Ideas For Your Next Tech Startup 184
prostoalex writes "Business 2.0 magazine enumerates tech ideas that venture capitalists are currently interested in, listing the amounts they have ready to invest." From the article:"A column that appeared on Business2.com the next day described the company Armstrong envisioned and his wish list of criteria. Those who thought they had the right stuff could send Armstrong a business plan. A few weeks later, Armstrong had a new gripe: He'd received more than 20 solid plans and couldn't decide which of three finalists he wanted to fund -- not just for $1 million, but for as much as $5 million. He has since winnowed the list down to two.
That got us thinking. Why not ask dozens of VCs a tantalizing (but often unasked) question: What types of ideas would you fund tomorrow if the right pitch landed on your doorstep? After a few weeks of trolling Sand Hill Road and beyond, we got 11 leading venture firms to spill their most promising business ideas -- and to pony up $50 million in funding to the entrepreneurs who can pull them off. "
The Midnight Spelunker (Score:1, Funny)
Re:The Midnight Spelunker (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:The Midnight Spelunker (Score:2)
Uhh, they have that already (Score:2)
In fact, both the IRS and the Fed are in heavy competition for your business:)
Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
wait, it needs something...
XML!
Alright, I got it, an mp3 player that doubles as a text messaging device. Instead of beeps, it plays ringtones you pick from your mp3 player. Java makes cool games possible. XML makes it seem cool to those who don't realize it just means humans can read the tags I will hide with DRM thus playacting the RIAA thinking people can't pirate ringtones.
I think I'm on to something...
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Mitac Mio A701.
I want one.
It also does GPS.
They had that up there (Score:2)
wait, it needs something...
XML!
I believe what you are asking for was covered under "convergence".
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
/Mikael
How ironic. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How ironic. (Score:2)
It's just because... (Score:3, Insightful)
"One more bubble, and we retire with half-a-billion."
Tiresome. The ideas are as fruitless as before - many more of us will go broke working 75 hour weeks, while big investors walk off with a tax break, if not the rewards for effort.
Re:It's just because... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not the effort, it is the risk that is rewarded. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
By working your 75 hours per week you are secure that you will receive a set amount of money. You have a low risk. VCs give their money to startups in the hope of receiving a high return, they have a high risk.
If you want to take chances, there are investment houses that will take you money, pool it with others and then act on your behalf to invest your money based on the amount of risk you are prepared to take.
Re:It's just because... (Score:1, Funny)
I run one of those investment houses. The annual prospectuses have just been mailed out, so I'm afraid there aren't any left at this time. However, if you send a money order or cashier's check and a self-addressed stamped envelope to the address listed below, you can get your money working in the high-ri
Re:It's just because... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's just because... (Score:5, Insightful)
- generally rock bottom salary.
- the chance that even that will disappear on a moment's notice.
- perhaps some stock options that are unlikely to ever be worth more than the bits they're taking up in some HR database
- the possibility of having that startup's failure emblazened upon your resume for the rest of your days [more important for execs, but still]
And that ignores all of the social risks taken by spending that much time at your job and not with your mate/kids/friends.
Not to say that investors aren't risking a bit, but to steal a tidbit of wisdom from the poker world, "100 chips is a lot more valuable to a man with 100 chips than a man with a thousand."
Risk my ass! (Score:2, Insightful)
The people taking risks are your overworked IT employees. Look at your boss the wrong way and you are out on the street. Have you business get bought out and while the owners are flying their golden parachutes, you are wondering where your next paycheck will come from.
People don't become wealthy by taking risks. They become wealthy by fig
Re:It's just because... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, they're called casinos.
Re:It's just because... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a pyramid scheme, like Employee Stock Purchase - which floats up the volume of trades for your company, using you as the captive audience!
"I'm afraid you can't change your ESPP options until the next enrollment period, after the second quarter..."
Re:It's just because... (Score:2)
Re:It's just because... (Score:2)
Not these investors (Score:2)
I took a look at these ideas, and I classify them into one of several groups.
(Class) Convergence in a diverse market.
