
Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work) - eladgil
http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/11/6-startup-ideas-every-nerd-has.html
======
pg
It's true that such ideas tend to be magnets for sloppy thinking, but I think
most if not all of them could be pulled off if done right.

~~~
stevenj
Out of curiosity, what do you dislike or think can be done better with
Craigslist?

In other words, if you were going to build a Craigslist competitor what would
you focus on doing differently?

~~~
pingswept
(I'm not pg, obviously.)

I've found the scantiness of information in Craigslist posts a weakness. I
have no idea how to fix that, but I rule out a large fraction of ads based on
"Not enough info to know what this person is selling." For example, many ads
don't have pictures, and many that do have pictures that are tiny and
inscrutable.

~~~
enjo
I'd argue that's a strength for Craigslist. The fact that you don't need
pictures (or even content really) lowers the barrier to posting.

What craigslist gets wrong is the posting procedure. It's arcane. My in-laws
can't figure it out with the email responses and what-not. Better would be
some way to submit posts by email (or mobile app) and have them automatically
posted to the site... like posterous.

------
allwein
In my day (I'm only 32), the startup ideas everyone always wanted to do were:

1\. A better bug/issue tracking system

2\. A custom CMS

3\. A code library/platform for easily building Business CRUD apps.

4\. A word processing app that has only the 20% features that 80% of Word
users use.

5\. A better classmates.com

~~~
smanek
It seems like someone did do them! Obvious examples include:

1\. basecamp/fogbugz/jira

2\. Confluence/Sharepoint

3\. django/rails

4\. Google Docs

5\. Facebook

~~~
cadr
I think there is a lot further someone could take #3 (crud apps for business).
While django/rails are great, I think you could build some more specific tools
that would provide a lot more leverage in some cases. (Maybe something like
DabbleDB but with some more specifics built in.)

~~~
uggedal
Like <http://www.appignite.com/> ?

~~~
cadr
Maybe? I don't know - the linked page doesn't really have any information.

------
binarymax
Here are some of the other common one's I've heard:

\- A social-networking site that totally respects my privacy and lets me own
my data!

\- An app store that lets anybody sell their digital stuff to anyone, not in
some walled garden!

\- A drag and drop interface that lets you make any program you want...totally
code-free!

I could go on and on...

~~~
jon914
As a founder of a startup doing #3 (Stencyl), I can attest to that idea being
an enormous time sink and risk. I can name at least 10 startups or larger
companies that went after that idea and either died or pivoted.

What we have is working, and it's working well, but as we press forward, we
find that our strongest value proposition is no longer the code-free aspect,
which turns out to be just one small part of a larger puzzle. Once you remove
that roadblock, other pain points come to light that are far more difficult to
solve.

~~~
dwiel
any chance we might be able to read about what some of those points are?

~~~
jon914
Sure, I'll list out some of the pain points we're aware of and have tried to
address.

\- Not able to think logically. There's only so much you can accomplish if you
take logical thinking out of the equation, and when you do, the creations are
underwhelming. Many startups set out to make creation _easy_ , and that works
to some extent, but the real solution to the problem may be to try to educate
users and bring them up to a minimum bar (learn how to fish), rather than
trying to lower the bar to the floor (give them the fish). This would be
suicide for most startups, but the users of creative apps are more patient and
more willing to learn and grow with the app. Sure, we'll shut out some people
this way, but we want to lift up the right, motivated people, rather than
trying to lift the entire world up.

\- Can't draw/other artistic skill. Shockingly, this ends up being a big
problem, and people absolutely _hate_ using placeholder art if they can't
draw. We've addressed this by integrating a marketplace for pulling in all
kinds of resources.

\- Can't work with other people. Many game projects fail due to bad
communication (if you're not working solo). They start out strong when
brainstorming and then die somewhere in the middle, usually when the members
fall out of regular contact or don't know what's going on. We've integrated
some features into our app to directly address this after observing how our
users interacted with each other on several group projects.

