Startups & Ventures

Car sharing in real-time A real-time car-sharing app that will allow users to enlist their cars whenever they are going somewhere so that other users can share the ride if it is on their own way and split the cost accordingly.

​​Ease parking search An app to find available parking in a specific location. The app will make use of GPS, location, webcams, and parking data to find a free parking space around you in real-time.

“patio11’s Law”: The software economy is bigger than you think, even when you take into account patio11’s Law. What does that mean? The software sector makes up more and more percentage in the global economy. There is a huge variety of niches where people make a business that also involves developing software. Even more, there are many businesses where people don't know that particular processes could be automated or removed at all with software. Have you thought about, for instance, that your phone's cover, or socks' painting, or the dog's leash was made somewhere in a small city you've never heard of? And such a business thrives, makes $10M annually and doesn't even show itself in social media. Probably the business uses software to, say, keep track of an inventory, employees, and so on. There are a ton of such niches you've never heard of. Did you know about an enterprise resource planning software niche, where the leader's worth is $163B? Should I continue to make such posts?

Today’s app idea is about regular navigation apps. Interesting routes A navigation app that prefers to choose (if you opted-in) a less known route to show you local attractions based on what you like. The app could also build a route for a casual walk considering what places you like to visit, how much time you usually stroll and so on.

​​Trend: Irish moss A type of moss that's common in Jamaican cuisine. Proponents claim that the substance has a variety of health benefits. Namely, improved digestion. 22K searches/month

​​Trend: Insect Hotel An Insect Hotel is a birdhouse for bugs. Typically made out of wood, insect hotels are designed to support beneficial insects, like bees. While the design of each insect hotel varies, they all contain nooks, crannies and protection from the elements that bugs crave. Especially in the winter. Insect Hotels started as a DIY sensation on Pinterest. But the product category has matured to the point that kits and premade versions are starting to show up on Amazon.

VR restaurant booking A separate app or integrated feature for restaurant’s modules that allows customers to book a seats/table by walking in a visual tour to understand what seats will be better for some event or people. Also, the app can be used not only for bookings, but to allow visitors to have virtual tours.

Shop’s items scanner An app that allows you to scan an item and gives you the info about a product: composition, manufacturer, etc. It could detect fake products.

​​Today’s app idea: AR house design An augmented reality app that allows you to change an appearance of your house inside or outside. You can re-color rooms, particular house parts, change a form, etc. Popular trend this month: Nail salon An establishment where patrons can receive manicures and have their nails painted.

Current trends. (Growth gradient shows how much the searches increase per month on average) TikTok ads Advertising platform that's specific for the popular video mobile app. Growth gradient: 26.07. Drop servicing Also known as "service arbitrage", this is the digital equivalent of sub-contracting. Growth gradient: 20.62. Digital learning The practice of educating oneself on the internet, whether through self-teaching or organized online courses. Growth gradient: 16.86 #trends Free webinar for Product Managers

Watch a movie online with friends Even with different audio tracks and subtitles. Yes, we have glitchy apps to let you watch a movie with friends, but this one should let you choose the audio track, so you can watch one movie, and each of you can select an audio stream.

Hey guys! Hope you are all great 🙌 ProductStar Global holds free weekly online meetup this Sunday (10/05) for anyone who is interested in product management! 👌 Manasa GN, Product Manager at Shell will talk about "Feature table building which helps understand different types of Product Managers in the industry".😎 They say ideas are 'a dime a dozen' but where do good ideas come from? Do they come from observation, personal experience, or research? Manasa will explore these questions in this discussion. 🚀 Key points: 🔸 Understand the different types of Product Managers in the industry 🔸 How to use the EMUC model to look for good ideas. 🔸 Learn how to build Feature tables for Product Managers Join the webinar by the following link https://productstar.org/productwebinar_startupsi 🗓 May 10th (Sunday) ⏰ 13.00 GMT, 18.30 IST, 20.00 Jakarta It’s going to be really interesting, so Invite your friends and share the information with your colleagues 🙌