(Why it won't work) Convergence will happen, based upon unifying forces within the technology. The problem here, though, is that those unifying forces will come from ISO efforts of the current sales leaders. In other words, there is no room for a new startup taking the lead.
Now, you can *take part* in unifying things, by
No one wants to pay me (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No one wants to pay me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:No one wants to pay me (Score:3, Funny)
Yawn. The same old stuff repackaged.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me or did everything sound incredibly boring?
Re:Yawn. The same old stuff repackaged.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the systems at hospitals are closed off. That is, an ECG or pulse oximeter may only be sending data directly to a monitoring station or hub where nurses are stationed 24/7, so it's a very small internal system.
1) Use the current monitoring systems a
Hospitals (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll play hell getting hospitals to adopt this. Imagine going to the Director and telling him:
"We want to help your patients save money, by letting them buy less of your services."
Sure, some hospitals are having a capacity problem, but it's way better to be overbooked than over-capacitied. This is especially bad when you consider the incredible fixed costs they have (think malpractice insurance for 75-150 doctors and a trauma center.)
Re:Yawn. The same old stuff repackaged.. (Score:1, Insightful)
The venture firms seem to be playing it pretty safe with their selection of ideas. They all seem to be relatively low risk (given the requirements for funding these guys list), low capital investment (all $10 million or less which is checkfeed to these guys), and high return (come on, $500 million return on an initial $10 million investment).
Re:Yawn. The same old stuff repackaged.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking VCs the specifics of what they want to invest in is pointless; they don't know. What they do (or should) know is a good idea when they see it.
Re:Yawn. The same old stuff repackaged.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software): he makes a bug tracker. Not a very novel idea. But he does it well, so his company is
Not boring, just old. (Score:2)
You then code the application such that, when you want to switch, it dumps a checkpoint of its current state and the new device pulls that in to continue where the old one left off. You then make sure the router redirects the virtual e
heheeeeeeeee.... (Score:1, Funny)
I have a bridge for sale...
With the growing complexity and diversity of the internet and the communities that use it, how they interact, and nature of companies that provide the service, I sure am glad I never specialized in one particular field
I got the best idea. (Score:5, Funny)
A news web site, but not just any news site. One that has a witty address and is directed towards technology. It will be a kind of news for nerds, you know... stuff that matters. It is sure to be a hit!
Re:I got the best idea. (Score:1, Funny)
Then, we can repeat stories to make it even better!
And post dupes, too!
Re:I got the best idea. (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Yoda says (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yoda says (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yoda says (Score:1)
Weak! (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer - I'm a physician. I can't really see a use for being able to know what a patient's vital signs are for someone "needing" to be in the hospital. In fact, according to recent insurance guidelines, if all you're doing is checking vital signs, you will not get paid for said hospitalization. Reminds me of a recent slashdot article about some bizzarre japanese medico-toilet which analyzed your various outputs and told your doctor about it.
I sure don't want to here about that.
Administering meds? IVs? Enemas? Who you gonna call?
Re:Weak! (Score:4, Funny)
Crapbusters? *ducks and runs*
Re:Weak! (Score:2, Funny)
I find canaries cheaper
Re:Weak! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Weak! (Score:2)
Re:Weak! (Score:2)
The banking idea was one of the stupidest ones there - and you need to have the right experience to know why.
Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to convince big banks to trust (aka risk) their data/business with YOUR software? Not only that, but big banks have huge internal development groups and user groups which are direly threatened by any such proposal, which means immediately you have some hugely powerful enemies. And then finally there is the massive question of "ok, if our data is in your systems,
No admin, just monitoring... (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, though...
This isn't a new idea. Twenty years ago, I was trying to raise funds to build a recording studio. A friend of mine, studying for his MBA at Harvard brought me a spiral-bound book that listed VC firms categorized by the fields that they were interested in (e.g., biotech, software, hardware, defense, etc.). All of them were way out of my league, but it made for interesting reading, in a "follow the money" sense.
Ten years after that, when I was involved in a dot.com startup, we ended up pitching to some of the VC firms listed in that spiral-bound book (on Wall Street, not Sand Hill Road).
