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Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project
- flexxaeon 14y agoSpotify, but for business Motivational audiobooks? Hmmm....
- minimaxir 14y agoIt'll be all the rage at parties.
- flexxaeon 14y agoSo I refreshed and got "Github for Cooking" which sounded funny at first, until I thought about it. Which then led into a 15 minute discussion with the wife expanding on the idea. Now I wanna build it.
- rooshdi 14y agoForking food in more ways than one....interesting..
- rachelbythebay 14y agoAs in, here is my pizza recipe, you can have it or you can "fork it" and modify it? forkitrecipes.com isn't taken ... yet.
- tikhonj 14y agoI'm pretty sure I've seen "GitHub for Recipes" pop up on HN before. Can't recall it's name at the moment, but it was definitely discussed here fairly recently.
- killermonkeys 14y agoWe've been working Sharpen (https://www.sharpenapp.com https://www.sharpenapp.com), a site for sharing your creative pursuits. You can fork a project, like in GitHub, and cooking is pretty popular with our alpha users: (https://www.sharpenapp.com/#!/tag/cooking https://www.sharpenapp.com/#!/tag/cooking). We haven't messed with fork in a while but we've got some idea on how to make it more useful... forking recipes makes total sense to me.
- blcArmadillo 14y agoFunny that this just popped up on the homepage: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5120578 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5120578
- flexxaeon 14y agowow looks like it's being/been done a few times over. nice
- sgdesign 14y agoTo be fair, any of those ideas could produce a great startup with the right team behind it… That's the thing, the idea alone is pretty much meaningless one way or another.
- droidist2 14y agoI hear people say this often and never quite understood it. The idea is very important. Having a bad idea vs. a good idea is like the difference between trying to sell snow to an Eskimo and trying to sell a glass of water to a man dying of thirst. Given the right salesperson, both can be theoretically done and both can be screwed up, but that doesn't mean that execution is everything.
- hayksaakian 14y agoHe means that execution is more powerful in general. If you can sell snow to an Eskimo, imagine what you could do with a good idea.
- droidist2 14y agoAbsolutely, you need both. I'm not sure how to quantify which one is more powerful or important, especially since "idea" can mean many things, from a very vague concept to a fully fleshed out and vetted business plan. I was just taking issue with the "ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything" mantra.
- mion 14y agoLet me quote Derek Sivers: "To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions." http://sivers.org/multiply http://sivers.org/multiply
- thoughtcriminal 14y agoThat should go without saying though. I think a better way of asking the question is "what's better: a brilliant idea executed so-so or a so-so idea executed brilliantly?" That to me is a more interesting and logical question.
- instakill 14y agoGithub, but for photography. That's not actually a bad idea.
- orangethirty 14y agoSoundcloud, but for fashion. I'm afraid this will drive people to build these.
- yawniek 14y agoexists: http://canv.as/ http://canv.as/
- kken 14y agoInteresting, I had already forgotton about that one. It looks like it did not really take off in the meantime...
- mattbradley 14y agoShazam, but for beer. I think I might be on to something.
- msoad 14y agoMeanwhile my restaurant owner friend wants me to sign a NDA for his startup idea. Oh God, why?
- tunesmith 14y agoHmm... helping developers politely decline the amazing opportunity to work on a lousy app/startup idea. Someone should write an app for that.
- Cacen 14y agoWe could work something out. I'll just need you to sign this NDA.
- notahacker 14y agoBeing "unable to sign this agreement" is a great way to decline the opportunity to do all the development, maintenance and marketing for the idea for 49% equity and a nice meal in the nicest way possible.
- sbov 14y agoJust ask them to sign an NDA too. Afterall you might reveal something they could steal from you while discussing their idea.
- justin_vanw 14y agoAll actually good startup ideas are bad ideas when they are started. Everybody thought twitter was retarded, and nobody had any idea social networking was even going to be a thing when facebook launched. If you only work on things that people agree seem like a good idea, you are probably the 5th team that is working on it, and you probably started about 3 years too late. This actually ends up giving many real successful startup ideas or just good ideas. It also gives a lot of bad ones, but here are some I noticed: OKCupid, for music. (Pandora) Github, but for knowledge. (Wikipedia) Hacker News, but for knowledge (Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange) FourSquare, but for photography (is that Instagram?) and a bunch that are more of a stretch. So, here are some ideas it had that I think are are actually good: OKCupid, but for shopping (better, hyper personalized product recommendations). LinkedIn, but for beer (more like "it's Just lunch" for professional relationships, set up one on one beers and such, foster mentor relationships, etc). Github, but for fashion (imagine something like paper dolls, where users can mix and match shirts, pants, accessories and share the combinations with each other, and then purchase complete outfits).
