"Demonstrate proper operation of laboratory equipment by inspecting, calibrating, cleaning, oiling, and greasing equipment, and analyze data to evaluate the effects of regulatory limitations on land use projects, such as explaining regulations, answering visitor requests, needs and interests of individuals and groups on basic rules of good nutrition, healthy eating habits and illness prevention and treatment of cardiac or peripheral vascular treatments, such as meteorological, atmospheric, oceanic, paleoclimate, climate, or related structures such as docks, bridges, tunnels, and other specialized material handling equipment such as endoscopes, closed circuit television, still photography, and testing devices, and repair assistive devices or make adaptive changes to equipment or environments."
Seems like this one is destined to fail due to lack of focus.
I generated these with https://github.com/pteichman/cobe - anyone got other markov chain generators to play with? This one seems pretty basic.
These are not startup ideas, but activities that people do. A startup-idea might be to find a way to make these activities easier.
To make this list more useful, there should be two additional datapoints: 1. How many people does the activity impact 2. How much does the activity impact each person. The product of these would be the total impact. Sorting by the amount of impact would give the most valuable areas for innovation, and there should already be a plenty of businesses focused on these activities.
Actually, if you Google them, you'll find the ONET page for the job descriptions that includes the activity and has more information about the task, e.g. https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/51-8011.00 (tasks are the 'startup ideas')
Even without the list being suitable for mockery, ideas are EASY. Ideas are like opinions, everybody has one. Take a shower, have some ideas. Go out for drinks, hear a bunch of drunk people talking about the great idea they just had. Winnowing out the chaff (not done here) is harder because not everyone agrees on what's chaff, and building a successful company for any of many definitions of success is harder still.
The idea is when an egg is fertilized. Producing a baby is a lot more work, and producing a successful adult is a lot more beyond that.
Having a good idea is at least half of what will determine a successful product.
The problem is that people confuse having an idea with having a good idea. The latter will be something that has things like a justifiable business model, a business plan (seriously, things like path to market and understanding the consumer market are important), something unique that can hook users etc.
Their whole business model seems to be "take quality white box hardware and build a management suite around it". It's not even particularly expensive when compared to white box gear. They already covered the traditional IT MSP model with voice, data and video; so it makes sense they would branch out into facilities management (since a lot of non-tech shops are pulling office IT infrastructure under facilities anyway).
Hundred percent agree. Especially if they upgraded it with >95 CRI and adjustable colour temp based on separate warm-white LED chips (not an array of RGBs).
You know, I never realized until I read your comment that "drone" seems to specifically refer to a UAV, and "robot" to a terrestrial type.
Which is strange to me, since when I hear "drone" the first animal that comes to mind is an ant. I thought it'd just be a catch-all term for any kind of bot.
Well, I think the word "idea" covers a vast range, everything from ideas that you come up with in the shower, to ideas you come up with after a decade of specializing in a specific domain, noticing unmet needs and figuring out how those needs can be met.
What is important to understand is that both types of ideas are useless to the layperson. The former is useless obviously because it hasn't been validated. The latter is also useless however because even if the layperson learns it, they won't have the knowledge and expertise to understand its value, much less know how to execute it.
This is why when someone comes to you and says "I have an idea, but you need to sign an NDA first before I can share it", you should just smile, nod and politely change the subject.
You need to execute well, but you also need to be working on the "right idea" for it to become successful.
The simple core ideas behind Dropbox and AirBnB were seemingly disregarded by many devs and investors when first pitched, but have proven themselves to be valuable. Even Google wasn't initially considered to be a good idea where Yahoo rejected acquiring them for $1M, but turns out Search Engines displaying contextual relevant ads has become one of the most valuable businesses in history.
I think that the point of this list is to say "there are lots of starting points, just pick one and iterate on it until it becomes something with value". It's a pretty well-worn maxim that ideas are worthless and execution is everything, but this is another way to present it.
I've heard multiple times that for a startup to succeed, it needs an idea, a great team to execute it and funding, and that it is enough to have two out of these three. Invariably, the people that say the latter are the ones that have no ideas.
