Love it. Two years ago I did this, and wrote a little something about it when I started:<p>"Why my code and ideas are public"<p><a href="https://sivers.org/ws" rel="nofollow">https://sivers.org/ws</a><p>I blogged about it to call attention to it for one main reason:<p>I wanted to see if anyone would "steal" the ideas.<p>Because it seems to be many (MANY) people's biggest worry about sharing any ideas: that someone will steal them. See the comments in <a href="https://sivers.org/how2hire" rel="nofollow">https://sivers.org/how2hire</a> for example. Also this from Jason Fried of Basecamp: <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/683809719782215680" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/683809719782215680</a><p>Anyway - it's been two years now, and nobody has stolen any of the ideas. It could just be that my ideas suck, but I suspect that the worry of people stealing ideas is nothing to worry about for any of us.
How on earth does this constitutes as open source? So if I write out my research results to the public, it is considered open source? What is the source? The text is not a compiled version of some previous text. And if it where (LaTeX) the underlying idea is still present in the "compiled" version. No saying I don't like his ideas, but there's beside the point.<p>When open source becomes a layman term for productivity and do "like all the cool guys in the bay", rather than one of ethics and critical reflection on contemporary ideologies underlying technological developments and their affects on society and the world as a whole.<p>BTW: this comment is open source...
I made some companies out of ideas that I had. I told everybody my ideas.<p>When I created my first company most people thought I was crazy when I told them my idea. It turned out to be a brilliant idea that worked very well but most people did not recognize it at the time, let alone put the resources to copy it...<p>In fact, because I was young and naive I was enthusiastic about it, but talking to people(specially experienced people) made you doubt in yourself.<p>Now I have friends that are also successful entrepreneurs, and it is a very common experience among us.<p>Now I don't talk with lots of people about my ideas, I don't want to argue or convince or whatever.This can make you to hang on on bad ideas by ego before they are tested. I just test them in the real world as fast as I can.<p>Most of them are not good once you test them, but thanks to them you iterate or discover good ideas.
Minor point: "open source" is not open source because you have the source. It's open source because it's <i>licensed that way</i>. Adding a public domain or cc-0 license to the page would achieve the same effect.
Kudos for the last one: re-type the masters. It's brilliantly weird and wonderful! Reminded me of this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...</a>
I guess most people here have similar lists, and it takes a lot of guts to take them public, thanks for that :)<p>At some point I started to split them into technical ideas on the one side and business ideas on the other side. That helps to deal with them in different ways.<p>The technical ideas are usually stuff that would be helpful to have and that solve particular small problems, but on closer inspection they just turn out to be things you can just as well do with existing tools (usually like excel or other tools). Or they are really just ideas for some kind of library or service that could be a small OSS project. Most of those ideas are fun to play with, but the fun would go away if I looked at them in an economic way.<p>The business ideas are the ones where I would immediately think about competition, costs, etc. They are usually more fun to research and reason about. And for most things that you could think about that don't exist yet, the reason for that nonexistence is often much more enlightening and interesting than the original idea.
There's a whole website dedicated to ideas like these: <a href="http://www.halfbakery.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.halfbakery.com/</a> Some of them are very funny, some might actually make good businesses.
><i>Look Inside for New Hires<p>Company takes pictures of inside of their office so prospective employees know the culture/space they are getting into. Hey Glassdoor this would be great for you!</i><p>Already done: <a href="http://www.officelovin.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.officelovin.com/</a>
I keep mine on GitHub[0], however mine aren't really business ideas and more like long-term side-projects with very little scope for making money.<p>[0]: <a href="http://github.com/captn3m0/ideas" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/captn3m0/ideas</a>
I know it's blasphemy but I think a really good idea should be kept secret. Smart, motivated people will compete if the idea is novel and compelling.<p>The origin of the myth that you should blab your ideas is the fact that the vast majority of ideas are not interesting.<p>But if you have DO one of those rare ideas that is new and interesting, why the hell give it away? Build it and then people can know about it through your nice implementation.
This is brilliant! I wish more people would do that.<p>I'd add a fat, explicit disclaimer that you don't want anything if people actually made a billion with those ideas (but might be happy if treated for dinner ;).
Nice! I maintain a list of startup idea lists [1]. If I get some time, I'll add your list too, but if anyone else is feeling up to it, the repo is open source [2] and I'd gladly accept PRs :)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/startup-ideas/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/startup-ideas/</a>
[2] <a href="https://github.com/brikis98/hello-startup-site" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/brikis98/hello-startup-site</a>
It will be interesting to sum up those ideas into an awesome list[1][2] at Github.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/tastejs/awesome-app-ideas" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tastejs/awesome-app-ideas</a>
Most lists of this type are silly, but for those of you looking for business ideas, this one is actually pretty interesting. But caveat: make sure you get out of the building and talk to potential customers first. Usually there's a very good reason these ideas haven't been executed on yet.
Just looked up "Dark Ages" in App Store prepared to pay <= $5 for it. Oh well. (I lack self control, need more stuff like this. Also, need something that stops me from texting certain people during certain hours, etc)
Oliver Samwer, while of course a controversial person, correctly points out that usually ideas are cheap. Execution, however, is where things get real and therefor hard. I tend to think that this is true more often than not.
