Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bored with no ideas for next startup

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#21

Post by pg »

NSX2 wrote: post #14
pg wrote: post #11

What do you wish someone else would build for you?

IN GENERAL this is a great frame of mind to come up with ideas for a non-programming mind; I think, however, that as a developer such a perspective would lead to technically interesting stuff that few people would use / pay for. As time remains constant and life becomes more complicated, I suspect people will become more selective and use more of the kinds of services they would actually bother paying for and limitin…

Google aside, that rarely translates into "great business".

I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#23

Post by aswanson »

pg wrote: post #21
NSX2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IN GENERAL this is a great frame of mind to come up with ideas for a non-programming mind; I think, however, that as a developer such a perspective would lead to technically interesting stuff that few people would use / pay for. As time remains constant and life becomes more complicated, I suspect people will become more selective and use more of the kinds of services they would actually bother paying for and limitin…

Google aside, that rarely translates into "great business". I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.

Throw in Intel, AT&T, and all the early transistor companies for good measure.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#24

Post by NSX2 »

pg wrote: post #21
NSX2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IN GENERAL this is a great frame of mind to come up with ideas for a non-programming mind; I think, however, that as a developer such a perspective would lead to technically interesting stuff that few people would use / pay for. As time remains constant and life becomes more complicated, I suspect people will become more selective and use more of the kinds of services they would actually bother paying for and limitin…

Google aside, that rarely translates into "great business". I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.

No, I mean just Google.

Apple in my mind = present an OS GUI according to the needs of the human brain. A lot more than 6 people were/are/will be interested in that.

Microsoft = make big business computer functions possible on the home computer (at least originally). Apparently more than 6 people were interested in that.

Yahoo's proposition originally = the world wibe web is taking off exponentially and you need some sort of list or something to keep track of all the interesting stuff that keeps popping up.

Again, more than 6 people were/are interested in that.

So, only Google. And truth be said, even Google doesn't count that much since from my understanding Google was just living off of angel/VC funding for a few years until a biz-dev V.P. came up with the idea to tie search results to paid advertising as text on the side.

Without what became adwords, Google would have just stayed an interesting technical solution.

Had that V.P. kept his mouth shut and left, secured VC backing based on his cred as an exec in a KP/Seq-backed venture and started his own search engine based on his adwords idea, I suspect he'd be the billionaire and "google" would have turned out to be a startup his subesquent company bought and absorbed.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#25

Post by NSX2 »

aswanson wrote: post #23
pg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google aside, that rarely translates into "great business". I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.

Throw in Intel, AT&T, and all the early transistor companies for good measure.

AT&T is too broad and I don't know what you mean specifically, but from a common-sense business perpective, the problem Intel works on is "how to keep making smaller faster better processors" and I think again that's another idea that, technical though it may be, captures the interest of way more than 6 people.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#26

Post by joe24pack »

mixmax wrote: post #8
joe24pack wrote: post #6

Find a good way to have an asynchronous feed back from a web server to a web client, a true general purpose "push" protocol as an extension of HTTP. Hey you can even call it HTTP2W or HTTP2HTTP. Of course you'll have to come up with not only the protocol definition but also a reference implementation for both the client and the server. Sounds like fun, eh?

Sounds like it will be impossible to make money.

Hey, I like to make a buck just like the next guy, but it still sounds like a neat thing to work on. I'm sure you could find a way to charge someone something after developing this.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#27

Post by NSX2 »

NSX2 wrote: post #12

BTW ... let's say you get the help you want. Do you offer anything in return?

This is sooo funny. Almost every week there's a "Ask YC" type of post where a business idea is seeking programming talent, and almost all the time the response is, "Why should I partner with you? What will you do for the startup while I code?"

And here we have a "bored software developer" just soliciting free business ideas and the mere suggestion that he should offer something in return seems to be unpopular.

Have you ever considered that the person who you seek ideas from may have developed the idea over months ... or even years of thinking, unpaid research, trial-and-error, awkward conversations with potential users, constant analysis of other things on the market, etc.?

Perhaps you may consider that from their perspective it would be something like, "Why should I share the insights of months/years of thinking about the problem? What were you doing while I was investing the time to investigate the feasibility?"

And yet the very question of what value the idea giver can expect meets scorn.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#28

Post by NSX2 »

I know how you can get an idea for your next startup. Call your favorite VC firm and ask them, "You know how VCs are always lamenting that great business ideas are a dime a dozen? I can't think of any ideas for now - but I have 30 cents! Can you please write down 3 dozen ideas you think are great so I can develop them?"

Problem solved ... for a mere 30 cents.

Keep me updated on any progress.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#29

Post by aneesh »

NSX2 wrote: post #24
pg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google aside, that rarely translates into "great business". I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.

No, I mean just Google. Apple in my mind = present an OS GUI according to the needs of the human brain. A lot more than 6 people were/are/will be interested in that. Microsoft = make big business computer functions possible on the home computer (at least originally). Apparently more than 6 people were interested in that. Yahoo's proposition originally = the world wibe web is taking off exponentially and you need some…

Microsoft is actually more B2B than B2C.

And yeah, Yahoo! was just making a list of links - hardly a challenging technical problem, but people wanted it.

Re: Bored with no ideas for next startup

#30

Post by ldambra »

Why would you come up "anonymously for now" ? If you have an already successful start-up experience, why not talking about it and tell us a bit about you ? What are the risks in doing so ?

I'm a bit cautious by nature and I'm just curious about it. If I had an already successful experience and were in your situation I'd rather talk about it and introduce myself a bit. It helps to gain trust from other people and would make your request more appealing.

Post reply on HN