From what I've gathered from the experiences of friends involved with vulture captial funding, it's a last resort, the only option if angel funding, friends and family, and lines of credit don't pan out.
k.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider a first few programming class you took. Consider a average guy there. That's what you get when you try to build 25 person team plus all your time will go managing those twenty guys. However consider few nerd friends you got, and thats what you can get if you go for 5 person team. Next thing to consider is the communications thats more or less n style thing. There is only so many independent peaces you can split the application, and still those need to communicate with each other. In the end for us the 25 person team is a LOT worse solution than going for 5 person team.
I think I'd go for 5 person team at beginning rather than VC:s just to have better productivity and higher code quality.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
only so many independent peaces you can split the application
Yeah, people ARE gonna fight in a 25 person team! :)
Techie Consultant... (Score:2)
Yup. Plain. Simple. Boring. Nothing to see here, move along.
What was their approach? (Score:2)
Peter.
What is this, 1996? (Score:1, Troll)
What's next, Slashdot announcing a VA Linux IPO?
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
The real moneymakers come out of nowhere. If it sounds like something you've heard of, but with maybe a tiny twist...look elsewhere.
The really amusing thing is that the biggest success in recent times, Google, was simply "we want to do search engines just like everyone else. But we'll do it better".
What makes real money isn't a hot new idea. It's doing something well. Quality. If I were a VC, that's what I'd be looking for. Competence and pragmatism.
Re:Prediction (Score:2)
"The real moneymakers come out of nowhere. If it sounds like something you've heard of, but with maybe a tiny twist...look elsewhere."
But if we look at the entire software industry, things tend to build on existing things, with little twists or quirks added in an attempt to get ahead of the competition. The whole "we stand on the shoulders of giants" mess. The iPod is an excellent example. There are other portable music players out there, many which came before the iPod, but Apple added a few twists,
Re:Prediction (Score:2, Informative)
I have had grandiose ideas to build the next "killer app" for 25 years. I have over-engineered all sorts of wacky ideas that never turned into much. I wanted the 200% growth rate per month or whatever took Gates and Ellison to the top.
Then I struck onto the formula that pays me a couple hundred thousand a year, is helping to fund well-paid jobs for people I have hired, and is growing at a 30% per year rate. Not r
Re:Prediction (Score:2)
Re:Prediction (Score:2)
The world is littered with the rotting corpses of great technology that got outmarketed by weaker products that had a clever spin on them.
If I wanted to market something solely to engineers - yes, quality would be the key. But engineers make for a miniscule market.
If I wanted to make *real* money - Microsoft-level money - I would not worry about quality except at the most basic level.
Google is, in my opinion, a fluke. I ca
Two Way Authentication... (Score:2, Insightful)
It mentioned SecureID but i wonder if they have heard of Kerberos [navy.mil] We have this at work.. you type in your username and password. after the password you use a 4-digit pin number, which gives you a 6 digit key(sometimes referred to as a ticket) to type in at the prompt. If you are really serious about security
Starting a Company (Score:5, Informative)
Anyways, I started a company by raising US $500,000 through friends and family. I used to be the CTO of an Internet company and decided to start my own company on the Internet but in a different field. I am a techie and an entrepreneur and definitely a geek. Let's put it this way, even today, I write the majority of the software (though I have other developers too).
The best advice I can give is to watch your cash flow. I was personally horrified by the stories of $200,000 per month burn rates. I actually had a lot of personal wealth (from my last venture) but still ran out of my basement until I needed more space. The US $500,000 lasted us for 2.5 years (not 2.5 months like some companies) after which we raised another $250,000. But we actually had a viable business already with the $500,000 spend. We raised another $250 K to speed up the marketing that we had already proven to know that if we spent X we would get X times 2 back in less than a year. This was based on hard numbers.
Anyways, I only gave away about 25% of the company to do it, and the company is probably worth about $20 million today and our earnings are growing faster each month.
We are in the very competitive website builder arena but are one of the top sites in the field. Our focus has been on ease of use first and then secondly on feature set.
Anyways, I'm mentioning this because I wanted to give those of you who want to start a business hope.