\- Set their sights too high. No, you're not going to create an MMORPG or RTS
as your first project. ;) This one isn't directly addressed by our app right
now and falls more under the umbrella of general user education and
progression. One idea we have is to incorporate game elements (turning game
creation into a game?) to nudge the user towards making baby steps towards
completing something through a quest structure, rather than trying to let them
go free from day 1.

The take home point is that like any startup, what you set out to do ends up
evolving as you move along and that the problem you're solving turns out to be
different and sometimes larger than what you originally expected.

------
blhack
I hope I don't come across as negative here, but I _hate_ lists like this.

Peopel are always raining on each others' ideas

"Oh, what, you're going to make a _myspace_ clone? Bahahahaha." (facebook)

"Oh, what, you're going to make a _facebook_ clone? Bahahahaha." (twitter)

"Oh, what, you're going to make _another_ dating website? Bahahahaha."

(Okcupid, plentyoffish)

"Oh, what, you're going to make _another_ social bookmarking website?
Bahahahaha."

(Reddit, digg, hacker news, etc.)

This sort of "You can't improve on an existing design" rhetoric is usually
coming from the same people who champion companies like netflix and say things
like "The RIAA suing downloaders is like wagon wheel manufacturers suing car
tire manufacturers! GET WITH THE TIMES, HELLO!"

You want to make a better dating website? Awesome, I hope you do and I hope
it's better than okcupid! If it fails, guess who's going to come out the other
side better than they were when they started?

You want to make an abstract machine learning system? Good! I hope you do!
Guess who's probably going to be learning a lot about ML when they come out
the other side?

You want to make a craigslist/ebay mashup? Good! Do it today! Start it right
now and, if it's better than craigslist, my friends and I are all going to use
it! How much are you going to learn about interface/UX design in the process?

You want to apply gaming mechanics to exercise? Good! Do it and tell me about
it! That sounds awesome! Make an iPhone app for it, make a facebook app for
it, let me pick random strangers across the internet to challenge at it. Make
leaderboards and lots of badgers, and blog about it. If you fail, write more
blog posts about _why_ you failed.

I'm sorry, I'm sure the author of this blog post had good intentions; trying
to help other geeks, but I find this sort of "don't even try this because it's
a stupid idea and you're going to fail" attitude _extremely_ harmful.

The first project I ever did was called <http://newslily.com> it was a
fark/reddit/hn/digg clone. Did I sell it to google for 2 billion dollars and
retire to a yacht somewhere just east of anywhere on the planet? No. Did I go
from knowing absolutely nothing whatsoever about web development to being able
to turn ideas into things? Yes.

My current project is called <http://thingist.com> . Have people said "oh,
psh, you're making a twitter clone...boorrrrriinnnggggggg."?

Guess who doesn't care? My daydreaming about having 50 millions users is
forcing me to learn about scaling, and how to use mod_python (oh, and if I get
_super_ crazy, maybe nginx as a web cache for my 10 users!). In a year, or two
months, or six weeks, or however long it takes me to decide that, yeah, well,
it's just another twitter clone and isn't going to get more than 10 users, I'm
going to be 1 twitter clone closer experience wise to making something people
love. (Although I still think that thingist isn't a twitter clone).

My advice: make 10 twitter clones and 20 abstracted ML frameworks. _NOT_ doing
this is like a running coach advising their runners not to waste their time
jogging around their neighborhood because they're really not going anywhere
anyway.

~~~
alex_c
Life is very, very short. Given the choice between not building anything at
all and building a "Craigslist killer" that no one will use, I absolutely
agree - go for it!

Given the choice between building a cliche project and something a bit more
off the beaten path - you may as well put a few extra days of thought into a
project before you start, and come up with something unique (as long as you
don't spend all your time thinking and none of your time doing).

The problem with the ideas listed is that they're obvious - both myself and my
friends have talked about/wanted to approach almost every single one - but
it's not obvious how to actually build a better mouse trap for each of them.
It's useful to realize when you're trying to attack a generic problem (that
has already been solved) with an equally generic strategy.

~~~
storborg
The ideas are obvious because people want them.

Lots of people want a Craigslist alternative that doesn't have the shittiest
search interface this side of 2004. Lots of people want a dating site with a
'market' that doesn't heavily heavily favor women. Lots of people want to
exercise/lose weight in a fun game-like way. Lots of people want the concept
of TripAdvisor but don't feel like they identify at all with the typical
TripAdvisor reviewer.

