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Poll: Rate my startup ideas

5 points by chaosprophet ↗ HN
Hi, I hit upon three ideas for a web startup, and now I'm not sure which I should follow through. I'm currently unemployed, so monetization potential is an important consideration. Ideally, I would like to be able to see some cash within 6 - 8 months of launching.

I am basically a programmer, so I would like to know which idea is the best to start working on. Also, I'm bootstrapping this, so initial cost is also a consideration.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to help me.

7 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 86.2 ms ] thread
bjnortier
For number 1, I recommend you read this blog post: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram... - especially if you're considering using the type of interface that Siri has.

"The task of "guess the application I want to use" is actually not even in the domain of artificial intelligence. AI is normally defined by the human standard. To work properly as a control interface, Wolfram's guessing algorithm actually requires divine intelligence. It is not sufficient for it to just think. It must actually read the user's mind. God can do this, but software can't."

chaosprophet
Well, I believe I can do this by splitting what the user wants to do into several vertical services such as movies, hotels, flights etc. The user input will be categorised using bayesian categorisation, after which I believe some simple natural language analysis will do the job.
Travis
Sorry, I don't think I could recommend any of those as legitimate money making ideas to you.
DanielStraight
For number 1, you should also consider how much of what you attempting to aggregate is already being done.

Movie recommendations? That seems like it would require you to tell the software movies that you liked. The problem is: Who wants to do this on a site that doesn't let you do anything else with movies? People are more than happy to tell Amazon what movies they like (by buying them) or Netflix (by renting them), but why would they take the time to tell your application what movies they like just so they can get recommendations which they could have gotten at Netflix, which they are going to use to go to Netflix and rent anyway.

Email lookups? Beating Gmail is very unlikely. I don't care about instant notification of email. I care about being able to manage email in a sensible and streamlined way. Again, your application it sounds would just tell me I had emails so I could go to Gmail and manage them... Well, since I'm going to Gmail anyway, what has using your application helped with?

Aside from that, I do not think many people will actually pay a yearly subscription fee for such a service. People online don't like paying for anything.

I'm not trying to bash the idea. I'm just saying it needs to do something DIFFERENT.

chaosprophet
I don't think I phrased that too well. I meant that was my original idea, but then I modified it to do more or less the same thing as Siri i.e. aid in task completion like for example, you can search for a sporting event, lookup ticket availability and buy tickets all from within the app.
growt
I like the second idea, but I don't see where you'll make money with it (at least in 6-8 months).
chaosprophet
Yeah, that's probably the only thing keeping me from that one. I guess it would make a good side project or something though.