Do you want to start a new business but don't have any great ideas? Well, that's great, because I have too many ideas but not enough time to start a business for each idea I have. So, in this blog post I'll share 10 great startup ideas. Just so you know, this is not a list of "leftover" ideas that I'm giving away because I don't believe in them; I'd start these businesses myself in a blink if I had the time. Unfortunately, I'm involved in five startups at the moment, so these ideas are for you to take. If you start any of these businesses, let me know. I'll be your first customer.
A Service that Allows Hotels and Airlines to Sell their Empty Rooms/Seats
The Problem: The cost of flying a plane from Denver to New York is almost the same whether the plane is full or there's only one passenger on it. If an airline gets $50 for a seat that was selling for $200 the night before, it's not great for them, but it's a lot better than not getting anything. Same thing for hotels: every night that a hotel has an empty room, that's money that they're leaving on the table.
The Solution: What if there was a service that allowed people to place bids on hotel rooms and flights? Airlines and hotels could secretly accept the bids at the last minute. For example, let's say I want to go to Europe for a month. I'm willing to pay $200 for a one-way ticket and I require a 4-hour minimum notice from the airline. Airplanes leave to Europe with empty seats every day. The first airline willing to take my money would get it. The key here is to allow the airlines and hotels to accept bids secretly. After all, if you paid $300 for a flight, you wouldn't like knowing that the guy next to you paid only $50.
This service should be offered online and also through mobile phone apps, because most travelers use their mobile devices a lot while traveling.
A Smart Parking Assistant
The Problem: If you live in a big city, parking is probably a big problem for you. Finding an empty spot is probably very difficult and chances are you don't always have enough coins to pay for parking. And, even if you did, who likes walking half a block to the meter, get the receipt and then walk back to their car to put the receipt in it?
The Solution: An app that you can install on your GPS device or your Smart Phone (iPhone, Android, etc.) that:
- Finds empty parking spots and tells your where they are so you don't have to drive around in circles until you find an empty spot.
- Uses BlueTooth technology or your phone's Internet connection to send your payment information to a central server that collects your payment and lets the city know your parking spot has been paid for.
Cool iPhone App to Buy Products from Affiliates
In case you don't know what affiliate marketing is, it's when a business pays their partners a commission for every sale they help them make. Amazon.com has a great affiliate program. What if you developed a really cool iPhone app that makes the experience of buying books on your phone a lot more enjoyable? You could use your affiliate link so every time someone buys a book from Amazon using your app, Amazon will pay you a commission. The best part? You'll get paid during the lifetime of that customer, not just once. This would probably make you a lot of money even if only 1,000 people used your app. And, don't limit yourself to Amazon! There are a lot of great companies that offer affiliate programs!
The key? Include a sharing component in your app so the users can share the items they buy on Facebook and Twitter so their friends can see them. This is a great way to get this app to go viral!
Video Content Indexing Service
The Problem: Let's say you're searching for a video about "growing yellow tomatoes". There's a guy in a video who mentions that exact same phrase: "growing yellow tomatoes", but he called the video "Gardening Tips" and "growing yellow tomatoes" is nowhere to be found in the video title, the description or the tags. Because YouTube doesn't automatically transcribe videos, you won't be able to find the yellow tomatoes video, even though that's exactly what you're looking for.
The Solution: A technology that converts spoken audio into indexable text. You could license or sell this technology to YouTube or their competitors, or charge companies to automatically add captions to any video. Even better: once an audio file has been converted into text, a translation engine can translate the content to several languages! And a text-to-speech engine could covert that Japanese text into Japanese audio! Imagine recording a video about gardening that gets automatically translated into Japanese!
A Tool for Remote Collaboration
The Problem: More and more people are working from their homes. This is great! They don't have to commute to work, they can eat healthier at home and spend more time with their families. There's a problem, though. Communicating with co-workers and clients over the phone and by email isn't as effective as communicating in person.
The Solution: A web app that emulates in-person interaction. It would allow you to:
- Draw on a piece of paper that you and the rest of your team are looking at the same time.
- See each other's faces (because so much is said with body language).
- See each other's computer's screens (and, everybody should be able to work together on one screen, too).
- Real-time voice and text translation, as more and more companies have branches, employees and contractors overseas.
I've seen some OK collaboration tools out there, but, in my opinion, nothing comes even close to resembling the experience of in-person interaction so far.
Service that Offers You Discounts on What You're About to Buy
We all hate spammers. They flood us with offers for products we don't even want. But, what if when you're about to check out at the grocery store you were offered a $20 coupon for the purchase you're about to make? What if when you're about to buy a pair of Nike shoes online this service alerted you that you can get the same pair for $10 less on some other site? Even better, what if this software asked you a few questions and learned from your behavior so it could offer you discounts on the things you buy every day instead of things you don't need or want? Who doesn't like paying less for things we buy every day? What he hate are offers for things we don't want.
Online Grocery Shopping
Imagine if your grocery store offered you to buy your groceries online. You could order the same stuff you ordered last time (if you always buy the same stuff). You could search by keyword or browse categories. You could set up auto-purchases for certain items you need every week and get the orders delivered whenever it's convenient for you. The engine should make relevant recommendations, such as, "You're buying cereal, do you want to add milk?" or "Three months ago you bought a tooth brush. Do you need a new one?"
I'm actually surprised that the main grocery stores aren't offering this service already. You can buy anything you want online, so why not groceries from your favorite grocery store?
Other Ideas
- People are a lot more conscious about what they eat than they were 10 years ago. A lot of people would only eat organic products if they were more affordable, but organic products are usually twice as expensive as their non-organic counterparts. Companies offering organic products at competitive prices are going to make a lot of money.
- When your car breaks, towing it costs a fortune and you don't have a car for a couple of days. What if a car repair shop picked up your car for free, gave you a car to drive while they fix yours and then bring your fixed car back to you?
- Posting photos and videos to a blog is very time-consuming. I just came back from a roadtrip and had hundreds of photos and videos. I wish I had had a software that could browse through my phone, upload all my content to the web and post it to my blog automatically.
As you can see, all these are things I wish existed so I COULD USE THEM. The best businesses start this way. Someone wishes something were done differently and a new product or service is born. These people usually do a really good job because they understand the pain and know what the perfect solution would look like. I love technology, so most of my business ideas are technology-related, but if you're a baker or a mailman, maybe you can think of a better/cheaper/more effective way to bake bread or deliver mail.
