Let's share some ideas we're not using! 🤓
In the spirit of not wanting to let good ideas go to waste, I've decided to share a bunch of startup ideas I have in my backlog! If you have some great projects sitting idle, share them in the comments and hopefully we can kickstart some cool projects across indiehackers!
Here's a little summary, and I'll share a link to detailed descriptions below:
- A VR Office For The Future Of Work
- The Bi-directional Linking Feature. Basically the functionality of Roam Research but stripped to the bare essentials.
- A Local Currency Framework. Like the Bristol Pound, but a framework to launch a thousand of them, if they could be interoperable in some way that would be awesome too 😍
- An E-Learning Platform Leveraging The Open Web. So no more duplicative content guarded by big players, just current learning pathways through openly accessible information.
- Article Printing ...seriously, some ideas are worth treasuring.
- tldr.press. Programmatically turn articles into unordered lists.
- A Technology Enabled Life Coach. Life coaching is booming, but it's still flawed, why isn't it truly tech-enabled already?
I've gone into loads of detail about what these ideas are and why I think they matter over on HackerStash:
https://hackerstash.com/blog/free-startup-ideas/
So, what are you ideas?! Honestly, I know some people really guard their ideas, but an idea is only as good as the motivation to execute on it - if you haven't started it already you maybe never will 🤪
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I'm with you regarding Roam, the UI puts me off and no mobile app is a real bummer
Make the new Roam, I'll be your first customer 😉
@blunicorn i'm wondering if bi-directional linking can be something useful for bookmarks instead of having tree schema or classified folders that we can find in bookmarking tools and if this visual looking can help peoples to get back to their bookmarks. I'm sure that bookmarks pain still exists but i'm not sure if this kind of visual can solve the problem, what do you think?
Yeah definitely, seems like a solid idea. Bookmarks always descent into chaos when you try and create a folder structure for them. It would have to be a bit manual, but one cool UI might be to do like:
So like using the graph as the saving interface - it would be quite novel and maybe not super straightforward to get right UX-wise, but I imagine there's a way to do it elegantly enough. Especially if you used machine learning and highlighted other nodes automatically in the graph that seemed like they could be sensible links/cross-references :)
This at least is useful in a 'how do I see the links between things I've bookmarked' sort of capacity, and there are many people already using roam like this. I'm not sure if it helps with discoverability at a later date though, and that's arguably just as big a problem...can be handled with great search though. The other thing that would differentiate it from something like roam is that it could be a browser plugin.
Thank you @blunicorn for your feedback, what do you mean exactly by "discoverability at a later date though"? do you think there is a market for this? Would people pay for it ?
Just that that's the whole point of bookmarking - to make it easy to find stuff later. The trouble is that all current bookmarking methodologies suck at it...but I'm not sure if a network graph is actually any better at that :)
@blunicorn great blog post! You mentioned bi-directional linking for other tools and services. What do you think those services are?
Well one thing that immediately jumps to mind is helpdesks e.g. zendesk. So like all your knowledgebase articles use bidirectional linking, so do all your snippets/canned responses etc. Would be so powerful in that context 🙂
That's a great use case. I have the pain of linking snippets of user interviews stored around docs and email. Tried a lot of tools but nothing really works well with external services. Trying to build my own linking tool in my spare time.
nice, yeah keeping track of user research assets is a nightmare, we have the same issue in my team at work 😢...everything ends up dumped in confluence now but there's no good way to get an overview and see the connections between things.
Here in Jamaica, tourism is on a halt because the coronavirus. I had an idea of VR tourism where tourists would enjoy visuals of the country remotely. This idea seems so complex I got anxious thinking how I'd implement it. But it's worth sharing lol.
https://www.oculus.com/deeplink/?action=view&path=app/2078376005587859&ref=oculus_desktop is quite cool - but yeah I can see a way that you could set up like a VR tourist agency to guide people around different locations 😍
A multi language translation widget that people can integrate into their website. Under the hood, it would do automatic translation for pages that aren't popular but would use real translator for more popular articles that reach a certain amount of views so as to get a good ROI on translation job
A recipe tool that make it possible to find recipe for things you have in your fridge and fit into specific diet requirements. Under the hood, it would crawl all the recipe website on the internet and use machine learning to sort all those out
a travel app that gives all the cool stuff you can do while on holiday. Under the hood, it would get the data from places like wikipedia, tripadvisor, google places and leverage machine learning to see either things for local people, underated places, places that are better for different type of travellers (adventurous, family, ...)
If you're interested in any of these, let me know :)
Awesome, nice additions! I actually know of a company doing number 1 https://www.oneskyapp.com/ - I really think there is space for more companies tackling localisation though. There's a few working on number 2 as well, but not why the ML and web crawling aspect thrown in I don't think, could definitely super charge it!
oneskyapp looks quite different. The idea is to literally copy and paste a code snippet onto your website and not have to worry about localisation at all.
By default your website would use automatic translation and once pass a certain threshold of visitors, your content would be translated by a real translator without any action from the owner of the website.Basically, that would make translation project into a website unnecessary as everything would happen automatically.
