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“Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

andrewchen.co

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Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#101

Post by ska »

cabaalis wrote: post #13

Do I have any of these "realms" wrong? It seems the best startup idea would be one that adds a new "realm" rather than rinses and repeats for another direct object. Uber for = simplify a process that involves transporting or delivering something somewhere Tinder for = rate/advertise/connect some product nearby Birchbox for = periodically refill a perishable or consumable Airbnb for = locate and book some experience o…

I think you are trying to define a taxonomy of such services based on the nominal/advertised proposition to end consumers.

I'm not sure that's the right way to quantify the startups themselves, as the business case is sometimes only tangentially related to said proposition.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#102

Post by holler »

noonespecial wrote: post #9

By "taken" do they maybe mean "validated"? Ideas are executed not "owned". The proof is in the doing.

this. While it's an interesting article and thought experiment, I don't think anyone should be discouraged from trying to build the next ride-hailing, dating, or couch-surfing platform simply because others have already found success in it. Competition makes the world spin, and in the grand scheme of things, we're only just beginning.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#104

Post by kristopolous »

acrefoot wrote: post #53
kristopolous wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

The "Zero to One" wisdom is that lots of competition means low margins for the business. It's very difficult to afford much more than minimum wages for your sandwich shop employees. That's part of why you don't see a lot of venture-funded restaurants.

LA has quite a large number of them. The restaurant startup space is quite big these days.

Regardless, the optics of venture funding changes this analysis because now we're looking at ROI and not just say, creating successful enterprises that create wealth and value.

The latter is the thing of interest to me. In technology we've focused too much on the former. A say, twenty person software company where everyone is paid well and the customers like the product is a worthy, fine goal. $5,000,000,000 MRR is fine as well, but the vegas-style way people think of tech shouldn't be the only road out there.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#105

Post by WaxProlix »

froindt wrote: post #37
WaxProlix wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants their hands to touch someone else's booger and cheeto dust coated peripherals, or vice-versa. There have been some times recently where I'd have paid money (but not much) to test drive computer hardware before buying it, but to some extent you can do that by purchasing from places with a liberal return policy. Speaking of test drive, I'm in the market for a car and would love to be able to actually test…

Google Voice number for car dealerships. Turo to try cars out for a few days. The owner would probably be happy to tell you what they do or don't like as well - and perhaps sell it to you if they were looking for something else.

Turo if you could search by car type without having to specify date ranges maybe?

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#106

Post by mordechai9000 »

paultopia wrote: post #23

tinder for weed. somebody did tinder for weed. that's got to be the most young californian thing ever.

I had an idea kind of similar to that. Call it Herb Grind(e)r. I don't use weed myself, and I'm married, so I don't know how much need there is.

I actually think something more like Meetup for weed users would be kind of cool, though. Find fun activities to do with herb friendly people.(Disc golf, anyone?)

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#107

Post by redkoala »

WaxProlix wrote: post #15
arxpoetica wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not an opportunity for consoles per se (see cheeto comment), but maybe an opportunity for renting games from your neighbors. Heck, I could see this being extended online in quite a unique way. Cheaper renting some movie or game from someone who already owns it...

Except that nobody owns games or movies anymore. I suspect that letting someone log on to my Steam account would potentially be grounds for a banning, and losing whatever investment I have in the platform.

Redbox is a thing. Not for renting out PC games, but there is a case for renting out physical console games. A large part of GameStop’s business model is retrading second hand games.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#108

Post by blfr »

kristopolous wrote: post #90
blfr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yandex has about ~1.5% revenues of Google. Baidu ~11%. It's not even a contest which rakes in the most money.

If I had a company that made even 0.1% of Google, I'd probably start each day running around the room in feats of joy and delight. Seriously, if I could pay talented people many hundreds of thousands of dollars, have a nice office, happy customers, a decent product, and only make a paltry 136 million a year, where do I sign up?!

You're getting away from the tread though. At 0.1% you're not FedEx to Google's UPS.

And if you're running a similar service, say a speciality search engine, Google might come after you at a moment's notice.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#109

Post by redkoala »

airstrike wrote: post #16
QuinnWilton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that, at least in places with decent internet, something like ShadowPC negates the need for such a service. I rent a top of the line gaming PC for ~$25/month, and run my games in the cloud. With what I used to spend keeping a gaming rig upgraded, it doesn't even make sense not to rent something that's always going to be state of the art.

Can't really play FPS or RTS on the cloud, though EDIT: I'll be damned, according to reddit you can even do CSGO on one of these beasts. I guess that solves what I'm buying myself for Christmas

I was on an early pilot for Google Stadia and could play Assasin’s Creed Oddyssey smoothly on a high speed internet connection.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#110

Post by cjblomqvist »

robomartin wrote: post #56

Very often engineering types can only think of differentiation in technical terms. I think I can say that, in practice, at least in mature markets, differentiation is more about positioning and marketing rather than almost anything else. Easy examples: - Cars - Bottled water - Computer monitors The vast majority of automobiles produced today have reached a level of design and manufacturing maturity that makes them pr…

You can do the apple thing, but imo that's more than just marketing abs branding. To be a startup though (work radical growth) it's likely you'll be able to do and sustain that only with marketing and branding as a differentiator. Imo.
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