Startups & Ventures

Live portraits A tool that takes a collection of photos and makes videos with the people moving, looking, smiling there. As a reference, recall Hogwarts' portraits. There are such tools, but they lack better quality and don't allow uploading a collection of photos to make a video or many videos at once.

I assume there are people in this channel who want to study something but lack a direction. I saw questions about how to write an app - what prerequisites one need to do that. I wrote an introduction post about the learning direction. As for programming, if there will be any interest in this, I could write a more detailed guide from my point of view regarding what you should know to start writing apps (mobile, web, desktop). Let me know in this Google Form whether you need such a guide. I develop commercial apps for 4 years using mostly Javascript.

I assume there are people in this channel who want to study something but lack a direction. I saw questions about how to write an app - what prerequisites one need to do that. I wrote an introduction post about the learning direction. As for programming, if there will be any interest in this, I could write a more detailed guide from my point of view regarding what you should know to start writing apps (mobile, web, desktop). Let me know in the comments whether you need such a guide. I develop commercial apps for 4 years.

Harmful ingredients while scanning goods An app where you could scan products' ingredients whether they have any harmful things. A feature that simplifies the whole process is that the app knows your clinical history: do you have any allergies, etc. Additional features that might be included are: - the app suggests the most useful recipes for bought products. - it also recommends various recipes for one dish. - it helps to assemble the list of necessary goods for one week/day/two to buy. - it highlights the useful ingredients of products, describes how they impact your health.

All newsletters you need A newsletter that combines links with descriptions to other newsletters, newly created ones, trending, closed, ranking with the top world or by region newsletters. There are might be 2 types of executing this idea: a newsletter where you send it with, say, weekly updates about how newsletters world has changed. Or, you could create a website that serves as a knowledge base. Optionally, with updates. Monetization? Ads apply to both types of the solution. Also, it could be paid catalogs. So people will pay you to add their newsletters to yours.

Hiring experts platform Hiring is hard. If there are no experienced people in a field to tell you who to hire, what to expect, etc. then there is no way you find out by yourself without attempts and mistakes. The first way is to become an expert in tasks you're searching for an employee, then it's simpler to understand who you're looking for, what things a person will be doing, and whatnot. The second approach is to ask people who know and may recommend something as they have more experience or expertise in something. The problem is to find such people you can trust and who are the real experts. For example, if you look for accountants, then it makes sense to speak to a person who worked as an accountant, or/and managed such people. Thus you understand what skills a potential employee should have, what tasks should be doing and what are the main responsibilities. How to recognize great accountants and so on. This idea is about creating a platform where people who want to hire could find experts in some field to receive recommendations about the process.

Replacing faces service My friend makes videos where he substitutes people's faces. He tried a few paid services, but there are problems: the video quality is low, the faces aren't replaced right. So, the main issues are the quality of the video and the substitution. We might build a service that provides a better video quality which means higher processing time on a server. To leverage this issue, we could provide custom plans where users would choose video quality. For example, 720p is priced more than 480p. Notice that it's hard to render such videos and probably you'll need performant GPUs for cloud hosting. The second issue is the quality of the face substitution. To handle this we could use custom parameters provided to end-users but simplified to their understanding. So the service can be used by not only programmers, video professionals, or deep learning engineers. Our target is regular people that aren't familiar with underhood face replacement magic. There are some open-source projects for that, so probably you don't need to re-create a wheel. I guess it needs a custom configuration to handle various kinds of videos and faces to be handled in the service and to provide a friendly API for users.

Specialized 3D printing A lot of manufactured now things could be made faster. Many businesses demand specific goods, say dentistry or hearing aids, that should be produced by particular schemes. Thus you need to reconfigure a manufacturing process sometimes to meet specific requirements. It may be simpler to use 3D models and print them employing 3D printers. For example, a dentist prescribes you a treatment that requires a tool/material for your teeth only, which means it should have a specific size. There is a company 3D manufacturing such goods. I guess it's a big one and there are should be smaller ones specializing not only in medicine goods. Resources: - How 3D Printed Hearing Aids Inaudibly Took Over The World - Research: 3D printing: a threat to global trade - Report from World Bank Group: Is 3D Printing a Threat to Global Trade? - 3D printing market valuation

Travel stuff reminder Reminds you to do not forget stuff to take when you traveling or even going to work. It gather info based on what other people forget often and gives you recommendations. Also, it allows to create lists of things to not forget.