It's hard to learn about why these things are difficult without actually
trying to do them.

~~~
timr
_"Lots of people want a dating site with a 'market' that doesn't heavily
heavily favor women."_

Yeah, they're called men. And given that history tells us that attracting men
to dating sites isn't a business-limiting problem, it follows that building a
(heterosexual) dating site that appeals to men is not a good business idea.

~~~
julsonl
I think what he meant was dating sites suck if you're a man since: 1.) Men do
all the chasing/initiating contact. 2.) Women get inundated with a lot of
messages from a lot of other eligible men that you're competing with your
entire neighborhood for a single girl. 3.) Hence women tend to be really picky
and chances of her noticing/replying back you are incredibly low.

~~~
philjr
how is this different from real life?

------
_delirium
Versions of #4 have worked, though not usually structured as X% of _all_
future earnings. The most common version is the group-of-freelancers variant,
where a group of people are really working independently, but do it legally
via a partnership, which pools income to reduce risk, share upsides, smooth
cash-flow bumps, etc.

It's pretty well-established in a number of professions outside tech, e.g. in
law, a partnership of four or five lawyers will all get rich if _any_ case
that any of them took hits the giant-settlement jackpot.

~~~
bryanlarsen
A workers co-op is a good alternative to a partnership if your jurisdiction
has sane laws. (in other words if you're not in the United States).

The big downside to partnerships is that you're exposed to unlimited
liability.

~~~
_delirium
The exact terms vary, but in some states an LLP or LLC is a good alternative
with limited liability (just how limited the liability is also varies).

------
dlevine
I think that all of these (or at least most of them) are reasonable ideas that
could work. I think the biggest problem is that a lot of them are either
technically difficult or involve entering crowded markets.

For example, the Craigslist killer can and has worked. The guys at RentHop and
AirBnB are both attacking pieces of Craigslist's functionality.

The problem is that most nerds don't have the ability to pull these ideas off.
Heck, most people in general don't have what it takes to build a successful
company. There's a big difference between hacking on something for a weekend
and building a company out of it (although you can't build a company without
starting somewhere).

Overall, a lot of people (including many successful YC Founders) start out
with stupid, unfocused ideas, and morph into something that's focused and
solves a problem that people need solved. It's all just part of the process -
if you wait for the perfect idea to hit you, you might never get started.

------
sedachv
There is something common with some of these ideas worth noting:

Dating sites, social travel (social anything), and Craigslist killer all
depend on network effects.

A common argument for starting a new business is that "hey, someone else
already has this idea, they've mapped out the market and proved it can make
money." This works really well for things like restaurants where there is no
network effect, no incentives for new users to go with well-established
providers or disincentives for existing users to switch providers.

In the social/dating/craigslist space, you don't just need to build a better
X, you need to convince people to leave the old X (or pray that they've never
heard of the old X before and won't consider it) and sign up for your new X.

In terms of dating, social and craigslist at least you're only dealing with
one type of customer. As soon as you turn to local events/businesses you needs
to do this for two (the people looking for events and businesses, and the
promoters and business owners).

Cable networks are similar businesses, but I think the key distinction is that
they charged money for their services. Somewhat paradoxically, I think this
makes it much easier for people to switch than if all the services are free -
there is the immediate incentive of "save $10 a month!"

I think this is why AOL and Prodigy managed to make so much money. Then all
the free (ad-supported) online services came along and basically wiped out the
paid services, and intensified the network effect and its disincentive for
switching to better services.

------
timf
> _Giant, Purposeless, Unfocused Machine Learning System._

There's a YC company that does this in a general way but I would not label
their use cases as "purposeless".

<http://www.directededge.com/>

~~~
icefox
You could even argue that is what Amazon.com did with their recommendations.
And the main reason I signed up for netflix was after working on the netflix
prize. And I have been rewarded by buying things I wouldn't have otherwise and
watching movies I had never heard about, but loved. There is $$$ in
recommendations and selling solutions.