The "Talk to the Picutres" books already exist[1].<p>A good one is Welcome to the Zoo by Alison Jay[2].<p>Also wordless picture books are popular amongst Rudolf Steiner teachers.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/wordless-picture-books" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/wordless-picture-books</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Zoo-Alison-Jay/dp/184011973X" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Zoo-Alison-Jay/dp/184011973X</a>
When it comes to implementing ideas, I learnt one thing that has become crucial for me: an idea needs to have a deep personal relevance in order to be able to bring it to its fullest life.<p>Since I figured out that personal truth, I stopped searching for ideas from the outside. A list like this can still be inspiring, but just because an idea sounds good or seems to make sense, if I don't have any profound interest in it, I know I won't have the energy and drive to realise its potential.
> COLIVING - Like WeWork but for living.<p>Already implemented at <a href="http://www.buildcampus.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.buildcampus.com/</a><p>> STOP SLACKERS - Logs all employees use, anonymously. Found <a href="http://www.rescuetime.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.rescuetime.com</a> which does this awesomely<p>Already implemented at <a href="https://wakatime.com/" rel="nofollow">https://wakatime.com/</a>
"Housemax - Carmax for single family homes, buy it now price, close in 10 days, instant home liquidity."<p>Opendoor founded by Keith Rabois is as probably as close to this idea as you'll ever get.<p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/02/26/startup-opendoor-wants-to-buy-houses-that-are-for-sale/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/02/26/startup-opend...</a>
There are some good things on this list.<p>The real estate industry is a bit of a hobby of mine and the problem with trying to bring it into the 21st century is there are some very powerful vested interests who want to keep things as they are. It is also very local which makes it hard to scale. You have to unlock a lot of value or have very good local connections to get any where.
I'll probably never get Jake to admit it, but until proven otherwise, I think being vocal about my own ideas is part of how CaseText came to be - and that was absolutely the purpose of putting it out there. If not me, then whoever.<p>edit: Have talked w/ Jake several times personally since they formed. Sometimes when I'm antsy I beg him for a job as consultant!
Just a word usage nitpick:<p>In your "Hacker News for Moms" idea description, you say, "Higher quality posts and articles than the <i>dribble</i> that most moms read on their Facebook feeds" (emphasis mine). I believe you mean "drivel" here. Many parents <i>do</i> deal with their fair share of dribble, but that's something else entirely.
I did the same thing on a trello board. Had some friends collaborate and add some potential projects too. Perhaps we could make a site which allows groups to form around these and contribute? Could tie it into trello, github, etc. If anyone would be interested in collaborating and building something like this send me a message :)
One of my ideas was to create a site where people can share their business ideas with the world and others can find them and use them.<p>I would contribute some of my ideas to such a website and there's a good chance that some people might be interested in reading/using them.<p>Anyone interested in building such a website? :)
Was recently approached to work on a commercial real estate idea similar to a lot of yours in the idea of making things easier and more modern. I know nothing of the field, so it's interesting to read your ideas on it and see you share some of the same sentiments.
I feel like no-one has managed to build a small-business CRM (like his Shoebox CRM) effectively yet. I run a one-person business and I'm still using a colour-coded Excel sheet to try and figure out when I should bug sales prospects.
The sqwiggle for moms one is easyish with WebRTC. I made one in an afternoon. <a href="https://github.com/respoke/yodude" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/respoke/yodude</a>
So people publish this, but for some reason, either these are high quality ideas, or they resonate with me better, but I really like them a lot.<p>Since it is open, I might do some and who knows, it might even work.
Reading the list I watched myself clicking on quite a few of the link-like titles, as if there was an actual project following the link. So there's definitely something to them ;)
I did too!<p><a href="http://www.joshcanhelp.com/ideas-1/" rel="nofollow">http://www.joshcanhelp.com/ideas-1/</a>
i really love the "talk to the pictures" idea! would translate beautifully to a tablet app too, so that you could get a constant stream of new content (ideally creative commons).
I did something similar. I packaged up business ideas I wasn't executing, along with a domain name, logo and mini-business plan. I call them "StartJumpers": <a href="http://startjumper.com" rel="nofollow">http://startjumper.com</a>
I liked the hacker news for moms.<p>I throw in hacker news for Horologists. (I'm working on this now.)<p>Hacker news for collector car enthusiasts.<p>Hacker news for Jewelers.<p>When I was younger, I wanted to make/sell a chewing gum that that had an alkaline natural substance in it; something that would neutralize the acids in you mouth. Something you could use after eating lunch, or something sweet?<p>I imagine just chewing any type of gum would stimulate salivary glands, and subsequently reduce acids? I noticed a European country came out with a gum that claimed to netralize oral acids, but I lost track of it.<p>In high school, I hooked up a old military flight suit to my motorcycles alternator. It kinda kept me warm, but I didn't know enough about electronics at the time to make it really work. Later I wanted to better the idea, and sell the suits. Never did anything. I now see many different electric jackets/suits for motorcyclists. (I was so sick one year in high school. I remember showing up for class freezing, and wet, but I loved that old Honda.)<p>I kinda passed up a chance to get in on that plastic tooth pick/dental pick business. It wasen't my idea, but I worked for the inventor. I think if I treated him better, he would have brought me in. He handed over everything to his son, and financed everything. I really took off. At the time, I though he was just spoiling his kid, but he knew it was a great idea. He was an older Dentist who decided to market these dental tools to the public, and the plastic dental pick was genius, but horrid to our current enviorment. They are the pull tabs of my generation.
I don't mean to troll, but having ideas is nothing. Of course projects start with ideas but if the creator of the idea didn't pursue given concept - neither should you.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyL9EC0S0c&feature=youtu.be&t=835" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csyL9EC0S0c&feature=youtu.be...</a>