

Quora: Startup Ideas that Persistently Fail - bl4k
http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-startup-ideas-that-persistently-fail

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swombat
Seems like a pretty haphazard list. Does not convince me to sign up to Quora.
The fact that those people are founders or senior people at tech companies
does not make their answers any better thought through.

I guess when you ask someone to answer a complex question quickly without
giving the subject too much thought, you get a superficial, skin-deep answer -
no matter whether they're supposed to be experts in the field.

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arethuza
Indeed, I can remember being told by experts that nobody would ever:

\- Use the Web as it wasn't a very "rich" experience

\- Do banking transactions on the Internet

\- No airline would sell tickets online

These were all predictions by real _experts_ in their respective fields.

Arthur C. Clarke's First Law of Prediction applies:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he
is probably wrong."

~~~
panic
All startup ideas persistently fail — until they don't. Maybe it's not the
idea that failed, but the implementation?

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DrJokepu
I got two problems with this list. First, for many items on the list, I can
actually come up with examples of successful attempts that tackle the problem.
Seconds, it feels like that even the ideas that failed so far look like that
there is nothing inherently wrong with them, it's just that no ones figured
out yet how to do them well.

It's actually a good list of problems that still need to be solved (and you
could be the one who solves them), not a list of ideas you should avoid at all
costs.

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brc
Ha - I went there to see if Micropayments was already listed. I wasn't
disappointed. Though i don't see any sort of e-cash there. I wonder if that's
because people have completely abandoned the idea?

Downvote for the suggestion on online groceries - haven't been to a
supermarket in months because of online groceries. It works, just needs scale
and big bucks.

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robryan
Groceries depends, I'm sure there not referring to large supermarket chains
when saying they are failures. Startups that try and add some value over going
to a chains site though seem to struggle.

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_grrr
Anyone know why you cann't browse questions on Quora (or at least it's not
clear to me how to)?

It doesn't mention being in beta, so I assume this is the final site...

EDIT: And what's with only being able to register via fb/twitter? I hope this
isn't the start of a trend.

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cing
Not sure about "Anything involving paying people to look at ads". Lockerz
seems to be making a business out of it.