------
djb_hackernews
I feel like this misses a ton of apps. In chronological order:

textbook swap todo list dorm rating apartment/roommate rating/review local
business rating/review something to hack the stock market better pet site
better dating site better wedding site

~~~
retroafroman
I agree with your list, but could you please format it for better readability?
Each of those on a separate line would do wonders.

------
rwhitman
Amen. Definitely been sucked into and subsequently failed at Social Travel big
time. I think that's a sexy one, there is an unsaid allure in it of being able
to mix travel with running a startup. Such a crowded space, and most fail out
the gate. Once you do the math you realize there is far more travel media out
there than travelers, especially in a down economy.

Anyone who loves to travel and wants to get out more, but is stuck inside
writing friggin code all day gets this idea at least once. "Wait! How would I
combine writing code with travel? I know, I'll make my own travel
recommendation site." The irony is in reality I traveled wayyy less as a
result of committing to this idea. Bummer

~~~
danielhodgins
"Once you do the math you realize there is far more travel media out there
than travelers, especially in a down economy".

I recently shut down my travel startup - a site that offered tours and
excursions in many of the world's greatest cities.

Why? The VC-funded big boys have 2,000 affiliates and many thousands of
inbound links to their site. This bumps them up in the organic rankings which
sends more traffic to their site - enabling them to gather more conversion
data. As conversions gradually increase, their product becomes more attractive
to other affiliates, and more sign up, thus perpetuating a positive feedback
loop.

Learned a ton during the process of building the company, and I wouldn't trade
the experience for anything.

To all prospective founders out there - really do your homework and understand
the competitive advantages held by the top competitors in your market - things
that are very difficult, time consuming, and/or expensive to replicate!

For example, 37 Signals now has a passionate fan base of hundreds of thousands
of people based on years of teaching and writing opinionated rants. Nearly
impossible to replicate for a new startup trying to market simple project
management software.

Also, realize that cute innovations and a great user experience might not
overcome the massive reach held by existing companies.

------
jbail
One idea I hear all the time: Better agile/project management software. I've
never met a nerd who liked what they were using (myself included).

~~~
Elepsis
This is actually an interesting one, because I think it falls into its own
specific category: workflow-specific startups. The reason no one is ever happy
with project management software is because everyone works slightly
differently, and every nerd will occasionally have the urge to write one that
matches the way _they_ work.

It's likely there are other startups that fall into this category. Time
management and to-do lists seem like fairly obvious ones.

~~~
nkohari
This is definitely a huge problem in project management tools. I don't mean to
spam, but with AgileZen (<http://agilezen.com/>), we're trying very, very hard
to create a project management app that isn't workflow-specific. I'd be very
interested in knowing how we could make it even more flexible.

------
topherjaynes
I dunno, I agree that everyone and their brother has these ideas, but it's
like writing a novel. In literature there are a bunch archetypes (hero,
heroine, Christ-like figure, etc), it's the nuance the author brings to the
new iteration . Your right in that everyone has these ideas, but that doesn't
mean we shouldn't think about ways to do them in a different way!

