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SUMMARY - startup ideas that we would like to fund

[WHAT]

1. ] We don't like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we're trying something new: we're going to list some of the ideas we've been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn't anticipate.
2. ] Please don't feel that if you want to apply to Y Combinator, you have to work on one of these types of ideas. If we've learned nothing else from doing YC, it's how little we know. Many of the best startups we've funded, like Loopt, proposed things we'd never considered.

[WHY]

1. ] 

[WHERE]

1. ] READ THE FULL ARTICLE
1. ] http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html

[WHEN]

1. ] 2008-07

[EXAMPLE]

1. ] A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom
1. ]  at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels' business model. The current situation can't be the final answer. And what happened with music is now happening with movies. When the dust settles in 20 years, what will this world look like?
2. ] Simplified browsing
1. ] Grandparents and small children don't want the full web; they want to communicate and share pictures and look things up. What viable ideas lie undiscovered in the space between a digital photo frame and a computer running Firefox?
3. ] New news.
1. ] traditional newspapers - their problems are due to deep structural flaws that are exposed now that they have competitors. 
2. ] News will morph significantly in the more competitive environment of the web. So called "blogs" like PerezHilton and TechCrunch are one sign of the future. News sites like Reddit and Digg are another. But these are just the beginning.
4. ] Outsourced IT.
1. ] IT department is an expensive bottleneck Getting them to make you a simple web form could take months.
2. ] Enter Wufoo. Now if the marketing department wants to put a form on the web, they can do it themselves in 5 minutes.
3. ] You can take practically anything users still depend on IT departments for and base a startup on it
5. ] Enterprise software 2.0.
1. ] Enterprise software companies sell bad software for huge amounts of money. They get away with it for a variety of reasons that link together to form a sort of protective wall
2. ] make things for smaller companies, because they can't afford the overpriced stuff made for big ones. They're also easier to sell to.
6. ] More variants of CRM
1. ] CRM ("Customer Relationship Management") means all sorts of different things, but a lot of the current embodiments don't seem much more than mailing list managers.
2. ] It should be possible to make interactions with customers much higher-res.
7. ] Something your company needs that doesn't exist.
1. ] someone needed something in their work, found it didn't exist, and quit to build it
2. ] if you're working for a big company and you start the conversation "We'd pay a lot if someone would just build a ..." Whatever you say next is probably a good product idea
8. ] Dating
1. ]  in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces.
9. ] Photo/video sharing services
1. ] As much as people like to share words (IM and email and blogging are "word sharing" apps), they probably like to share pictures more.  less work with more interesting results . I think there is huge growth still to come. There may ultimately be 30 different subtypes of image/video sharing service, half of which remain to be discovered. 
10. ] Auctions.
1. ] boring, stagnation, eBay monopoly BUT - Online auctions have more potential than most people currently realize PRB as with dating, creating the strategy to solve the chicken/egg problem
11. ] Web Office apps
1. ] msft office competitor -
12. ] Fix advertising
1. ] Advertising could be made much better if it tried to please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they're getting. The right answer will probably look very different. It might not even seem like advertising, by current standards.  approach problem - start over from scratch: to think what the goal of advertising is, and ask how to do that using the new ingredients technology gives us
13. ] Online learning.
1. ] Till recently, schools, like newspapers, had geographical monopolies. But the web changes that ... ] start with test prep services, for which there's already demand, and then expand into ] teaching kids more than just how to score high on tests. Another would be ] to start with games and gradually make them more thoughtful. Another, for younger kids, would be to ] let them learn by watching one another (anonymously) solve problems.
14. ] Tools for measurement.
1. ]
15. ] Off the shelf security.
1. ] Services like ADT charge a fortune. Now that houses and their owners are both connected to networks practically all the time, a startup could stitch together alternatives out of cheap, existing hardware and services. 
16. ] A form of search that depends on design
1. ] 1 google weakness is design, - what if - a kind of search that depended a lot on design, a startup might actually be able to beat Google at search. I don't know if there is, but if you do, we'd love to hear from you.
17. ] New payment methods.
1. ]  So pretty much any new way of paying for things that's easier for some class of situations will turn out to have a bigger market than its inventors expected. Look at Paypal. (Warning: Regulated industry.)
18. ] The WebOS.
1. ]
19. ] Application and/or data hosting.
1. ]
20. ] Shopping guides.
1. ] Now the space of possibilities is bewilderingly large, and people need help navigating it. If you already know what you want, Bountii can find you the best price. But how do you decide what you want? see #3 
21. ] Finance software for individuals and small businesses.
1. ]
22. ] A web-based Excel/database hybrid.
1. ]
23. ] More open alternatives to Wikipedia
1. ]
24. ] A buffer against bad customer service.
1. ] appalling customer service. "Please stay on the line. Your call is important to us."  -> a more user-friendly wrapper around common bad customer service experiences, people would pay to use it. Passport expediters are an encouraging example.
25. ] A Craigslist competitor.
1. ]  there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves
26. ] Better video chat. 
1. ] Skype and Tokbox are just the beginning. There's going to be a lot of evolution in this area, especially on mobile devices
27. ] Hardware/software hybrids
1. ] not many software companies do hardware, not many hardware companies do software (well), doesnt need to be groundbreaking new hardware, iterative
28. ]  Fixing email overload
1. ] A solution would find a ready market. But the best solution may not be anything as obvious as a new mail reader.  Related problem: Using your inbox as a to-do list. The solution is probably to acknowledge this rather than prevent it
29. ] Easy site builders for specific markets.
1. ] Weebly is a good, general-purpose site builder. But there are a lot of markets that could use more specialized tools. What's the best way to make a web site if you're a real estate agent, or a restaurant, or a lawyer? There still don't seem to be canonical answers -> write a flexible site builder, then write layers on top to produce different variants.
30. ] Startups for startups
1. ]

[HOW-TO]

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[REFERENCE]

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Details

ID: 4267

NAME: ideas

DESCRIPTION: by Paul Graham, founder @yCombinator - SUMMARY Paul's Essay(2008) on startup ideas(30) that we(ycombinator.com) would like to fund

AUTHOR: article.author/s

EDITOR: article.editor/s

PUBLISHER: article.publisher/s

STATUS: Write

PRIORITY: 0

OWNER ID: 75

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