I have lots of ideas, but have very little success. It's super annoying that I'm not able to generate as much interest or momentum on them as they deserve.
> 4678. Develop transactional Web applications, using Web programming software and knowledge of programming languages, such as hypertext markup language (HTML) and extensible markup language (XML).
Where has this list been all my life? I could have been a zillionaire....
I've heard somewhere the way to find start up ideas is to take something like this list and add AI to it. How do you add AI to a nail salon start-up?
How about: build an augmented reality display for customers who are waiting to get their nails done. It's got a camera, and it will show users what their nails would look like with any of the styles offered by the salon applied.
When I was a child, I really hated having to cut my nails. One of the reasons why I developed an interest in technology, is that I wanted to build a device that cod take care of this horrible job for me. Insert hands, and bam, nails trimmed to the ideal length.
To this day, I've neither seen nor built such a device. Devices to print patterns on your finger nails do exist, however.
the generated ones look as good as those, example:
5.Evaluate a vehicle's operation and use of the system and record information on the system, such as the number of miles driven, total mileage, speed, and odometer reading.
6.Prepare and administer reports to provide data on vehicle performance, and to support vehicle performance maintenance and repair.
Could a massive list like this help stop frivolous patents from being viable, or granted? Perhaps if all people could just add their ideas to this list, over time, we could prevent the ability for anyone to patent anything if the idea already existed.
Or do I still not understand patents?
Could this list exist at a stop-patents type website where even the patent office could do a quick search to see if an idea is unique and original, or has been thought of easily already and put on big list?
You dont understand patents. You cant patent an idea. You patent a specific way to do something. For example, you cant patent a mop, but you can patent a specific design of a mop, a way to build it. You cant patent encryption but you can patent an encryption algorithm. You cant patent "compressed video" but can patent a compression format.
A patent requires a detailed writeup of how to do something.
I don't really have a point here, but my wife and I recently looked at burial options and there's a beautiful cemetery near us but the only really affordable option is cremation and storage in a wall of tiny notches with little doors with an indoor/outdoor viewing area and garden for visitors.
I have started referring to it as, "Our Cubby" and my wife hates it.
A lot of it is legal, but there is some change happening. WA recently made it legal to compost* human remains, perhaps the first new option outside of burial and cremation?
I ctrl-f'd for something else and had to do a double take when I saw that. The worrying part is presumable someone actually does that job - which seems to only involve sticking tubes into people, never mind which hole.
I've thought that inserting IVs is something that nurses struggle with a lot and maybe could be automated. It would be an absolute nightmare to develop that robot though, as you'd have to go through all of the medical device certification on top of dealing with all of the edge cases of human anatomy.
Just not sure if it's just a satirical thing -- like, "Hah, look at the silly word jumbles my script generated!" -- or if it's meant as a tool for something.
I subscribed to a few newsletters that would send me startup ideas and problems to solve on a daily basis.
But somehow that didn't do anything for me.
Some even would offer to connect me to people with the problem, but I had the feeling even with people who would say "I have problem X and I'd pay for a solution" the whole process was still too abstract for me.
I think this has more to do with the business side of things than with talking to potential customers and implementing a solution.
How do I start? What are good first steps if you don't know anyone, don't have a network etc.
Flip it on its head: don’t start with an idea. Start by identifying a group of people you belong to (e.g. “Rails developers”), because it gives you an instant leg up in knowing their struggles. Then research their struggles. Write about them, and solve them. Grow an audience (read: email list). After all that research you’ll have a solid idea of what they already want and buy, and you can create that for them. Plus you’ll have built up an audience to sell it to!
It’s not necessarily quick but it works. Amy Hoy & Alex Hillman were the ones who taught me this strategy and I heartily recommend reading everything they’ve written at https://stackingthebricks.com :)
It is a lot easier from a technical standpoint if the group you pick is not already in tech. Replace "rails developers" with something like "antiques collectors" or "massage therapists" or "arborists" any other profession that isn't saturated with software options already. These people all have smartphones and computers but probably have only crappy options for how those tools specifically accelerate their work.
