Some sort of Web application to actually help with coming up with startup ideas. I knocked at this for a month or two, but couldn't come up with a decent solution. The best I got was some sort of database of user-generated customer pains, which would be ranked (social news style) by users at large. The theory was that once you knew which pain you were targeting, coming up with the solution (second half of the idea) would be easier.
If anyone thinks this problem is even solvable, and wants to work to come up with a good solution, send me an email at keshavs@berkeley.edu - I would actually love to implement something like this.
Hi trekker, if you are interested in pursuing a subset of your idea, I might be able to provide you a canvas for testing it.
We are developing an app that solves a narrow but significant pain point for ecommerce merchants, As we deploy the app to our beta testers, they will all want to add new features. The dilemma we will face is this: which feature should we pick? The answer - and your opportunity - lies in coming up with an algorithm that picks the right feature based on analyzing three factors: (1) the pervasiveness of the pain across the user base, (2) the magnitude of the pain, and (3) our own resource limitations.
Once you apply your algorithm successfully to our app, you should be able to extend it to other apps. If you succeed, this could be boon to the beta community all over the world, and a major success for you.
hi trekker - I'm part of secure online payment gateway in Asia and we're slowly introducing ecommerce all over Asia - we know about the "pains" of birthing something like this - maybe we can collaborate? email me paulpajo [at] gmail
If anyone thinks this problem is even solvable, and wants to work to come up with a good solution, send me an email at keshavs@berkeley.edu - I would actually love to implement something like this.