Forsage is the international community of the global decentralized ecosystem and the first ever smart contract marketing matrix of the ethereum and tron network This is a self executing software algorithm that perform the function of distributing partners rewards between community members

A bank for kids An account that could be created with parents' permission, so their kid might accumulate money there. It could help in teaching young humans how to spend/save money. The app should have a friendly interface, not like regular banks have.

International movies platform Problem: Watching international films is especially difficult. This is problematic because there are thousands of movies I can’t watch online. Did you know that Bollywood (the film industry in India) and Nollywood (the film industry in Nigeria) are both large than Hollywood by film volume? Solution: An international movie platform for people to watch international films. Given the success of Parasite (an international film made in Korean by a Korean team) last year in the global film circuit, this type of business would play off more global trends. Since the combined revenues and volume of non-US films are larger than Hollywood, this business would tap into an untapped market that is being neglected by larger content-producers and distributors today like Netflix. In 2015, Fortune Magazine’s Jake Bright wrote about Nollywood. Explaining that: By 2009, Nollywood had surpassed Hollywood as the world’s second largest movie industry by volume, right behind India’s Bollywood. And in 2014, the Nigerian government released data for the first time showing Nollywood is a $3.3 billion sector, with 1844 movies produced in 2013 alone. Earlier this year, Nollywood Producer Kunle Afolyan reached an exclusive Netflix distribution arrangement for his latest film, October 1. This adds to the 10 Nollywood related titles already on Netflix and the U.S. media company’s recent $12 million movie rights purchase of Nigerian novel Beasts of No Nation, to star Idris Elba. And many observers believe that the global reach of African films could take off, led by video on demand (VOD) platforms and productions of Nigeria — the continent’s largest economy and most populous nation. One large player in the Nigerian streaming market is IROKOTV. They (and other African digital content startups) have received financial backing of $25 million from firms such as New York’s Tiger Global and Sweden’s Roko. Recently, however, IROKOTV laid off 150 members of their staff and seem to be disinvesting from Africa; thus, leaving more space for opportunity.

Ultimate shopping The first problem I wanted to share is getting actual information about goods prices at the nearest supermarkets. A lot of shops do this already. We'll try to go further. What if we're interested in a specific set of products, and we want to track their price? Also, it would be interesting to see the price dynamics. So, our platform's first main feature is the possibility to subscribe users to specific products to notify them about price changes, discounts, or coupons available. How many times did you get poor service or goods? If it didn't happen, you're lucky. The problem here is leaving a review, thus other people can adjust their plans to get the best service and goods. If you leave feedback in a shop, and the next day you buy a spoiled fish, then the case repeats a few times, then leaving feedback there doesn't work. What if we have a review system where verified(ones who buy there regularly) customers can leave feedback about goods and services? That's the second feature of the platform. Later we might connect delivery businesses. Therefore users have one place where they can buy goods and be sure the service will be excellent. These are 2 different problems. I don't think it's worth building a whole thing initially. Try to deliver the most important one. For example, an independent supermarkets review system at <choose your region>.

Work chat team building There are many tools for Slack, Teams, etc. where you can play quiz games with colleagues, or guess a song. More and more people become remote workers and the trend to communicate and know better folks you work with is getting stronger. Though there are many tools for that, it would be great to have one that helps teams. For example, there would be different games, questions to know everyone better, topics suggestions so you can talk like in an office kitchen, etc.

Digital non-fungible assets This is more a concept than a specific business idea. We need to handle creating/functioning/selling/buying digital assets which become more popular every day. The market has a name of the digital collectibles. For example, there is a platform on NBA Top Shot that allows fans to buy/sell video highlights. More details about the platform.

Recaller A platform to help you to keep knowledge of read articles, books, etc. by employing learning techniques such as writing questions when you're reading. Then answering them once per X period. The platform shows the highlights you made, the questions and notes you wrote down.

Brand familiarity price analyzer A tool that helps you understand an approximate spending on marketing of some brand by collecting it on search engines and analyzing the data.

Meeting auto-recorder A tool that automatically records an online meeting, keeps track of an agenda, transcribes a voice data to text, generates a summary, then saves all the data to some place.

Voice diagram builder An online diagram creation tool that can be build via voice. Imagine a situation you're talking with someone explaining something. In meantime, you also need to pick right draw tools, diagram formats, draw and connect the arrows in right directions. Wouldn't it be quicker if a tool can recognize diagram patterns by its own? So it can create explicable diagrams why you're explaining concepts and others may see a visual part while you're not busy with the tool itself.