------
lkozma
He forgot the data synchronization system, except that Dropbox pulled that
off. Also the "social browsing", "see who else is visiting this webpage",
except that Facebook is after that one already. Also the "alert me if a
website has changed", well, I don't know if that really exists in a usable way
or not.

~~~
konad
<http://www.changedetection.com/>

------
praptak
_"Gaming Mechanics Applied To X Vertical"_

I have seen real money spent on something along the lines of "Hey, we're in
accounting business! Let's make a Facebook of accounting where accountants
will create profiles and publish their annual and quarterly reports." (details
changed to protect the guinnocent.)

------
wtracy
Favorite comment: "You should have made us sign an NDA before reading this
post."

------
raganwald
I'm pretty sure that "Better Search Engine" was on the list when Google, Cuil,
Bing, and DuckDuckGo were founded. SOmetimes you win, sometimes not so much.

Let's get empirical for a moment. If we are sifting through applications for
funding, do you think that there is a significant correlation between whether
a business is on this list or not and its eventual success or failure?

If the other factors driving outcomes--founder quality and so forth--have
higher confidence levels, this kind of list isn't very useful.

------
gojomo
Never say never. Ramit Sethi, a smart writer and generally perceptive
entrepreneur, highlighted textbook exchanges in May 2006 as his top "stupid
frat-boy business idea". He wrote: "NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY
SUCCEEDED. I HATE TO CRUSH DREAMS BUT PLEASE FORGET ABOUT THIS."

[http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-
boy-...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-boy-business-
ideas/)

But now there is Chegg.

And Chegg is not just Sethi's despised textbook exchange idea -- it started as
a Craigslist competitor for campuses! And when it pivoted to its current model
in 2007, it first used the name textbookflix.com! And it competes against
others on price! So it fits multiple categories from these Ramit Sethi and
Elad Gil 'never work' lists.

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

Estimates are that it'll have more than $100 million in revenue this year and
is growing to a dominant position in a large market.

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/05/teardown-chegg/>

Chegg's final success isn't assured -- especially given the rise of
e-textbooks -- but it's passed the point of "tempting but foolish nerd/frat-
boy startup idea".

------
swecker
I think the point this author is making is not, "These ideas won't work, so
don't do it." but rather, "You might think these ideas are unique, but they're
not." So he's not shooting down the ideas per say, but warning people that if
they undertake such a project they need to be honest to the fact that your
"variant" needs to be something special and/or you have to execute seamlessly
to get ahead of the crowd.

------
randrews
The stereotypical "never gonna work" idea that I always see is this:

* There's a sort of thing that there are many implementations of (website logins, say)

* Having many implementations is confusing, one canonical one would be better (Hey! Let's make OpenID!)

* They make a new one, announce it, everyone sees that it's not as mature as what they already have (Provider? XRI?)

* Nobody else adopts the new one, now there's one more competing implementation for the next never-gonna-work idea to contend with.

Note: I don't want to pick on OpenID, it actually works pretty well, but I
needed an example.

Once you start looking for this pattern you see it everywhere: Linux distros,
OpenSocial, OS X package managers, etc.

------
joe_the_user
I imagine "social networking site"/"myspace killer" would have been on the
list five years ago.

The article sketches ideas that have promise and long odds. Five years ago,
most people who were trying to create "yet another social networking site"
looked dumb. One doesn't now.

There is are many reasons that most of the cool ideas people come with
brainstorming late at night don't work. But it's not that they are bad ideas.
The factors for failure include the distance between idea and execution,
competition, the need for good design, etc..

It's just a question of whether you want to make an easy bet or a hard bet.

------
iterationx
He forgot the 3D window manager.

~~~
binarymax
Speaking of which ...I wonder if we will hear anything from
<http://bumptop.com/> via Google soon?

------
s3b
Another one he's missed : Algorithm to predict stock market movements.

~~~
ahilss
And another: Algorithm to predict football scores.

------
sedachv
This reads like a list of the Montreal startup scene. So far I've met people
working on dating sites, purposeless recommendation engines (to be fair, in
one of those startups two of the guys were part of the team that won the
Netflix prize, the other one is headed by someone who placed second in the
GitHub contest, so they're not dilettantes at least), social travel ("we'll
get film students to make videos about restaurants... for free!"), I'm pretty
sure there was a Craigslist killer there somewhere.

Other hard things of dubious utility people work on:

1\. Local events

2\. Local business directories (I was once removed from this space by working
at a company that provided an integrated directory/SEM buying product to
various Yellow Page companies around the world; the cynic in me thinks this is
a great way to fleece small businesses, although if you try it really can
drive a lot of business)

3\. Microsoft Access for the web. Dabble DB tried (acquired by Twitter), I
tried, <http://formlis.com/> (HN user warrenwilkinson) is trying. There's
probably a bunch more. Google Forms and Wufoo seem to be the most successful
with the least functionality. The hard part here seems to be getting people to
know about the service. Companies typically contract these apps out, and the
contractor companies are more interested in $30k contracts to build custom
form apps and making busywork for PHP drones than reselling a solution where
the customers or other contractors can cut them out as middlemen. Actually the
more I think about it, the more I want to try this again.