The five shortest ones (11, 13, 13, 13 and 13 characters long):
> 874. Carve meat.
> 5221. Dig trenches.
> 8361. Graft plants.
> 10799. Align wheels.
> 16441. Shampoo hair.
And the five longest ones (291, 305, 308, 317 and 332 characters long):
> 6231. Keep abreast of government regulations and emerging Web technology to ensure regulatory compliance by reviewing current literature, talking with colleagues, participating in educational programs, attending meetings or workshops, or participating in professional organizations or conferences.
> 12863. Design, develop, select, test, implement, and evaluate new or modified informatics solutions, data structures, and decision-support mechanisms to support patients, health care professionals, and their information management and human-computer and human-technology interactions within health care contexts.
> 7530. Keep abreast of game design technology and techniques, industry trends, or audience interests, reactions, and needs by reviewing current literature, talking with colleagues, participating in educational programs, attending meetings or workshops, or participating in professional organizations or conferences.
> 4806. Direct environmental programs, such as air or water compliance, aboveground or underground storage tanks, spill prevention or control, hazardous waste or materials management, solid waste recycling, medical waste management, indoor air quality, integrated pest management, employee training, or disaster preparedness.
> 5895. Compute, retrace, or adjust existing surveys of features such as highway alignments, property boundaries, utilities, control and other surveys to match the ground elevation-dependent grids, geodetic grids, or property boundaries and to ensure accuracy and continuity of data used in engineering, surveying, or construction projects.
---
My method for determining these things (which may be of interest to some), using just my favourite text editor, rather than slurping it into a REPL for some programming language and manipulating it thus:
1. Copy the whole document to the clipboard;
2. Paste in Vim (and note at this point that lists lose their markers in favour of just a tab character, so the numbers disappear);
3. Manually remove everything that’s not the list;
4. Manually remove the tab at the start of each line with `:%s/^\t//` or block selection (this could also be done in the next step with slight modification, matching `^\t\(.\+)` and using `submatch(1)`);
5. Prefix each line with its length and the line number using `:%s/.\+/\=len(submatch(0)) . "\t" . line(".") . ". " . submatch(0)` (I actually used asterisk instead of \+, but HN formatting hates unmatched asterisks; see `:help sub-replace-\=`; another approach for the line number part alone would have been to block-insert `1.\t` on every line, then block-select all but the first, and use `g<CTRL-A>` to increment them, see `:help v_g_CTRL-A`);
6. Sort by line length with `:sort n` (since I had put it at the start of the line for convenience);
7. Optionally strip the character counts out again with `:%s/^\d\+\t//` or similar.
sub-replace-\= and v_g_CTRL-A are among my favourite not-so-well-known Vim features. They’re not useful very often, but when they are, they’re really great.
The problem with such a pipeline is that it’s not interactive. Now if you had a REPL that would memoize the steps so that it only ever did one `curl` request, that’d be different and useful.
I know all of this off the top of my head, so less than a minute all up. Well, except the line(".") bit; that didn’t occur to me until I’d done it manually with the help of v_g_CTRL-A, and I had forgotten about the "." argument until I looked up its docs—haven’t used it in a while.
Great stuff - however, one thing that is missing is the ability to discuss these ideas in a forum-like medium. This is why I created the GH repo: https://github.com/marcelosousa/million-dollar-ideas.
I might code a script that pushes each item as an issue to the repo to at least allow for that.
What would make this for more useful is to have a list of even mildly _validated_ ideas, even by showing that there are existing competitors or a market for it. Or pointing to a gap where it exists.
Validation is the first step to product market fit.
(function () {
var els = document.getElementsByTagName("li");
var startups = ["A web-based platform", "An AI-powered platform", "Uber for",
"Subscription-based service", "Blockchain", "A folder that syncs"]
for(var i = 4 ; i < els.length ; ++i) {
els[i].innerText = startups[Math.floor(Math.random() * startups.length)] + " for people who " + els[i].innerText;
}})()
Paste it into dev console on that page to receive an instant list of proper startup ideas.
