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Ideas For Your Next Tech Startup
prostoalex writes "Business 2.0 magazine enumerates tech ideas that venture capitalists are currently interested in, listing the amounts they have ready to invest." From the article:"A column that appeared on Business2.com the next day described the company Armstrong envisioned and his wish list of criteria. Those who thought they had the right stuff could send Armstrong a business plan. A few weeks later, Armstrong had a new gripe: He'd received more than 20 solid plans and couldn't decide which of three finalists he wanted to fund -- not just for $1 million, but for as much as $5 million. He has since winnowed the list down to two.
That got us thinking. Why not ask dozens of VCs a tantalizing (but often unasked) question: What types of ideas would you fund tomorrow if the right pitch landed on your doorstep? After a few weeks of trolling Sand Hill Road and beyond, we got 11 leading venture firms to spill their most promising business ideas -- and to pony up $50 million in funding to the entrepreneurs who can pull them off. "
I'm thinking mp3 player + SMS + ringtones + java
wait, it needs something...
XML!
Alright, I got it, an mp3 player that doubles as a text messaging device. Instead of beeps, it plays ringtones you pick from your mp3 player. Java makes cool games possible. XML makes it seem cool to those who don't realize it just means humans can read the tags I will hide with DRM thus playacting the RIAA thinking people can't pirate ringtones.
I think I'm on to something...
We want our cell phones to do everything and we want to market PCs and content to everybody on the planet. I think that's a decent summary of all the "ideas" there.
Is it just me or did everything sound incredibly boring?
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
I got an idea that is sure to be a hit.
A news web site, but not just any news site. One that has a witty address and is directed towards technology. It will be a kind of news for nerds, you know... stuff that matters. It is sure to be a hit!
"many more of us will go broke working 75 hour weeks, while big investors walk off with a tax break, if not the rewards for effort."
It is not the effort, it is the risk that is rewarded. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
By working your 75 hours per week you are secure that you will receive a set amount of money. You have a low risk. VCs give their money to startups in the hope of receiving a high return, they have a high risk.
If you want to take chances, there are investment houses that will take you money, pool it with others and then act on your behalf to invest your money based on the amount of risk you are prepared to take.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
... begin, the next dotcom bubble has.
Disclaimer - I'm a physician. I can't really see a use for being able to know what a patient's vital signs are for someone "needing" to be in the hospital. In fact, according to recent insurance guidelines, if all you're doing is checking vital signs, you will not get paid for said hospitalization. Reminds me of a recent slashdot article about some bizzarre japanese medico-toilet which analyzed your various outputs and told your doctor about it.
I sure don't want to here about that.
Administering meds? IVs? Enemas? Who you gonna call?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Seriously, though...
This isn't a new idea. Twenty years ago, I was trying to raise funds to build a recording studio. A friend of mine, studying for his MBA at Harvard brought me a spiral-bound book that listed VC firms categorized by the fields that they were interested in (e.g., biotech, software, hardware, defense, etc.). All of them were way out of my league, but it made for interesting reading, in a "follow the money" sense.
Ten years after that, when I was involved in a dot.com startup, we ended up pitching to some of the VC firms listed in that spiral-bound book (on Wall Street, not Sand Hill Road).
From what I've gathered from the experiences of friends involved with vulture captial funding, it's a last resort, the only option if angel funding, friends and family, and lines of credit don't pan out.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
None of those ideas come to anything.
The real moneymakers come out of nowhere. If it sounds like something you've heard of, but with maybe a tiny twist...look elsewhere.
The really amusing thing is that the biggest success in recent times, Google, was simply "we want to do search engines just like everyone else. But we'll do it better".
What makes real money isn't a hot new idea. It's doing something well. Quality. If I were a VC, that's what I'd be looking for. Competence and pragmatism.
The cake is a pie
Low risk. Right. Perhaps you're looking at different startups than I am but standard employees often work those 75 hours a week for:
- generally rock bottom salary.
- the chance that even that will disappear on a moment's notice.
- perhaps some stock options that are unlikely to ever be worth more than the bits they're taking up in some HR database
- the possibility of having that startup's failure emblazened upon your resume for the rest of your days [more important for execs, but still]
And that ignores all of the social risks taken by spending that much time at your job and not with your mate/kids/friends.
Not to say that investors aren't risking a bit, but to steal a tidbit of wisdom from the poker world, "100 chips is a lot more valuable to a man with 100 chips than a man with a thousand."
For competitive reasons, I don't want to post this with my real name, but this is a real post from a real guy in the SlashDot community. I've been here for a while (id in the 4x,xxx range).
Anyways, I started a company by raising US $500,000 through friends and family. I used to be the CTO of an Internet company and decided to start my own company on the Internet but in a different field. I am a techie and an entrepreneur and definitely a geek. Let's put it this way, even today, I write the majority of the software (though I have other developers too).
The best advice I can give is to watch your cash flow. I was personally horrified by the stories of $200,000 per month burn rates. I actually had a lot of personal wealth (from my last venture) but still ran out of my basement until I needed more space. The US $500,000 lasted us for 2.5 years (not 2.5 months like some companies) after which we raised another $250,000. But we actually had a viable business already with the $500,000 spend. We raised another $250 K to speed up the marketing that we had already proven to know that if we spent X we would get X times 2 back in less than a year. This was based on hard numbers.
Anyways, I only gave away about 25% of the company to do it, and the company is probably worth about $20 million today and our earnings are growing faster each month.
We are in the very competitive website builder arena but are one of the top sites in the field. Our focus has been on ease of use first and then secondly on feature set.
Anyways, I'm mentioning this because I wanted to give those of you who want to start a business hope.
The absolute worst thing you can do is get into the high-tech business without a model for making money. Pure research or cool ideas are fun but don't bring home the bacon. Remember your market is business people so focus your business plan on how the tech brings in profit. Now how cool the tech is and hence there ought to be profit.
Good luck.
I have personally overseen the patenting of at least 75% of these ideas. Considering that's just within my own firm, and without a reviews of the prior art, any firms attempting to implement these concepts will probably be faced with serious legal obstacles.
Yes, they're called casinos.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
We have solved step3) ???