~~~
WalterGR
_Local events_

This is my "Dream Project" - i.e. the one I'll build when I have endless free
time that I'd like to devote to working.

I'd love to know why you think it's of dubious utility. (Aside from movie
times, I've _never_ discovered an event through an "event site" - but I feel
like I could...)

------
yoak
The most common thing I see from such people is a desire to break off and do
whatever is being done at their current company, but to do it _right_ instead.

------
Goladus
Dating sites still kind of suck.

If I were building a dating site, it wouldn't be anything like what the
original author suggests. Rather than focus on matching algorithms or ways to
stimulate initiative (okcupid is already reasonably good at that), I'd focus
on providing value after the initial connection has been made. I don't know of
any dating site that does that well, at the moment.

------
acgourley
I would also like to submit a whole spectrum of ideas that have a huge
bootstrap problem and that problem is often hand waved away.

------
chwahoo
I think the wrong-headed idea that many nerds have is that creating a startup
is mostly about having a brilliant idea. If someone comes along and creates
something similar to their idea, they think "that could have been me."

I suspect that the real value comes from execution of the idea, perseverance,
and willingness to let your idea evolve until you've created something that
people want. Often folks fail to recognize that the ability to execute and
evolve (and be willing to fail) are traits that we don't all have, and so it's
very possible that it couldn't have been them.

While there are probably some ideas that are doomed to fail, I don't think
that label applies to any of the ones from the original post.

------
daimyoyo
Does this mean I should stop working on
www.craigsmatchsquaretravelocifund.com?

~~~
silverlake
there's already an app for that

------
roadnottaken
I wish somebody would actually make a better Social Travel website.
TripAdvisor is _exceedingly_ unpleasant to use, despite the solid content.

I keep hoping that wikitravel will thrive but it's never very good...

~~~
kongqiu
I'm working on a niche social travel website that's currently underserved.
Launching next week; will share on HN!

~~~
kongqiu
Would love any feedback: parkgrades.com

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1980478>

------
rgbrgb
All of those ideas have clearly worked.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Of course they all worked at least once. Otherwise the siren song wouldn't be
so seductive.

Often half the problem with an idea _is_ that it has already worked once. In a
world where you're allowed to assume away Craigslist, cloning Craigslist would
have a much better chance of working.

~~~
ig1
Kijiji and Gumtree have also succeeded in this space (albeit in different
countries).

What's killing Craigslist/gumtree/etc in practice is their generality, they're
no longer the dominant player in their most profitable markets (jobs, dating,
housing) all of which are being carved away by specialist sites.

~~~
Mc_Big_G
If Craigslist is getting killed, they sure are making a lot of money doing it.

~~~
ig1
TV killed the Radio, doesn't stop radio being a big business.

------
anmol
isn't hunch an example of #2?

as an outsider, with many west coast friends, it appears that both start-ups
and investors move in herds. for example, six months ago it was location-based
check-in services?

------
uast23
It boils down to the cliche "if you think you are unique, you are probably an
asshole". The mere fact that you manage to find a co-founder in your own
country/city is enough to prove that there are lot of other people in ROW
going in the same direction where you are headed. It's not about doing things
uniquely, its about doing things in a better way or at least trying to do it
in a better way. So, I should get back to work now.

------
nowarninglabel
Meh, these are more like ideas that nearly every person has, and then wants a
developer 'nerd' to implement (for free mind you, for x% of future profits).

------
cj
I'm guilty of #4.

Made this but never followed through with it. <http://brandonpaton.com/demo/>

------
Tichy
I don't see why 1 to 4 shouldn't work. How many failed dating sites are there?
Also, many dating sites seem to simply be a matter of efficient advertising -
even if you are a newcomer, if you can pour enough money into advertising, you
are all set.

Machine learning: I hope Directed Edge is doing well (YC startup).

Social Travel: what are some good social travel sites? I don't know any.

~~~
alex_c
>How many failed dating sites are there?

That's the problem, we don't know, do we?

~~~
Tichy
I know a lot of successful ones and no failed ones. But asking here, maybe
somebody who knows a failed one could speak up.