Ah, now I get it, yeah that would be cool. I think you'd have to constantly scan the pages for changes too which could become a huge task, like a popular blog post you've translated into 15 languages gets a new paragraph added and you need 15 real translators to spring in to action quite rapidly
There's multiple approaches, you don't necessarily need to crawl, the approach I had in my head is to either:
The new paragraph case is a solved problem with translation memory which is how the companies I've seen work this problem out.
Also, getting translators to do things quickly is basically the main value where the backoffice streamline how translation is done. For instance, translators connect to a backend and don't see a translation job but sentences to translate in the backlog of work and get paid per word until the backlog of translation is empty
Yeah makes sense, and ultimately scalability can come second - market/idea validation first 🤓
Exactly, getting idea validation from a real market is key. At this stage, it's just an idea
@blunicorn I had a nearly identical idea to your #4 years ago and almost made a run at it once (skillbonsai.com). The name came from curating your little bonsai skill tree of learning resources with different branching pathways (much like a video game skill tree).
I still think it's a fantastic idea, but what ultimately steered me away from it was how much effort it would take to curate and build really good skill trees (or build a community to help with the effort).
Sounds cool 😊 I think my idea for it was that people make pathways on topics they're interested in, but then others can access them and learn from them etc. So you don't have to do too much work as a learner at least...but there's no escaping the fact that e-learning courses are a big time investment for course creators, even if the content is sourced from around the web!
Yeah, that's exactly it. Anyone could create pathways and such, but I think for the whole site to have credibility, you'd have to do a lot of work up front to make really good examples. Maybe from there it could take off organically with ratings and what not. I still think there's a huge opportunity here.
Even as a learner for something that doesn't already have good pathways out on the web, I'll often piece together my own pathway and it'd be great to have a framework to use for that.
Yeah, I think one way to grow it would be to focus on small topics that are underrepresented in e-learning but have deeply passionate people. Like reach out to people on Facebook groups for train enthusiasts, or antique spoons or whatever. Like make it super quirky, diverse and specific. That would generate passionate niche supporters and you could grow from there.
I agree, an idea is only as good as the motivation to execute on it. Im with you, sharing your idea is ok.
Here is one that I have been thinking of. Small/local restaurants are always being crushed by large tech companies year after year. For example, 5 years ago it was Yelp that was crushing businesses b/c if you didn't play by Yelps rules you were not getting their funnel of customers. In this COVID times another big tech players has come to light. This is in form of the delivery service guys. GrubHub, Instacart, UberEats, etc, etc. A lot of times when you Google a local business for their number, the number that comes up is from one of these delivery services instead of the direct number to the restaurant. A lot of the time this is not what the restaurant wants because they get charged when someone uses those number hence using the delivery service. This happens because there is a big disadvantage to the local restaurant on the internet. The delivery services has all of the information and know how on how to SEO key search terms while the local restaurants probably don't even do much more than put up a website if even that. They don't have time nor the resources to do SEO or to build their online presence. This is not their expertise.
The problem is that the local restaurants has a big technology disadvantage because of know how and resources they can put into it.
In my opinion what these businesses need is technology to come and help them out with this problem. They need a solution that is easy and cheap to help them get an online presence. They not only need SEO but they need a tech stack to help them answer the phones with automated routing and order acceptance, online ordering, etc. This could be an open source thing or a paid product but the software would have to keep up with current SEO and web practices and updated accordingly.
I also think this is only one part of it. Another part is having to convince Google that local businesses is a good thing to promote instead of large tech "platform" companies but one battle at a time =)
Yes definitely an area that needs fixing - I know of one company working in this area that is dealing with part of the problem https://orderich.com/ . There's a big market available for people that want more proprietor-friendly food technology / delivery companies!
That looks cool. I think another problem is how do these local restaurant even find that service or know that it is there. I think that is how bad the tech divide is. Most restaurant wouldnt even know that exist and they can google to find a service like that.
I think it has always been hard to sell to a small/local restaurant. They don't have the budget and you can't do internet campaigns to reach out to them because that is not where they live. You kind of have to go door to door and sell to each location.
True, I think orderich are v.early stage and dependent on word of mouth referrals etc. I guess that's part of the reason food delivery companies have taken large funding rounds - spending big on marketing and sales can make all the difference in products like these with narrow margins
Here is a very interesting and funny article about what these companies are doing to local restaurants: https://themargins.substack.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
Makes a very good point at the end about there is no clear winners here. The deliveries companies (the VCs) are subsidizing this whole experiment and until there is a winner for this platform, which means everyone is hurting until this ends.
I guess this is turning more into a rant than a business idea =)
Feels like there is an opportunity here to do good and build a business though.
Haha, well amongst the chaos and problems in that space there are still opportunities to do good by the restaurants and the delivery personal I'm sure! I'd read that substack thing yesterday too haha, good observations in there 🙂
A program that makes us contactless with ATM's, Store, anything we have to pay for. I know apple pay is available but not many people use it. (maybe they do now) But when you go up to the atm you do everything on your phone but the money gets disposed out the atm. Your info is all done on your phone and whatever it is that you are doing the ATM will do. So no need to touch a screen that a thousand people touch a day. Another idea -an ATM cryptocurrency, you go to the ATM make a deposit and buy (bitcoin) for example and it goes into your phone in a matter of minutes.