- cabalamat 14y ago> All actually good startup ideas are bad ideas when they are started. Hmmm. I've just created a website for an event happening next year, that around 16 million people in the UK will probably take part in. http://www.euroelection.co.uk/ http://www.euroelection.co.uk/
- thoughtcriminal 14y agoAm I missing something? Can you complete the thought?
- rukshn 14y agoit's really nice most of the results are good ideas, some already exists, some are pretty bad
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- redschell 14y agoLinkedIn, but for Cooking Definitely niche, but not bad. It might be cool to have a system like that for connecting young, promising Chefs with more established ones. I don't know too much about cooking, but I bet it's hard for Chefs to convey their expertise and experience with a traditional resume.
- tikhonj 14y agoThere are some amusing combinations there. Quora, but for programming: sounds like StackOverflow :). Netflix but for news: rent news broadcasts months after they were aired; sounds like a perfect plan!
- mwill 14y agoGithub, But for Knowledge Wikipedia? Between this and the Video Game Name Generator [1], I think I could work forever on random junk. ; ) [1] http://videogamena.me/ http://videogamena.me/
- donfitz 14y agoFunny that the first idea it showed is almost exactly what I'm working on now. I couldn't believe it.
- gmu3 14y agoWhen he said the ideas were hidden (and before I realized you just refresh the homepage), I just started trying random urls. This was my favorite: http://www.badstartupidea.com/no-satisfaction http://www.badstartupidea.com/no-satisfaction
- stuffihavemade 14y ago"Instapaper, but for Location" Rand McNally is Web 3.0 certified!
- rtcoms 14y agoOne day I was thinking of using github for writing novels, stories etc. Each branch will have different climax. Newbies in writing will be motivated to write small parts and get feedback. Although it's not a startup idea but a use case of github api and will need a different interface. What you all think of this ?? edit:grammatical error fix
- ville 14y agoI was expecting a blog post about how it's bad to build a startup from a weekend project. :P
- DigitalSea 14y agoStumbleupon but for knowledge — this could actually work. You stumble knowledge of particular subjects instead of blog posts and comics. Very interesting. Cool idea, lots of fun I've been generating ideas for 20 minutes now.
- wfn 14y agoI always enjoy 'wikitripping' - * http://xkcd.com/214/ http://xkcd.com/214/ * http://xkcd.com/903/ http://xkcd.com/903/ (see tooltip) (and corresponding wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy) * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random So agree, this sounds like a fun idea!
- ehsanu1 14y agoA side project of mine is sort of a stumbleupon for knowledge. Sort of. It's more like a directed stumbleupon; you get web pages related to the page you're currently on. Good for research, but knowledge-stumbling works too: http://jellly.com http://jellly.com
- mailshanx 14y agoHey i checked it out, it's a really cool project! Would you mind sharing how you implemented this? I'd really love to know :)
- devcpp 14y agoSounds like http://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/ http://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/ Basically, "I found an interesting article on Wikipedia".
- samsolomon 14y agoI made something similar when I first started learning ruby. http://ideabit.herokuapp.com/ http://ideabit.herokuapp.com/ eHarmony for tax consultants is one of my favorites.
- arbuge 14y agoI was thinking a sentencing commission website, but for hackers. Oh wait, looks like that one just got taken...
- ______ 14y agoThis is good, I thought that itsthisforthat.com gives funnier results though... Wait, what does your startup do? So, basically, It's an analytics platform for aquariums.
- tomasien 14y agoI just got "Quora for programming" which is already a thing, it's called "Stack Exchange" and it's a massively big deal of a company making a ton of money that saves my life every day at work. Sooooo actually picking one of these may be smart.
- mistercow 14y agoOw, that Venn diagram.
- blparker 14y agoI was too lazy to refresh, so I built a script and dumped 220 of the ideas in a pastebin. Sorted with duplicates removed. Very likely that some are missing. Would've probably been just as easy to try all combinations of left and right terms, but oh well. http://pastebin.com/rzEuz89f http://pastebin.com/rzEuz89f