------
rwhitman
"Social e-commerce". I get a lot of project bid requests for variations on
this theme. Especially when the economy really tanked every panicking startup
tried to pivot their business plan to be shopping related for a while. Very
difficult to implement, people are much less amped about sharing purchases
than nerds would expect

------
alex_c
Take-out services / services for restaurants.

------
wheels
I know of companies doing well in at least 5 of the 6 spaces listed here.
(Future success of friends being the missing one, and there very well may be
companies doing well there, and you could almost consider the fact that
prominent angels often raise money from other prominent angels as an instance
of such.)

~~~
jlees
Ah wheels, I saw #2 and I thought of you. ;)

------
ja27
No "groupware"?

<http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html>

------
Keyframe
Don't forget MMORPG!

~~~
JustinSeriously
Which is often "just like game X, but more complicated."

I think that's the route of most startup pipe-dreams: Take a successful site
or product, and make it more complicated.

------
user24
Quite pleased to see none of these are on the list of ten startup ideas I
released a few weeks ago: <http://www.puremango.co.uk/2010/10/ten-ideas/>

------
WalterBright
This site is hilarious. Every successful business idea I've had was met with
derision by every respected professional I encountered.

------
rlander
#2 works and is a profitable company called tellapart
(<http://tellapart.com>).

~~~
tmcneal
#2 reminded me of Directed Edge's generalized recommendations engine
(<http://directededge.com/>).

~~~
rlander
Cool, didn't know about directedge. Any idea how profitable are they?

[edit] Crunchbase says they only received YC's $15k in seed funding. That's
weird for a B2B company.

------
there
is anyone still trying to innovate in the online dating arena? i thought
okcupid has had it pretty much locked for a while.

~~~
prawn
Anyone tried a dating site that works more like a deal-a-day site? I've had
that on my list for a while. Figured that if you give people 100+ prospective
partners, they will hunt for the best (who might be out of their league) and
get nowhere. If you show them one at a time, they might make a "would I go on
a date with this person" choice.

HotOrNot tries throwing people at you in a sequence, but do you really make a
proper decision when you know there are countless more around the corner?

~~~
usaar333
Could work. Okcupid actually offers this feature.

On the other hand if the person is picky enough, they'll just be rejecting
everyone they see and give up on the site after a few days.

------
JabavuAdams
... until they do

------
mmaunder
The idea for building a better search engine and a better social network was
on a list like that, once upon a time.

------
ErrantX
Social network. That tends to be a common one.

(yes, I spent a long time creating a social network, no it went nowhere
special :))

------
rrrhys
How about the best to do list ever!

------
dnsworks
Geeks are so incredibly negative it's why I end up trying to convince friends
to find a better career filled with happier people whenever they ask how to
get into the tech field.

There's nothing more pathetic then that guy who is the born skeptic and can't
see beyond his own inability to find success, constantly putting down every
idea his friends give him. I'm told that's what it's like trying to do a
start-up in England.

~~~
zeemonkee
That's a very good point; I'm very much that way myself, and more so every
year.

Part of it is cynicism from being at the bottom of a pecking order that puts
the braying salesman and architypal PHB at the top and consistently having
advice and ideas ignored, while given impossible deadlines because people
don't know how to manage a development process properly.

However there is also a very negative vibe among geeks in general, especially
(but not exclusively) in the UK. No doubt American geeks suffer from the same
idiots in charge, but say the hell with it, and go start their own companies.
Here there is more of a resigned shrug of the shoulders.

It's not a univeral British trait; people in other walks of life seem to have
a more positive attitude.

------
clistctrl
I was honestly expecting to see something about a bar revolving around gaming.
I've heard it proposed by at least 4 seperate nerd friends.

~~~
mikeklaas
<http://manabar.com/> (Zero Punctuation guy)

~~~
artmageddon
The site you linked to is for another bar(and a page with a Flash intro that
pumps Jennifer Lopez into your ears, I should add)...

This is the correct site: <http://www.manabar.com.au/>

------
ojbyrne
This would have been better with at least a little explanation for why each
idea wouldn't work (other than a Nerd thought it up).