The absolute worst thing you can do is get into the high-tech business without a model for making money. Pure research or cool ideas are fun but don't bring home the bacon. Remember your market is business people so focus your business plan on how the tech brings in profit. Now how cool the tech is and hence there ought to be profit.
Good luck.
Re:Starting a Company (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Starting a Company (Score:2)
I must say though, how can you be horrified by a $200,000 / month burn rate without qualifying it by how many employees, type of buisness etc?
I ask because I know of a startup with a burn rate well over that. However they have 34 employees (the salaries alone can equal that) and they produce custom hardware so it costs them ~$150,000 just to tape-out 1 chip and put together a few prototypes.
A $200k burn rate is huge if you are 5 people writing software but not so much for a
Re:Starting a Company (Score:2, Interesting)
A hardware startup may justify that kind of upfront effort, but I would think most software startups can get a couple versions of their product out in the field before needing to grow to 30+ employees.
Re:Starting a Company (Score:2)
Spelling error (Score:3, Funny)
The word is spelled "mom's".
75% Of these ideas are patented (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:75% Of these ideas are patented (Score:2)
A patent doesn't prevent anyone from implementing ideas, it just means they have to license it from you.
Your customers/etc would be fucking idiots to use their own patents to crush the develompent of the field that you've got rights to.
Or do you think you'll magically find one company that can do things right and make the field as big as it possibly can be? That's totally impossible, unless you let a few different implementers fight it out, no one will capture the right mix of features/usability/etc/etc t
So the investors come up with the ideas now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Artificial Intelligence Needs Venture Funding (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't even need to fund an unknown AI startup. Just hire some hotshot programmers and Steal.This.Idea [scn.org]!
It's all described in the scientific literature of the Association for Computing Machinery [acm.org] (ACM).
Be the first on your block to launch the Hard Takeoff [sl4.org] of a Technological Singularity [caltech.edu].
Re:Artificial Intelligence Needs Venture Funding (Score:4, Interesting)
http://opehncyc.sf.net/ [sf.net]
Who needs AI? Why do AI solutions not scale? Whenever AI people sell "usable stuff" it is exaggerated. Whenever AI people provide nice stuff you do not know what to do with it.
where is the japanese 5th generation computer gone?
Who uses AI expert systems?
Why isn't there prolog installed on my machine?
Where are the neuronal network processor chips?
Why do search engines need no AI semantic net or AI language analysis.
why is there no fulltext translation tool?
Why are AI problems usually solved by non-AI methods?
Re:Artificial Intelligence Needs Venture Funding (Score:2)
I don't think you will find the answer on slashdot.
hey its the mad Mentifex guy (Score:2, Informative)
who even has his own FAQ written by the real AI community to stop the nonsense he spouts from giving AI research a bad name [nothingisreal.com]
keep flipping burgers Murray, you will get further in life
Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money Where Your Mouth Is (Score:2)
No... go to where the money is (Score:2)
So... if the VCs have trillions of dollars, why in the name of Pete would you beat yourself up trying to come up with "the idea" that will grudgingly seperate them from a paltry few million? Go to where the money is! Put together a consulting firm that specializes in helping VCs get a better return on their investme
Re:No... go to where the money is (Score:2)
But, having made some money (especially in 2000 and 2001) doing tech analysis for VCs, that's not nearly as good a return on my time invested as selling them equity on a company I start. That tech analysis you're talking about nets maybe 1-3% of a deal, if it goes through; maybe 1
Cell Phone Auth (Score:2, Interesting)
WHAT HE WANTS: Fraudproof credit card authorization via cell phones and PDAs.
Google could make a cool five million from this since they already use similar technology now when signing up for a Gmail account. (more info on their account creation page [google.com])
Really dry (Score:4, Insightful)
Indian startups normally get $50 million but they seem to be doing more ambitious projects.
Think about it (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Think about it (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. Everyone has a few great ideas floating around, but very few have what it takes to convert a good idea into a viable enterprise. Being able to lead people, make a plan, ignore the plan, and ultimately being willing to do what it takes to make a success of a good idea are a vanishingly rare set of skills.
The ideas themselves are a dime a dozen.
