What is your next idea for startup?
A regional Condom Drone Delivery Service. - "Rubber up 'bruv", in the UK. - "Rubber a brother" for the US. Expand to CAAS (contraceptives as a service) when applying for second round, pre-ipo.
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Ideas for Startups (2005)
11–20 of 57 posts
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#12I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who wants to start a startup. I'm very respectful of people who have great ideas. One thing about startup first is that it ends up with a lot of duplication. Granted Google and Facebook were duplicates. And so it's fitting that they are in essence aggregators. But I'm an engineer (and not a VC) and I have a natural inclination towards the Woz approach. The magic happens in the process o…
One reason to want to do a startup (in the abstract) is because you're unhappy with the degree of autonomy at most 9-5 jobs.
I somewhat think a bootstrapped-profitable business might be a better route though, if you can manage that.
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#13I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who wants to start a startup. I'm very respectful of people who have great ideas. One thing about startup first is that it ends up with a lot of duplication. Granted Google and Facebook were duplicates. And so it's fitting that they are in essence aggregators. But I'm an engineer (and not a VC) and I have a natural inclination towards the Woz approach. The magic happens in the process o…
One reason to want to do a startup (in the abstract) is because you're unhappy with the degree of autonomy at most 9-5 jobs. I somewhat think a bootstrapped-profitable business might be a better route though, if you can manage that.
It's true that a lot of startups have, well, a "startup vibe" at first. I many cases that seems to disappear as soon as external capital is poured in :-(
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#14I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who wants to start a startup. I'm very respectful of people who have great ideas. One thing about startup first is that it ends up with a lot of duplication. Granted Google and Facebook were duplicates. And so it's fitting that they are in essence aggregators. But I'm an engineer (and not a VC) and I have a natural inclination towards the Woz approach. The magic happens in the process o…
If you respect Woz, you should also know that Apple was not the only company that was in the personal computing space when they started. They were just passionate about what they were doing and they did the best job at it.
I myself hate the cliche "Ideas are worth nothing it's all about execution", but at the same time I also have no respect for people who think they have the best ideas but never execute on them.
Ideas do matter, except that most ideas are too abstract, and you won't realize if your idea works or not unless you start it. That's why "idea people" with no execution are never respected by people who actually do stuff. Of course, that is, when we're talking about startups. if you're an actual philosopher who theorizes abstract things, you are an idea person and I totally respect philosophers
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#15I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who wants to start a startup. I'm very respectful of people who have great ideas. One thing about startup first is that it ends up with a lot of duplication. Granted Google and Facebook were duplicates. And so it's fitting that they are in essence aggregators. But I'm an engineer (and not a VC) and I have a natural inclination towards the Woz approach. The magic happens in the process o…
If you respect Woz, you should also know that Apple was not the only company that was in the personal computing space when they started. They were just passionate about what they were doing and they did the best job at it. I myself hate the cliche "Ideas are worth nothing it's all about execution", but at the same time I also have no respect for people who think they have the best ideas but never execute on them. Ide…
The later need to show their work in detailed logic way, e. g, a book. That's real idea with execution.
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#16Anyone can think of ideas. I'm sure we've all got entire documents with lists of ideas we never followed up on.
The hard part is finding opportunities to create value for others (making stuff people actually want). Generally speaking, people already have the stuff they want that they can have. Now, I'm sure Paul Graham would say people's desires are infinite and there's still many unmet needs and wants. For All the stuff they don't have but want: well, there are major barriers to entry for those business ideas (flying cars), the exception being those ideas that were just recently enabled by another innovation (a Rare treat indeed). I think we've had this conversation before....
And, as he said in another post: you've got to be at the forefront of any industry. Live in the future. Meaning, use the latest tools and gizmos of any particular industry in order to help understand where things are and get a feel for them.
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason to want to do a startup (in the abstract) is because you're unhappy with the degree of autonomy at most 9-5 jobs. I somewhat think a bootstrapped-profitable business might be a better route though, if you can manage that.
It's true that a lot of startups have, well, a "startup vibe" at first. I many cases that seems to disappear as soon as external capital is poured in :-(
Well, besides "what" you sell in the end, running a company is a job of its own.
And you can only learn it by running a company...
So if you want to be a "Professional Company Runner", you got to start somewhere.
I mean its as legitimate as being a professional programmer or a professional artist, etc.
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#18I'm deeply skeptical of anyone who wants to start a startup. I'm very respectful of people who have great ideas. One thing about startup first is that it ends up with a lot of duplication. Granted Google and Facebook were duplicates. And so it's fitting that they are in essence aggregators. But I'm an engineer (and not a VC) and I have a natural inclination towards the Woz approach. The magic happens in the process o…
If you respect Woz, you should also know that Apple was not the only company that was in the personal computing space when they started. They were just passionate about what they were doing and they did the best job at it. I myself hate the cliche "Ideas are worth nothing it's all about execution", but at the same time I also have no respect for people who think they have the best ideas but never execute on them. Ide…
You are correct that Apple was a duplicate. At a certain level, just about all companies are. Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land. Same with movies. Do you really want to see something truly original because you will recognize nothing.
However, having no respect for people who think they have the best ideas but never execute on them is going a bit far. Arthur C Clarke wrote an article
EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL RELAYS: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage? http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/1945ww_oct_305-308.html
It calculated the geostationary belt and showed that it could be applied to communications satellites. No patent, no possibility of exploiting it. Basically a really interesting blog post before there were blogs.
So I give credit to great ideas that are short of startup potential. What I yawn at is startups not based on great ideas. I'll grant that there are successful startups out there that aren't based on great ideas, just execution. But they don't interest me. So fundamentally, that's a personal evaluation.
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you respect Woz, you should also know that Apple was not the only company that was in the personal computing space when they started. They were just passionate about what they were doing and they did the best job at it. I myself hate the cliche "Ideas are worth nothing it's all about execution", but at the same time I also have no respect for people who think they have the best ideas but never execute on them. Ide…
You are correct that Apple was a duplicate. At a certain level, just about all companies are. Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land. Same with movies. Do you really want to see something truly original because you will recognize nothing. However, having no respect for people who think they have the best ideas but never execute on them is going a bit far. Arthur C Clarke wrote an article EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL REL…
"Great idea" is an extremely subjective thing, and I don't even mean it in a loose sense.
Many people think great ideas are things that are so obvious like flying cars or fixing cancer, fixing aging, going to mars, fixing racism, fixing global warming, etc. They are great ideas, but at the same time they are all just obvious ideas. If something is obviously a great idea and has great market potential, it would be stupid for a large company to be not working on it. That's why these ideas are mostly tackled by already large companies and almost never by startups. In fact I have never seen a startup that succeeded by working on an idea that was already obvious to the masses, nor have I seen world-changing come out of this. Most groundbreaking ideas started out as something you would think is not one of those "great ideas". Use the same Apple example, most people didn't think personal computers would change the world, they just thought it was some nerdy tech thing that would stay as a fringe culture. That's why IBM got into the game late.
That said, I am not disagreeing with you that philosophers are bad, I already mentioned that. I use the term "philosophers" loosely here. For philosophers, theorizing is execution, it's not like they can build something. And I totally appreciate thought experiments.
Re: Ideas for Startups (2005)
#20What is your next idea for startup?
A regional Condom Drone Delivery Service. - "Rubber up 'bruv", in the UK. - "Rubber a brother" for the US. Expand to CAAS (contraceptives as a service) when applying for second round, pre-ipo.
what about a swooning service, you get the rubber, an uber to the hotel and a bottle of champagne.