking, limiting length of posts
(aka Twitter), anonymity, chats in threads, micro-comments (quick comments
about meaty posts visually separate) topic isolation, user labels (like
trolls, political, religious nuts) etc.. You could add and remove features in
order to guide the community to be active, post good content, or troll like
4chan.

Of course you'd need extensive experience of wasting time on forums, digg,
reddit, starting your own forum to approach this idea.

2\. Code map - lots of projects have a lot of boilerplate code, multiple
functions with little inside them, linking to other parts of the program for
convenience. Code density map shows where the functional code is in a large
project. Complexity map could show where there is long, incomprehensible
logic. Dependency map showing which classes have more dependencies than
others. Some of these could be documented by the developer, he can label
something "hacky" and you could see how much of the code-base is "hacky" on a
map. Long name API map should look different for JQuery and Google Closure (JS
frameworks), would be useful for designer coders because they have low
tolerance for long lines of text. Would look different for Processing.org vs
Java drawing API too.

Such a map should look different from one project to the next. It might reveal
coding style. Someone who is looking to work on a project could decide if the
coding style matches their own without having to dig in to the code. People
choosing a framework like Rails, Django could decide based on a map of example
projects that do the same task. Compare how verbose one framework is vs
another.

This is a hard problem with fun social implications. I don't really know how
hard, but there should be some intermediate stages for the idea that would be
neat, maybe even useful for github.

3\. Individualized content - user takes a survey of words, concepts he
understands, like helium, fusion, deuterium, megawatts, steam turbines and
when looking at a news site he would only see the articles where he
understands the concepts. If the news site wants to explain these concepts to
the individual, they have to write specially written articles that break
things down, start at the fundamentals.

It's not hard to get ideas after you have some experience, did a lot of
research in a domain. As a bonus you have more motivation to work on it than
you do on someone else's less familiar idea. That might be a problem for you.

------
revorad
This one's easy: Facebook-killer!

------
lzw
It takes some training to get to the state where you can sense and recognize
when there's a problem where something sucks. I've thought banks really sucked
for two decades, but never had the idea of doing something like simplebank.

The best ideas are ones where there is pain you can relieve.

Here's one: Web development sucks profoundly. People actually write CSS and
HTML by hand, using text editors. That is a complete indictment of the state
of web development tools. We've got decent stuff for web apps, but nothing for
html building. Cappucino and Sproutcore are starting to provide interface
builder apps for javascript based apps. But still nothing that works.

I think an Interface Builder for the web would be revolutionary and
profitable.

I'm tempted to say that if you don't have a bunch of ideas then you shouldn't
be leading this thing-- but on the other hand, you have the presence of mind
to recognize that those three ideas are all poor and that, my friend, is
extremely valuable. So at this stage, pick the best idea from here or from the
other people who will work on it and go for it.

For anything you do-- see if you can find 4-5 people who are not engineers who
will honestly say "Yeah, if you could build that, I'd buy it for $X" or that
their company would.

~~~
semanticist
Isn't DashCode almost literally Interface Builder for the web?

------
startupcto
Like gdgt for apps. I'll throw in $5K + existing code base as investment.