​​Found a great list of newsletters you can subscribe to in the categories such as tech, finance, business, productivity. Available as a Notion page - https://www.notion.so/090c527e386d4cef9ad6ad12b6248b4a?v=c7912c2a61304991aedbd0ecaac1d798

​​Trend: Drip Drop DripDrop is a souped up version of Pedialyte for adults. The company claims that its oral rehydration therapy products have a multitude of benefits for healthy people, including hangover relief and faster exercise recovery. DripDrop has grown largely thanks to its portable “Powder Sticks” that can be mixed with water. A host of unique flavors (like “spiced apple cider”) has also helped the brand achieve rapid growth. What's next: DripDrop is part of the meta trend of turning medical products into consumer-facing categories. Other recent examples include retinol serum and red light therapy devices.

Coffee as Wine Coffee has become a product for the masses, but there is an untapped market of luxury coffee enthusiasts and sommeliers. While testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2017, Kelly Goodejohn of Starbucks described how, “coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil and 25 million farmers around the world rely on income generated from growing coffee.” While many sources have come out to dispute this claim (some arguing that it is only the 15th most traded commodity globally), there is no escaping coffee’s influence in the world. In his most recent book, “Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World,” Michael Pollan describes how for many caffeine is not consumed because of its life-enhancing and surprisingly medicinal effects, but purely because it is a wonder energy drug that allows us to work more — like cocaine for the masses. What if a company reframed coffee from a mass-drug with purely practical uses to a luxury good designed to be consumed in small doses (like wine)? Whether designed as a subscription service or a high-end coffee shop, the business would be a coffee dealer designed to expose people to a new brand of luxury coffee beans. What would it take to elevate coffee culture to the same level as wine culture? This business would work to answer this question and push the world to the “fourth wave” of coffee consumption (1st wave was instant coffee, 2nd wave was commoditized coffee a la Starbucks, 3rd wave was specialty coffees a la Blue Bottle, and this proposed 4th wave is luxury coffee designed to create coffee sommeliers). Monetization: selling coffee beans as a subscription; hosting conferences and events for luxury coffee enthusiasts; providing coffee sommelier certifications at a price; and more.

Cloud Factories One of the largest “taxes” on goods that are purchased in person is the cost of shipping that product to its retail location. Replacing “dead space” or “dying spaces” in malls with smaller, robotic factories that can decrease shipping costs for end-consumers; thus, decreasing the average price of goods or allowing merchants to sell less while still maintaining revenues. This business would be like Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchen business (which has already raised over $400M dollars). Cloud Kitchens are commercial facilities purpose-built to produce food specifically for delivery. This business would do the same thing with factories to either be delivered to end users or picked up “in-store” (really, just a store-front with a few items of clothing that you can try on for sizing, not for style). The thesis of this business would be that bringing the production closer to the end-consumer could actually reduce pricing. Monetization: Subscription fee to be able to use these cloud factories. Perhaps a % per good sold.

At-home Sleep Lab Everyone sleeps differently, but it’s hard to figure out what conditions create the “best sleep” for you. An integrated system of sleep devices that can turn your room into a “sleep-lab” or “legendary sleep location.” The company would sell watches that can track your sleep, blankets that can adjust in temperature throughout the night, lightbulbs that can turn on and off with different waking hues, meditative speakers to play music or sounds, sleep mattresses, and more. All of these devices would have live-sensors that work together every night to try and optimize your sleep cycle for the better. It would use machine learning to create the best tailored sleep environment for you. Casper (currently with a market cap of $250M, CSPR on the stock market) has dabbled in this quite a bit. One example way that this could work is by having 2-weeks of “testing sleep” to adjust a variety of factors to see how individuals respond best, then a platform tailored to you based on these results. To sell the product, it could be a “sleep subscriptions service” that is free for the first 4 weeks (the first 2 weeks would be “sleep tests” and the next 2 weeks would be actual sleep use). Imagine the 1999 movie Smart House, but as a Smart Sleep suite of integrated sleep systems. Eventually, with data at scale, these metrics could be used to create a large sleep database that could be used for research.