Regards,
Ross
finally (Score:5, Funny)
How about TV prices ? (Score:2)
Is this what venture capitalists?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Ideas don't count for very much (Score:3, Interesting)
If it really is a good idea then there are always going to be a couple other startups doing exactly the same thing. So now the question is should you fund the first guy or not. Or maybe you should fund the competition?
What really counts is the team. Do they have what it takes to make the idea into a product and beat the competition? A great team can take any idea and adapt it into a profitable company.
Critique (Score:4, Interesting)
The Open Source IT centre did seem useful
Re:Critique (Score:2)
Myself and about 230 of my closest friends and developers used to work there. It was called "Linuxcare [archive.org]", maybe you've heard of it. You might recall we were called "The 1-800 Number for Linux", and we were.. not only for users, but for hundreds of big players in the market (IBM, HP, Intel, SGI, 3Com, etc.). We had quite a nice portfolio of custom applications for these companies, as well as supporting most of the Linux distributions and applications that were a
Re:Critique (Score:2)
Where's common sence? (Score:2)
Which explains why I and some others here are not impressed with the ideas list.
Apparently the search for a "what do you want to invest in" response lead to some VC's realizing the opportunity to mention themselves.
Simple logic:
I'm a VC and I have this idea.... Hmmm, why don't I just invest in myself and hire those who can impliment my ideas???
Duh!
Why innovation doesn't start with VCs (Score:2)
When people are quoting "Vignette" as one of their success stories, I have to chortle. [yahoo.com] What a piece of crap that software is, and clearly the market agrees.
I can't wait for the day when the patent system switches to "first to file" and we're practic
The only benefit I could see from the article (Score:2)
well.. (Score:2)
http://paycan.net/ [paycan.net]
You have to pay someone for your domain name registration. It might as well be someone who donates all proceeds instead of superbowl ads sporting big-breasted women appearing before a mock congress.
For now I'm all by myself, and just a reseller, but the goal is to have a board, complete transparency, and full ICANN accreditation. I'm work
I was annoyed by the article, but it motivated me (Score:2)
I subscribe to Business 2.0 (usually has interesting material). I was dissapointed to see our idea in slightly different form in the article - now I will have 10,000 competitors. I did grab a great domain name (http://o [ourevents.us]
Re:I was annoyed by the article, but it motivated (Score:2)
Hate to break it to you, but Craigslist has been there first. Heck, localized Usenet groups were around before Craig even got email.
Dumb venture capitalists (Score:2)
Theres a reason those VCs cant find a plan (Score:2)
2. Good luck convincing a bank to just hand over control of their systems to you, a fly by night "entrepeneurial" firm with less than ten employees. Then there's the banking regulations that can quickly destroy a bank should they be in non-compliance.
3. I could probably put together a group of people to engineer this, and even find an "etailo
Universal Bullshit Detector (Score:2)
For people that respond to spam, come-ons from VCs and investors.
Anti-ideas for start-ups (Score:2)
After reading this about VC`s fishing for talent to build their ideas. I couldn`t put the thought out of my mind that `these guys are doomed`. Someone may bite at the money. Would you?
I don't see any interesting problems. Just lots of little nasty ones.
Thoughtful listening:
One of the biggest shifts I`ve seen this year is audio. Audio scales. [2] It brings the ideas forward with more immediacy than the written word. I don`t have to be at the conference to hear these speakers
Yeah, but that's a HUGE opportunity (Score:2)
Housing is about to take a major hit, and it will affect all sorts of ways that money is used in the economy. That and derivatives. Double whammy bad mojo.
The problem isn't just the housing and derivitaves which will cause the entire economy to collapse. The problem is that they will take out every financial institution in the USA with them, who will hyperinflate the dollar out of existence in their last dying gasp!
The US will have no choice but to move to a gold economy or die. If I were VC's I woul
Re:Yeah, but that's a HUGE opportunity (Score:2)
Re:people who (Score:2)
The US is better than that, and I never said that the US economy is going to totally fail, but I have serious doubts about the US financial system and the survivability of US dollar over these next few years, and housing IS going to crash very hard no ma