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Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

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

#141

Post by blhack »

praptak wrote: post #132
blhack wrote: post #40

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 w…

[...] 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. That's not what the author had in mind. In fact, it's explicitly written: "[...]or alternatively, that they are unsolved problems that someone, someday, somewhere, may actually come up with a variant that hits big." So, it's rather "If you invest serious resources in that, you better know wh…

This wasn't meant of a critique of the author, it was meant as a critique of a lot of geeks (self included) feelings overall.

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

#142

Post by jules »

prewett wrote: post #129
binarymax wrote: post #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...

#3: National Instruments' LabVIEW is the best example of graphical programming I have run across. But after I used it for a while, it became clear that text-based programming is denser; I can see a lot more C++ code than LabVIEW code in one screen, and that makes me more productive in C++. LabVIEW is awesome for a quick app, but for something more successful, I don't think any form of graphical programming is going t…

I agree that text is probably going to conquer programming for quite some time to come. It is no accident that mathematics is done with text, even though connecting boxes and lines of paper is a lot easier than on a computer. However, like in mathematics, the occasional diagram or graphical notation is helpful.

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

#143

Post by jules »

smackay wrote: post #65
binarymax wrote: post #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...

> A drag and drop interface that lets you make any program you want...totally code-free! This is an idea that was hot way back the 80's and early 90's in the era of CASE tools. There was some limited success but only in very limited domains such as signal processing and to a lesser extent building data-driven, object-oriented systems.

You mean labview? Labview succeeded despite its drag and drop interface. It succeeded because its extensive domain specific libraries. Labview code is horrible to write and even worse to read. /physics student hating labview point and click interface

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

#144

Post by retroafroman »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #29

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

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

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

#145

Post by sedachv »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #128
sedachv wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of time it takes him to put this into Excel is miniscule compared to just having a conversation with a single woman. What's really driving his success is his persistence (it's a numbers game). The problem with "bringing pick up artist techniques to the masses" is the same as the guy/girl ratio notification tools. We're very poor in making comparisons based on absolute factors, so we make our decisions base…

I agree that data entry + excel time is not a lot. But coming up with sketch material and gathering enough data points for an A/B test to be statistically useful is a huge investment. Success = P x A, with P = probability of success and A = # of approaches. When A is large, it's a no-brainer to gather data and crunch numbers to improve P. Unfortunately, you can't improve P without a large A since your numbers won't b…

That's totally missing the point of the zero-sum thing.

I watched a few episodes of the VH1 show The Pick-up Artist (reality TV where Mystery teaches a bunch of guys to pick up girls). They constantly used corny lines like "I need a female opinion on _"

Any girl who has seen the show is going to respond with "OMG are you one of those pick-up guys?" if she hears a similar line (if she really likes you then she'll ignore it and pretend to play along, but then you could have said anything and it would have worked).

I hear that's exactly what happened with all the lines/techniques in Neil Strauss' book The Game.

The whole point of lines is to show the girl you are articulate and intelligent enough to have a good sense of humor. If everyone starts using the same ones girls will catch on, and the lines will stop working.

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

#146

Post by tptacek »

blhack wrote: post #40

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 w…

Life is very, very short. Given the choice between building yet another Craigslist-killer that nobody will use and anything that people will use, choose the latter. You will never get the most productive years of your life back. Knowing SEO, web dev, and a lot about classified ads is cold comfort.

At the end of each failed company, you are going to feel like "well, at least I learned a lot". I know, because that's how I felt. You feel that way because your brain is insulating you from the real loss. You have indeed learned things; that's what makes this particular rationalization so powerful.

Many, many people tried making Myspace clones. Many, many more will try to make Facebook clones. Inevitably, one or two people will be successful, just like people will occasionally win the lottery.

Other people will succeed with companies that contain elements of Facebook, or OK Cupid, or Twitter, or Craigslist. But their businesses won't be "better Twitter" or "better Facebook"; they'll be distinct, unique, interesting businesses that learned lessons from earlier successful companies and applied them to do something different. Some of these companies may grow to challenge Facebook, just like Twitter did. But they won't have gotten there by pointing a finger at Facebook and saying "you're going down".

My advice: learn everything you can from Twitter, and then use the ideas to come up with something you can build and get money from.

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

#147

Post by 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.)

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

#148

Post by mysteryleo »

tron_carter wrote: post #120
mysteryleo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow. that's really insightful. thanks for the post. I guess you're right, there is room for improvement, but . . . I wonder if the failure rate is higher, because those ideas are common, and everyone tries it. Yeah maybe the same number will succeed, but since everyone and their mom is doing it, it probably won't be you . . . dunno. Btw, a news site should be on the list too. Even I have one of those: http://tech.raw…

I always thought a sports version of techmeme would be useful. Voila! http://sports.rawsignal.com

haha thanks. yeah, we built this product for ourselves and friends. it's kind of a passion product that we're constantly working on.

sports was for my brother, but then he wanted college football specifically, so we rolled out this for him: http://collegefb.rawsignal.com/

will we become huge, who knows. who cares really, we love what we do.

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

#150

Post by 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.

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