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Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

blog.eladgil.com

11–20 of 220 posts

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#11

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…

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.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#18
post #2

All of those ideas have clearly worked.

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.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#19
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...

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#20
post #6

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

The difference between your list and his is that some people have actually succeeded with all of the items on your list.

But you've still hit the nail on the head with your list: there are vast numbers of failures and uncompleted projects for every success.

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