Business Ideas for 2014

Whoa, let&#x27;s tone down the negativity HN. The hate is already piling up, but I think there are some really good ideas here. Sure, many (probably most) of the ideas are already done, but he does give some thoughts on the angles of execution and niches. This would be a great place to start for someone looking to brainstorm or for someone looking for their first startup experience.<p>At least don&#x27;t deride the author for sharing some interesting ideas. If you&#x27;ve thought about each and every one of these, good for you, but I had some interesting thoughts while reading.

&quot;I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.&quot; - Bruce Lee

The &quot;Night time Delivery Service&quot; sounds like it could be a big business. The trend in logistics lately is getting closer and closer to same-day shipping.<p>A &quot;Night time Delivery Service&quot; could help start in one city and expand to others. The existence of Luna in SF shouldn&#x27;t dissuade anyone from starting the same thing in a different city, because it will take years for any one player to expand and colonize more locations. If anything, Luna is at a geographic disadvantage due to SF&#x27;s high wages.<p>The way you use Luna seems very convenient, which is that the customer has the package shipped to Luna by any shipping service, and then once it arrives there, Luna does same-night last-mile delivery for $7. This is nice because it can interface with any existing shipping service without the need for Luna to win any contracts.<p>Eventually, once a company like this is starting to scale, they could aim to get a contract with UPS, FedEx, DHL, or USPS to pick up packages directly from the UPS&#x2F;whatever warehouse, saving both time &amp; money for all involved.<p>If the company wants to exit they could sell to Amazon.<p>The company might have to pay a wage premium because the work is at night, but then again, in this economy maybe the workers would just be happy to get a job (and the hours involved would make it a great 2nd job). Also, compared to daytime shipping services, the nighttime company would be more productive per hour due to its drivers facing less traffic.

Cursory google searches and from my memory I can see all these ideas have been done in one form or another.<p>So much talk about ideation and execution and force multipliers blah blah.<p>Real key of the matter is knowing your opportunity costs and choosing the right thing. That actually takes time and experience to learn, albeit you can take the shortcut and finding the right mentors to guide you.

Add one more to your list: I had this one in 2012 and created a small app. There were a couple of lawsuits that I could have gotten &quot;my fair share&quot; on, but just didn&#x27;t know about them in time. Didn&#x27;t get too far with it, so I&#x27;m donating it in case someone else wants to &quot;run with it&quot;: ClassAction website or app. Aggregate all current class action lawsuits. Use crowdsourcing to keep the list current. You have like 5-10 &quot;standard&quot; pieces of info: link to the official website where you can fill out the form, Date that you need to respond by, who is eligible to participate, etc. Not sure about payment model, but as they say, worry about that later. Solve the Class Action Lawsuit &#x27;problem&#x27;?...

I like the style of these, in that most have low barrier to entry but for the hustle. Also, I don&#x27;t think any idea is ever really &quot;done&quot;, only incumbents waiting to be challenged. It does make sense to ask &#x27;how is this different from X?&#x27; but often times the differentiation comes down to just being more <i>hungry</i> than your competitor.<p>These scribbles from my notebook may be a bit more tech heavy or have other barriers to entry;<p><pre><code> Student loan servicing Programmatic corporate founding docs, term sheets, seed rounds (legalese as code) Self managed SMB 401k&#x2F;IRA&#x2F;125&#x2F;etc SaaS Crowd-based intermediation of credit [card] payments Single-click self-hosted [insert data-sucking, privacy violating SaaS here] SMS for every business Bid on anything (build the demand curve) Stop social fallout (crisis management as a service) P2P two-party escrow Telepresent expert hired by-the minute&#x2F;hour (fix my ___) LouisCK as a Service (the way he sells his content, not him specifically) Self-hosted everpix Yours If You Want It - A way to buy a gift for someone, but only if they &#x27;accept&#x27; Disciple - Subscribe to talks by geniuses in your industry </code></pre> And the one I&#x27;m currently working on... passwords that can&#x27;t be cracked.<p>Happy Hacking in 2014!

I&#x27;m already doing the &quot;Rock Your CV&quot; as a side business! Maybe time to step it up? <a href="http://handprintresumes.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;handprintresumes.com</a>. Would love some feedback from HN on prices, design, etc.

A note on bamboo eyewear:<p>I&#x27;m in the eyewear business. I&#x27;ve struggled with the idea of wood or bamboo for a while now. There seems to be a lot of interest in the area but I&#x27;m skeptical. Materials like these are porous and people sweat -- not the best combination.<p>I&#x27;ve been waiting for the acetate fad to fall out of fashion but we&#x27;re still doing pretty well in this area.

The best thing about this list is that Scott took the time to explain WHY he thinks these ideas can make money. In some cases, he even implies where the pain points lie. Scott aimed to spur people into action and I think that he&#x27;s done a very good job of it. At least, these ideas can serve as fun weekend hack projects

It&#x27;s easy to come up with a 100 ideas when you don&#x27;t have to execute any of them. I know it sounds dismissive but i&#x27;m speaking from experience. One idea will take a thousand other new ideas to turn it into a successful business, plus a ton of hardwork and persistence.

I really enjoyed Scott&#x27;s list and to be honest, I think it&#x27;s great to see someone openly sharing business ideas for free instead of letting them rust away in some notebook.<p>I actually wrote Scott about the idea management software, since we at Brightloops (<a href="http://brightloops.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;brightloops.org</a>) provide a free alternative for social idea development to Danish highschools and colleges; he wrote back almost instantly, friendly and enthusiastic. Even provided some great inspiration. He&#x27;s one to remember. :)

After reading the post, a skeptical person might say that this post is a clever hack to sell domain names. The article has a few links to domain names available for purchase.<p>However, these are pretty good ideas. At the very least, they should inspire further tweaks to the ideas for execution. Great list!

A lot of these ideas are great. Perhaps executable for other countries as well. Thanks Scott!

Some of these are actually viable, that&#x27;s the important thing. They seem mainly aimed at the UK market (finally!) and I&#x27;m going to have a proper read through later and figure out if any of them affect me and how I can break into the market.

I&#x27;ve been thinking about the &quot;Sell my car&quot; idea for a bit. I think it&#x27;s ripe for new thinking. If you&#x27;re interested and in the SF Bay Area, ping me at ahconsidered@hushmail.com

I thought this article was satirizing every negative stereotype about HN, until I came in here and read the comments.

&gt;Also as a vegan some good vegan dishes!<p>Oh God yes.

GradFolio is very similar to GradFly.

I like it! Good job.

I can see some patterns emerging in the list of ideas, some of which are quite okay. I think to me the value is seeing categories of the ideas and sort of what problems are on the horizon.

MySpace 2 is exactly where the money is. Tons of it.<p>I like the idea of users monetizing it.

Am I the only one who sees a giant and useless header on the site?<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/XQHyc2O.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;XQHyc2O.png</a>

And not one of those ideas is Bitcoin related. It&#x27;s 2014 for god&#x27;s sake.