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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)

#71

Post by iamwil »

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…

Reminds me of a quote, akin to: Sometimes, we reinvent the wheel not because we need more wheels, but we need more inventors.

If you see your project as learning about tech, then awesome. But I think the OP was warning against those that see their projects as paths to riches with those ideas. There are certain startup ideas that are perennial tar pits with good reason. There's something specific about the problem area that everyone's banged their head against, and often times, it's not a tech problem.

It'd be worth your while to understand it first.

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

#72

Post by pingswept »

stevenj wrote: post #43
pg wrote: post #13

It's true that such ideas tend to be magnets for sloppy thinking, but I think most if not all of them could be pulled off if done right.

Out of curiosity, what do you dislike or think can be done better with Craigslist? In other words, if you were going to build a Craigslist competitor what would you focus on doing differently?

(I'm not pg, obviously.)

I've found the scantiness of information in Craigslist posts a weakness. I have no idea how to fix that, but I rule out a large fraction of ads based on "Not enough info to know what this person is selling." For example, many ads don't have pictures, and many that do have pictures that are tiny and inscrutable.

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

#73

Post by wtracy »

stevenj wrote: post #43
pg wrote: post #13

It's true that such ideas tend to be magnets for sloppy thinking, but I think most if not all of them could be pulled off if done right.

Out of curiosity, what do you dislike or think can be done better with Craigslist? In other words, if you were going to build a Craigslist competitor what would you focus on doing differently?

Craigslist got buying and selling and job hunting pretty much right.

The Craigslist personal sections suck. If you want something closer to the traditional newspaper ad online ("Anyone free Friday night?") and not the experience that today's dating sites give you (create an account, personalize it, finally find someone, realize that your profile is still up and creepy guys are still hitting on you....) there's not much out there.

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

#74

Post by iamwil »

dzlobin wrote: post #64
clistctrl wrote: post #48

I was honestly expecting to see something about a bar revolving around gaming. I've heard it proposed by at least 4 seperate nerd friends.

http://www.barcadebrooklyn.com/

Yeah, and he's opening another branch soon in Philly.

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

#75

Post by sedachv »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #23
[deleted] wrote: post #17

[deleted]

> driverless cars Why not? Technologically, or socially?

It's hard. Just the technology is hard. It would be something on the scale of Federal Express to launch. I am glad Page/Brin/Schmidt are working on it. I can't see too many other people succeeding.

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

#76

Post by chc »

dgallagher wrote: post #37
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! Xcode and Interface Builder, using Core Data and Bindings. Don't expect to make a full-blown 3D video game doing that though. ;)

That will let you make any program you want, as long as it is a simple CRUD app with nothing but text and no processing of the data entered. It will get you about as far as Rails' scaffold generator.

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

#77

Post by dwiel »

jon914 wrote: post #38
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...

As a founder of a startup doing #3 (Stencyl), I can attest to that idea being an enormous time sink and risk. I can name at least 10 startups or larger companies that went after that idea and either died or pivoted. What we have is working, and it's working well, but as we press forward, we find that our strongest value proposition is no longer the code-free aspect, which turns out to be just one small part of a larg…

any chance we might be able to read about what some of those points are?

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

#78

Post by cadr »

smanek wrote: post #24
allwein wrote: 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

It seems like someone did do them! Obvious examples include: 1. basecamp/fogbugz/jira 2. Confluence/Sharepoint 3. django/rails 4. Google Docs 5. Facebook

I think there is a lot further someone could take #3 (crud apps for business). While django/rails are great, I think you could build some more specific tools that would provide a lot more leverage in some cases. (Maybe something like DabbleDB but with some more specifics built in.)

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

#80

Post by wheels »

I know of companies doing well in at least 5 of the 6 spaces listed here. (Future success of friends being the missing one, and there very well may be companies doing well there, and you could almost consider the fact that prominent angels often raise money from other prominent angels as an instance of such.)
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