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Startup idea list

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup idea list

#191

Post by arafalov »

arafalov wrote: post #160

I have a whole (Google) Drive of ideas, each with a hook, strategy, and business plan. Some of them, I have seen startups to independently try. I will post a bunch as individual sub-comments, see if anybody wants to make a startup of them. If somebody does, I will be happy to share most of the rest of details, in exchange for free accounts, recognition, etc. Ok, I posted about 10% of what I have (most here, one was s…

Airport Kindle store

Sell worldwide Kindle Help users to be very quickly setup and configured Buy books by shop issuing gift cards and taking cash in any/local currency Get money from Amazon referrals Provide limited wifi, so people could browse/buy more books

Allows to sell a lot of stuff without much store space.

Re: Startup idea list

#192

Post by arafalov »

arafalov wrote: post #160

I have a whole (Google) Drive of ideas, each with a hook, strategy, and business plan. Some of them, I have seen startups to independently try. I will post a bunch as individual sub-comments, see if anybody wants to make a startup of them. If somebody does, I will be happy to share most of the rest of details, in exchange for free accounts, recognition, etc. Ok, I posted about 10% of what I have (most here, one was s…

Photo-workshop aggregation

People like to do photography workshops. But information about workshops is all over the place.

TWIP talked about not having photography workshop aggregator website.

Build one (for worldwide audience) by using Google alerts for keywords and/or site scraping/RSS subscription..

Use NLP/NER to extract people/Location/keywords to make it simpler to populate the database. Maybe use SOLR for searching cached copies of ads.

Start by making it easier for a human to aggregate, then make it a destination that drives traffic, then give photographers tools to manage availability and maybe publication of their workshops through multiple channels.

Expose workshops as calendars for people to subscribe.

Expose information as a widget for SquareSpace, WordPress, etc to allow photographers to use this service for workshop announcement (and therefore locking them in into freemium model)

Making money: * Allow people to subscribe by location, topic, dates (e.g. show me things in Dec-Jan near me) * This creates a list to own and resource to ‘onsell’ for ads/special-offers. * Photographers can pay to access additional features that will then send reminders about classes filling-up

And another page of details.....

Re: Startup idea list

#193

Post by saraid216 »

tocomment wrote: post #93
hp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance can't work if either all or none of your customers are going to file a claim, because the premise of insurance is that those who don't file claims pay for those who do. This insurance would have to charge a premium that would cover the "everyone files a claim" case, which means people would be paying N dollars in order to have a chance of getting their N dollars back. Not a good deal ;-)

Right, unless the insurance company can hedge their bets. At it's simplest they could insure themselves with a re-insurance company. They could also figure out financial consequences of social security going away and place long term bets on that. If they are able to hedge properly, they're basically reselling that hedge.

I... honestly am not qualified to say that this is what it is, but I would strongly suggest taking a look at the details of how we entered this recession. It sounds extremely familiar.

Re: Startup idea list

#194

Post by gadders »

lutusp wrote: post #50
tocomment wrote: post #35

Ok a couple more ideas; sorry to post so many :-( A turn signal that produces the turn signal ticking sound really loudly outside your car so the person in front of you is aware you want to turn. Sell sterilized tape worms for weight loss. It seems like a great way to lose weight but I'd be freaked out by the though of them reproducing inside of me. If a tape worm harmlessly died after a few month I'd be up for it, e…

> Sell sterilized tape worms for weight loss. It seems like a great way to lose weight but I'd be freaked out by the though of them reproducing inside of me. If a tape worm harmlessly died ... The tapeworms might not cooperate: http://gizmodo.com/5910770/brain-tapeworms-are-real-and-they... http://www.inquisitr.com/240780/brain-tapeworms-are-a-terrif... I personally don't want tapeworms in my brain -- there's already…

Although there seems to be potential in using intestinal worms to fix auto-immune diseases of the bowel like Crohns Disease.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=helminthic-...

Re: Startup idea list

#195

Post by dgunn »

hp wrote: post #70
tocomment wrote: post #25

Ok, I have no idea how to do this startup but it seems very profitable. Have you ever noticed how anyone under 40 believes with 100% certainty that social security won't be around for them when they retire. Well I think it probably will be around. Most big (popular?) government programs aren't going away no matter what the media says. So how about selling social security insurance. Buyers pay a premium each month to…

Insurance can't work if either all or none of your customers are going to file a claim, because the premise of insurance is that those who don't file claims pay for those who do. This insurance would have to charge a premium that would cover the "everyone files a claim" case, which means people would be paying N dollars in order to have a chance of getting their N dollars back. Not a good deal ;-)

This isn't necessarily the case. Life insurance insures against certainty.

I think one things which would make this idea feasible is the fact that people are old by the time they receive SS so a certain percentage (a somewhat predictable one) will be dead. If a high enough percentage is expected to be dead, you could create rates which would allow you to win over the long run.