Today’s business problem and the idea: Sponsor app for J1 visa applicants For cultural exchange students looking to get a J1 visa and work temporarily in the United States, it is difficult to find a job. Currently, specialized agencies (known as Visa Sponsors) charge cultural exchange students anywhere from $1,500 - $10,000 for “program fees” which include, finding a job placement for the student, providing insurance for the student, and other support for the student before, during, and after their placement in the United States. However, these agencies are essentially middle-men in a system where the students and employers could talk directly if they just knew how to find each other. Generally, in this business their are so many points of contacts that students end up paying so many more fees than they need. Thus, this business would be an app (perhaps like Tinder) where students can upload resumes, complete a job profiles, and search for jobs while employers can post job descriptions, conduct interviews remotely, and find the best students for temporary work. We would cut out one (of the many) middle-men. Our role would be to provide a stable platform for these connections to take place. Think of it like an Indeed (which sold in 2012 for $1b), ZipRecruiter, or LinkedIn for international students who want to come to the US temporarily.

Finding a problem or How to find business problems and the ones you have You're going to have to brainstorm. Some people recommend that you just sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't. That might take years, if not forever. Be proactive. It's hard to say where the best place to start brainstorming is, not because there are so few, but because there are so many. There are thousands of good problems out there, and practically anything can trigger you to stumble across one. What's more important is that you recognize a good problem when you see one, and vice versa. If a problem scores poorly on the guidelines above, don't waste your time. Keep brainstorming. For that reason, it makes sense to start with one of these guidelines in mind, and let that be your trigger. For example, since it's helpful to solve a problem that you have yourself, why not take a look at your own life and see if you can spot any problems. What worries you, exasperates you, or annoys you? The other guidelines also work well as brainstorming triggers. Who do you like spending time with? What groups are you a part of? What are some problems you notice people solving frequently? What's something that seems to be growing into a bigger trend? My personal favorite is to start by looking at where people are already spending lots of time and money and go from there. Money changing hands is almost always a sign that there's a valuable problem being solved. Avoid Fatal Mistakes Founders typically have already made one or two huge mistakes by this point. If you can avoid these, you'll be way ahead before you've even started. Starting with a solution in mind. I've mentioned this already, but it's worth repeating. You need to be honest with yourself here, because this is sometimes subtle. If you're already attached to a particular idea for a product, technology, or set of features that you want to build, that's going to ruin your ability to find a solid problem and analyze it objectively. You've put the solution first, and it's blinding you to opportunities. Ruling out already-solved problems. Nothing in the guidelines above says that a good problem is one that nobody is solving. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Almost all successful businesses start by tackling problems that have popular, pre-existing, alternative solutions. Way too many founders attempt to solve unsolved problems, then get stuck. These problems are often unsolved because they're unimportant and people don't care. Being afraid to solve high-value problems. Indie hackers in particular are notorious for only tackling cheap, low-value problems. You don't have to sell something for cheap to have a chance at success. That's backwards. It's actually harder to sell cheap things, because people care less. I've bought more cars than back scratchers in my life. It doesn't matter that you're a small, scrappy startup. I've met 2-person teams selling their software for $10,000 per year per customer. Pick a high-value problem and charge a high price. Not having a specific customer in mind. If you can't articulate whose problem you're solving, how is your website going to articulate it? If you want to wait and see who the best customer turns out to be, that sounds a lot like a key looking for a lock. If you think your product is for everyone, it's probably for nobody. If you describe your target customer by combining a bunch of attributes (e.g. "iOS users who need to get tasks done but prefer modern, clean UIs"), that's not an actual group of people. You're just describing the features of a product you're already biased toward building. Some of these points are a bit counterintuitive. That's why so many generations of smart-but-uninformed indie hackers are repeating the mistakes of their predecessors. But it's simple to avoid these kinds of mistakes once you know them. It's more a more a matter of knowledge and discipline, rather than genius or hard work.