The code is GPLv3, and can be trivially modified to generate further interesting startup ideas.
EDIT: Modified to add a greater variety of instant startup ideas!
I never have any that are even half-decent. Plenty for things that aren't businesses. Sometimes I act on those but they don't make me money. None for businesses. When I think I have one it always turns out there are a few players in the space already, one or more of them appear to be doing a good job with no clear way to outdo them, but nonetheless all appear to be struggling (so it might have been an OK idea when no-one was doing it but trying now would pretty much be doomed, spending weeks to months to get off the ground to take 10th place eating from a small pie). Or it's something you'd have to have FAANG resources and/or a huge pile of cash available to do (owning/collecting relevant machine learning datasets, mostly).
When other people say "hey I'd love an app that let me do X, you should build it, you'd make so much money" it usually turns out there are already 20 in the app store, and they "love" the idea so much that they'd never bothered to look for one. This is true whether it's for themselves, or for their job.
"Splice or solder cables together or to overhead transmission lines, customer service lines, or street light lines, using hand tools, epoxies, or specialized equipment."
No...no no don't do that you will stand a good chance of being electrocuted.
i have a backend tech stack that i believe is scalable and efficient (REST or websockets). i'd like to prove this out with a demo or app. i can do a pure-js SPA frontend (eg fitno.us) but i'm terrible at UI so it's not gonna be pretty
is there a free service that i could provide that people would use at high scale ? there doesn't need to be a way to eventually monetize it
required: store data to database
optional: rest calls to 3rd parties
Instead of just a 2-way chat program, there is a 3rd participant "the FBI guy" who also joins the chat. Every message sent must get approved by the FBI guy before it goes through to the recipient.
It should also be possible to send messages to the FBI guy directly. e.g. "Does she/he like me?"
i like the concept (and it's sort of the inversion of another chat app idea i've been tossing around along the lines of cyrano de bergerac) but i don't see what's going to drive adoption
what's the motivation for a user to use this app vs un-moderated chat ? is it driven by the moderator, eg a parent wanting to limit what their kids can say or see ? or is it one of the 2 chatting parties that prefers to have someone else sanitize content before they have to see it, eg to ensure that they don't get d*ck pics ?
in the latter case, what motivates the moderator to participate ?
I think it would have to grow (or die) virally. Like GMail in the early days, moderators would get accounts by being invited.
Although there probably is a way to pitch it as a parental control, I think other demographics could enjoy it too. As you say, the moderation basically ensures no creepers or d*ck picks. That will probably encourage more female users to trust the platform, which would certainly help to boost overall numbers.
It could be a means of chatting to strangers, where the moderator chooses 2 people to pair up. That could get interesting. The idea is still pretty half-baked, but I'd like to explore it more, and maybe use it as a testing ground for decentralised chat technology.
For people who are unsure about social norms of chatting to people, such as those with Aspergers, autism spectrum, or who are just plain shy, I think being a moderator would be a great way to learn how to have an ordinary conversation. I'd also want to make the website fully accessible, with text readers for the blind, and automatic language translation so that people can make friends in other countries.
No idea, I'm a programmer not a businessman. I don't think OP actually minds about income: "there doesn't need to be a way to eventually monetize it"
I guess some money could be made by using the chat logs to train AI chat bots, and selling those bots. I have no idea how that would work in practice though.
* Check with customers to determine their usefulness.
* Inoculate animals against various diseases, such as internships.
* Review product promotional materials, and physical fitness.
* Monitor computer-controlled test equipment, using germicides and sterilizers.
* Transpose music to alternate keys, or to towers.
* Operate farm machinery, such as espresso machines.
* Document software defects, using hand and horn signals.
* Prepare bank deposits, or performing arts.
* Run errands, such as animal dehorning or castration.
* Forecast staff, equipment, utensils, and silverware.