Startup Ideas We'd Be Willing To Pay For

<i>Have you had another idea you’d pay if existed?</i><p>1. A device that rings a bell or flashes the lights in any/all rooms of my house if my cell phone is at home and rings. This way I don't have to carry it with me everywhere in the house.<p>2. A service which lets me know which restaurants have excess capacity and will give me a discount if I come right now.<p>3. A reasonably priced dependable on-line grocery service that delivers in fly-over country.<p>4. An email device for senior citizens as easy to use as an iPod.<p>5. A device that lets you know whether the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty or clean.<p>6. An open source Windows clone that works.<p>7. A device that automatically disables any cell phone in any car within 50 car lengths of me and heading in my direction.<p>[EDIT: Numbers 1 thru 5 were serious. #6 was a pipedream. #7 was a joke, but like James Bond's Austin Martin, I can dream, can't I? You guys are giving me what I deserve for mixing jokes in with the real stuff.]

If I've understood #1 correctly, this year's node knockout winner does exactly this. <a href="http://observer.no.de/features" rel="nofollow">http://observer.no.de/features</a><p>The demo appears to be buggy, but they seem to have something substantial in the works. From the website:<p><i>Please note that Observer was build during the Node Knock Out, a 48 hour coding competition. The commercial version currently in developement, this free service will stay online as long as there are resources to support it.</i><p>update: ClickTale does this perfectly, down creating playable videos. <a href="http://www.clicktale.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.clicktale.com/</a>

I'd pay for something that made it easier for me to remotely manage my parent's life (documents, bills, schedules, appointments, insurance, money, etc.). English isn't their first language so I end up being the go to for a lot of things.

<i>1. Software that shows videos of real visitors using our website</i><p><a href="http://www.clicktale.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.clicktale.com/</a><p><i>3. A wrapper around PayPal</i><p>Why put lipstick on a pig? I'd rather use Stripe (not as full featured yet, but getting there)<p><i>4. An iPhone code editor with Github / Heroku integration</i><p>Github lets you edit and commit tiny changes right from the site.<p><i>5. Zerocater for startup swag</i><p>Lots have tried; nobody wants to pay for swag it seems. [Edit: I misread this one, they want their own swag.]<p><a href="http://www.schwa.gd/" rel="nofollow">http://www.schwa.gd/</a><p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2006/05/04/get-web-20-schwag-from-valleyschwag/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2006/05/04/get-web-20-schwag-from-vall...</a> (closed)<p><a href="http://www.startupschwag.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.startupschwag.com/</a> (closed)

Congrats to ZeroCater on their first "X for Y" appearance

"2. Yelp for business services"<p>Take it three steps further. I want to know what tools of all types other developers are using. I'm a game developer want to browse what other studios are actually using and sort based on developer size, time, and more.<p>For example what do people use for Source Control? Small devs probably use Git or SVN. Show a time trend and SVN likely trends down and Git way way up. Large devs will almost exclusively use Perforce. I want to see this data for EVERYTHING. Text editors, modeling packing, memory managers, build tools, databases, profilers, and so so much more. There are dozens of amazing, wonderful tools/middleware/things out there that I don't even know exist.<p>This can naturally be expanded outside of software development, but I'm greedy and want to use it for myself first and foremost. :)

B2BRev is working on number 2.<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/yc-backed-b2brev-aims-to-be-the-yelp-for-b2b-services/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/yc-backed-b2brev-aims-to-be...</a>

#5 definitely!!! I think the ladies working in startups will definitely appreciate it! Startup schwag rarely fit me properly :( and most of them are just a logo slapped onto a T-shirt. Would be great for team morale! Plus, nice swag like rovio's angry birds plush toys, t-shirts etc are selling like hotcakes <a href="http://disrupt.techcrunch.com/SF2011/2011/09/12/angry-birds-the-brand-rovio-sells-1m-t-shirts-and-1m-plush-toys-per-month/)So" rel="nofollow">http://disrupt.techcrunch.com/SF2011/2011/09/12/angry-birds-...</a> there's definitely market validation for that idea! I definitely believe in investing in gd schwag and who knows that might even become a source of income for a bootstrapping startup :)

1. Software that shows videos of real visitors using our website<p>Forget ClickTale. Check out Mouseflow. Love it and <i>much</i> more affordable. <a href="http://mouseflow.com/demo" rel="nofollow">http://mouseflow.com/demo</a><p>Useful for debugging purposes too <i>and</i> they have a "live" version.