Yeah for sure, given the current coronavirus precautions the ATM app could actually be a matter of public health! I guess the only thing is you'd need unique identifiers on the ATM to know where to give the cash out, or couple it with some geolocation stuff.
The bitcoin dispenser is definitely a thing I've seen too! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_ATM
Been thinking about a platform that creates a personalized newsletter using RSS as the source of data. Users will select their favorite Sites/RSS and we will then put together the information and send them personalized newsletters. Some issues, RSS seems to be going away, not all sites have RSS.
Well ... this already exists. https://mailbrew.com/
Works not only with RSS-Feeds but many other news sources like reddit posts, tweets and more.
Nice, I like it! How do you currently feel when you receive a newsletter? Personally I feel a little bit excited, but then by the end of the week my inbox can be slammed with things I haven't yet read! The reason I mention it is becomes I wonder if there's a way to takes the RSS feed content and make it ludicrously stripped back, like 1 sentence that summarise each article perfectly, then a link to go read more if it tickles my fancy.
@shylands has a great tool that generates a newsletter from your slack channels which you might find interesting https://getlowdown.com/
Honestly, mixed filling about Newsletters, sometimes there is just too much work to have time to go over them. So I guess is about a service that makes it easier, removes what is not needed, and just gives you the best of them. So here is another idea. An email address where you subscribe to your newsletters, the service receives all the newsletters for you and then puts them together into a single one sent once a week. With a clear easy to read format.
Can't remember the name, but there was someone doing exactly this. Subscribe to newsletter with a mail that they give you, and you have only 1 email with a summary of them. Think someone mentioned it on IH but not sure
Yeah that could be cool, so you'd have a parallel address at like steban@mynewsletteraggregator.com
This is really awesome I think I'm going to try and try this one out.
🙌
Awesome! let us know how it goes.
I'll be sure to document my journey for everyone.
exactly. I wonder how many newsletters people actually read.
The newsletters I don't read issue are a real issue that does need to be solved.
I subscribe because I have to (ideally these are unsubscribed automatically at a later date)
I subscribe because I think there's value. There's not. Again, one button unsubscribe would be nice.
I subscribe becasue I think there's value and there is but I don't have time to read them and only a percentage is of value -- this is the area that needs hacking.
This happens all the time. You don't open email newsletters doesn't mean you're not interested it is just not timely or in the idea format or digestable.
When is the Next Match?
For the longest time I wanted to have a sports listing site so I know who is playing tonight and don't miss an important game.
Here's the design I came up with:
Notice I even tested ads placement ;)
(OMG I created that with google drawings :-O ... savage)
So basically twitter/reddit but only displaying the game info. Nothing else, no "latest news" nor gazillions of "click here, enter to win" banners which are so annoying.
You click on a game, the details page shows up, you can see the lineup, and other data and "maybe" a live chat or a message forum.
Problems:
Google added this functionality so this basically this idea became obsolete.
I couldn't figure out a scalable way to do the data entry (update scores in realtime and stuff like that), Maybe this is something the community could handle but initially would require manual data entry or find a paid API.
I think that's when I decided to join IH to learn more about these topic. I have put this idea on the shelf but if anyone wants to pursue it feel free to DM me.
Btw @ThisIsRGaurav helped me to create the first iteration. Sorry your work hasn't seen the daylight yet.
Awesome, thanks so much for sharing @OscarRyz - love that you've included some designs and explanation of some of the outstanding problems too! It's definitely an idea with great potential as well - you're right that google do a pretty good job of it now, but decent chat, and maybe text commentary would be great as well.
Why was it create in google drawings might I ask? 😂 Pretty amazing to get that level of fidelity in there!
Ha, I didn't know anything else. Later I learned about figma and I've been using that.
Btw, after writing this response I thought: Hm this could be my failing product where I will learn the hard lessons.
I had the name, the domain and even a logo. So I created an IH product:
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/nxmatch
Thank you for that
OMG, this post is for you! My great ideas that have gone nowhere. Where does the Dirt go really needs a champion and could be so helpful.
https://albertideation.com/greatideasgoingnowhere
Haha thanks, this list is great, I like the QR code licence plates one!
Thanks - I've had a few people say that would be a great thing to have.
etc.
Curated newsletter for video, movies, etc.. It was an answer for all people searching what to watch on youtube, amazon prime, Netflix. The problem was time because it takes too much time to gather content per niche
yeah, such a tough problem to solve. It's funny cause when I browse netflix I'm often thinking 'why the hell is it so hard to find something to watch?', but I've recently realised I used to spend equally long, if not longer, wandering around blockbuster stores trying to find films or series to rent - it's an age old problem that's very stubborn! I know there are a few people out there tackling the same issue with music curation, so it is possible, but it's a tough grind.
yes, it's hard and long.It is especially harder for Netflix when I was asking people on Netflix subReddit, there were so many different answers.
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Yes! I like the sound of that 😍