You could also make the SS insurance apply only to the individuals and not their beneficiaries who would have received the SS benefit in the event of the individual dying prior to receiving benefits.

I know it's grim but just some thoughts..

Re: Startup idea list

#196

Post by saraid216 »

benrequena wrote: post #72

Here's an app idea. Show notifications when the device is within a certain distance from the location of a past historical event. ...or past Crime ...or a message another app user has left.

This smells like an ARG. And even if it isn't, there are plenty of overlapping demographics who'd like it.

I can see all kinds of weird unintended uses for it, too. ("Alice <3 Bob" marked in random places.)

Re: Startup idea list

#197

Post by arafalov »

arafalov wrote: post #160

I have a whole (Google) Drive of ideas, each with a hook, strategy, and business plan. Some of them, I have seen startups to independently try. I will post a bunch as individual sub-comments, see if anybody wants to make a startup of them. If somebody does, I will be happy to share most of the rest of details, in exchange for free accounts, recognition, etc. Ok, I posted about 10% of what I have (most here, one was s…

Making support calls hurt less

Introduce man-in-a-middle: phone service (like Google Voice, Conferencing, etc). Used specifically for people calling tech/customer support and provide services to make that experience less painful.

Obvious things: ) Track the time things really take ) Record conversations (some thoughts around one-party and two-party consent here, but if they say 'this conversation can be recorded', you can probably record it too) ) Everybody calling the same tech-support number is also in the same text chat conference. Gives them something to do and also creates a sense of community around shared pain. Maybe even some solutions. ) Give them some pausable social games to play. E.g. 'Hangman with a 'customer support' rep hanging and swear words to guess? :-) ) Integrate GetHuman ) Provide estimated Queuing time based on sample of people using the service

Less obvious things: ) Allow injecting crisp English/whatever voice commands to the system who expects voice navigation. Helps all those for whom English is second/third language (see http://youtu.be/fhE2WgHIuzc) ) Offer AutoMute (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/telephone_moni...) ) Provide journalistic interface with statistics/breakdown Allow people to say 'allow/disallow to be contacted for the story' ) Visualise call tree and let user click straight on the result (A company was started just around that couple of years back)

Making money * Allow companies to place their agents into the call, like Comcast Cares * Allow NLP api hook to promote specific customers in the queue (or every customer using the service....) * Allow customers to pay for anonymous accounts (why?) * Allocated inbound number that automatically records that ==nobody ever called back== * Let users do Amazon Turk tasks while they wait as a way to pay for the service

And another page of thoughts.....

Re: Startup idea list

#198

Post by Buzaga »

!OVER-THE-TOP-ALERT In-browser/Facebook MMO PVP game

A browser game(not HTML5 magic.. those that function like RTS, for example) that permitted all sort of harassment, apart from directly competing/fighting(example.: click to send 10 thugs to attack other player HQ), it would also possess other mechanics like slowban and hellban to fire at other players, Area of Effect stuff, scorching earth, looting, reputation, karma

Other than fu#king with your enemies/friends by making their game slow or making them silent without them knowing, there could be all kinds of creative "bans"(that would be like curses, but since I haven't thought of a setting to run this on top on I won't call them this way).. mess with the player interface, steal/spy on resources, the more over the top, the better

the game would be designed to encourage everyone to harass everyone(or to polarize harassers/good people, like in UO), with some additional mechanics that would encourage different types of interaction too, like parties, guilds, if you're teamed up, collaborating could mitigate a 'ban' that could make you die easily... but betraying is game too

Monetizing through micro-transactions, with a big eye on balance(evade the "pay-to-win" path to the max)

Re: Startup idea list

#199

Post by saraid216 »

tocomment wrote: post #117

Problem: Customers ask for a cup for water in restaurants with selve serve soda fountains and proceed to fill the cup with soda. (Is this a big problem?) Solution: QR codes (or something else) printed on the inside bottom of each cup intended for soda. (water cups would be normal cups.) Then the machine would only dispense soda if it sees the QR code. (Or same idea with RFID)

I think this is interesting, but I suspect any solution will cost more than the loss incurred from the problem. But, ignoring that,

A good way to implement it might be to have an entire line of cups that have the QR code printed, with a peel-off sticker inside hiding it. Then you could just have one type of cup and peel it off whenever someone asks for water/soda.

Re: Startup idea list

#200

Post by jvanderwal »

joering2 wrote: post #185

OK, here is the list of my ideas. "working" on it for years, never had balls to start implementing, BUT I am computer programmer if you want to work on any of those together, let me know. Otherwise take it, "steal it", and make it big. And mention you heard it from joe :) - watches exchange club. you are doing as a middle man between watch lover. X amount to signup + monthly fee gives your user base access to each ot…

UniKey is doing the "iPhone door opener" idea. Very cool tech - can't wait until it's available.

http://www.unikeytech.com/

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