With regards to #2 on your list "Yelp for Business Services" there is a company called Contact Karma <a href="http://www.contactkarma.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.contactkarma.com/</a> which aims to do something along the lines of what you're looking for. My company will also eventually be in the space and allow you to search and discover recommendations through friends and friends of friends in your social networks. For the most part we're restaurants, entertainment, and services for now while we perfect the data but you can see if you're connected in anyway by checking out <a href="http://www.cliqsearch.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.cliqsearch.com</a>

For #3 wrapper around paypal<p>Thought that's by far not all we do, my startup ( <a href="http://www.kout.me" rel="nofollow">http://www.kout.me</a> ) has the ability for people to do that. A lot of interesting problems in this space.

Hey guys, great post. I just wanted to let you know that you should add left padding to your post content. The text runs right at the edge of my screen on my phone.

How does AngiesList not satisfy #2?<p>Seems to me that this article could be a little less manna-from-heaven and more inclusive of the unmentioned-but-existent.

<i>2. Yelp for business services</i><p>Take a look at:<p><a href="http://www.headstartup.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.headstartup.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.cloudsurfing.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cloudsurfing.com/</a><p>and<p><a href="http://web.appstorm.net/" rel="nofollow">http://web.appstorm.net/</a><p>In addition to the already mentioned <a href="http://www.bestvendor.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.bestvendor.com</a> (which I look forward to checking out).

I think it would be awesome if there was a "Google Voice" for Snail Mail. You would give out one address and it would follow you everywhere. This would be especially great for those 18 - 25 that are going off to college and will end up living in multiple places over a short period of time before settling down.

It's kind of sad for PayPal that people NEED a wrapper around their UI for the reasons stated.

Here's two I would use, but making them seems to require everyone in the world to agree to some reporting API.<p>- Software that automatically finds receipts for all my account activity. So that if I give it my bank account statement that had a charge for Dropbox, it would automatically create dropbox.png which is a screenshot of the receipt from dropbox. This would save about an hour every month finding these manually.<p>- Mac OS X widget that adds all daily revenue from all different ad networks (adsense, cubics, lifestreet etc.) and displays the sum for yesterday and today in the menu bar.

Great idea for posting up a wishlist for services, until I remembered the old saying of how people are terrible at predicting future behavior. Hence, never to ask potential customers the question, "would you buy/use this". I realize that this is in reverse (the writer is asking for it), and that they are not being lead by an interviewer, but shouldnt the same theory (that people cannot predict future behavior) still apply?

Doppler for Heroku (<a href="http://dopplerapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://dopplerapp.com/</a>) works like a charm for having a quick rails console on your iPhone. It also allows you to provision your app and run rake tasks as well.<p>I'd be interested in something that also allowed code editing with github integration for the iPhone if any exist.

#1 - doesn't Clicktale do exactly this?<p>I secretly love watching the thought process of people as they fill out a form.

I'd like someone to start a service that <i>guarantees</i> I get the best deal on my utilities every month (gas, electricity, broadband etc). They would get paid an amount based on the saving they made for me.

Regarding the swag idea, I was thinking of a service that would deliver swag to users of a site.<p>eg. When you become King of Mayor of whatever on foursquare you get an actual shirt type thing, or an iron on badge, etc.

The swag idea has some potential. Though there isn't much market for people paying to get startup swag, I feel that many startups would love to outsource the actual shipping out of their swag.

4. An iPhone code editor with Github / Heroku integration<p>Can kind of be solved by using iSSH or any other SSH client for the iphone. If you've got a bluetooth keyboard then it's pretty handy.

I'm surprised there isn't a company that fits #5 yet. That seems like it would be a lot of fun.<p>startupswag.com and hackerswag.com are taken but aren't hosted yet.

Strange how nobody here has mentioned <a href="http://clixpy.com" rel="nofollow">http://clixpy.com</a><p>Although it's more strange that the site's down atm.

Swag as a service: <a href="http://www.swaglove.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.swaglove.com/</a> (Boulder-based startup)

#4 - Cloud9 seems to fit the bill <a href="http://c9.io" rel="nofollow">http://c9.io</a>

#1 - I believe tealeaf.com and atomiclabs.com provide that #5 - Check out swaglove.com

wifi enabled thermostat with web-based controller at a reasonable price.

2. Yelp for business services<p>This is exactly what BestVendor is doing.<p>www.bestvendor.com

#1 reminds me of a reverse Selenium test :)

Every startup should do a list like this.

I would pay for number one right now

E-junkie is a PayPal wrapper.

Idea No. 4 is implemented by Cloud9 very well; <a href="http://c9.io" rel="nofollow">http://c9.io</a>