Ask HN: What are other "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas"? In his recent essay, (http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.... ), PG discusses several frighteningly ambitious startup ideas. The question revolves around other ideas that PG did not discuss, Here are the one he discussed:
1. A New Search Engine
2. Replace Email
3. Replace Universities
4. Internet Drama
5. The Next Steve Jobs
6. Bring Back Moore's Law
7. Ongoing Diagnosis |
To turn that from a dull idea (it's been done, it just needs to be done better) you'd add in some human rights stuff, and some prisoner reform stuff. If you wanted to push some boundaries you'd use it to include schemes that befriend, and monitor, paedophiles.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11755527)
Add in some work / education programmes (using some disruptive technology to deliver the education; because you have a captive market.) and you've got a nice socially aware start up.
Transportation:
1. A two-seat, 80+ mi/charge, <= $5,000, autonomous EV. Should be simple and modular enough for self-assembly (basically Ikea for EVs). Insurance for this would be next to nothing.
The following should be franchises in every city that matters:
2. Co-working space, learning space, and living space franchises for <= $5/day each per customer.
3. A vertical, autonomous farm franchise for <= $5/day per customer.
4. An autonomous, scalable manufacturer-as-a-service with a simple API (like Heroku for manufacturing).
Web services, Hardware, and Software:
5. Email will change, but not on a deep technical level. The winning service will just let its users do everything they wish they could with email now but can't. If such an email service were created, it would replace most social apps/services and affect the rest profoundly.
6. I don't think we need another Steve Jobs--but a few more PGs wouldn't hurt.
7. A way to prevent talent acquisitions and to encourage entrepreneurship in a broader population outside of tech. The economy could definitely be more distributed and diversified than it is today.
8. An inexpensive OS and accompanying tablet tested and proven to work for old people. If any demographic needs the power and grace of the internet, it's old people. The interface and functionality should adapt automagically as you get older.
9. A subscription based service for the EV I mentioned earlier.
10. A web service that creates DRM/copyright free songs based on songs you like.
11. Every time I say this I get down-voted but I would like a search engine as good as Google, but lets you explore a realtime graph of anonymous or aliased queries passively or actively; collaborative searching would definitely be a feature. This solves "A New Search Engine" and "Internet Drama" at the same time.
12. Replace the FDA.
There are dozens of opportunities replacing the way that banking, credit cards, and insurance operate. Jeremy Liew's piece in Pando Daily is a good place to start:
http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/27/big-data-machine-learning-s...
http://www.quora.com/Startup-Ideas/What-are-other-Frightenin...