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20 Tech Ideas VCs Want to Fund
An anonymous reader writes "CNNMoney reports on the top 20 technology ideas that our beloved VCs want to throw money at. Are these the brilliant ideas that will change the world (and make you rich in the process)?" From the article: "Delivery of new types of Web search to mobile phones. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are all taking a swipe at this, but Rimer believes they're betting on a losing strategy by simply shrinking their existing desktop features into a handheld package. He says he's willing to invest in new search applications that, for example, depend as much on voice recognition as on text input and would offer up everything from shopping and news headlines to driving directions and restaurant reviews with a few voice commands and keystrokes ... What he'll invest: $2 million for a working demo application."
The thing about all of these ideas is that they are not really very interesting or innovative. No slam on any of the VCs involved here (particularly the Draper Fisher Jurvetson folks as they are top notch), but these ideas are all about derived markets and products. It seems that the VC world has gotten lots more conservative over the past five years or so and they are looking at giving larger amounts of money to easier/simpler concepts rather than encouraging real cutting edge research.
This of course is a major problem as the US has historically relied upon federal funding to help develop the real cutting edge stuff, yet federal funding for basic science research is being cut dramatically in favor of applied research. So, we now run the risk of losing out on our technological advantage from both traditional government funding and now private funding. (notable exceptions for a number of philanthropists such as Paul Allen, Bill Gates, John Moran and others).
It's harder for VCs to find basic science research projects that have a significant payoff, but the projects are out there. We're banking on our technology and approaches to an area of bioscience and metabolomics to pay off in a variety of spaces from agronomics to medicine, drug development, defense and nutrition among many other applications, but I've found most VCs to be remarkably limited in their approach preferring to focus only on the short term, 1-3 years, rather than the 5-6 necessary for many projects. Its an old story, but focusing on the short term is a good business model where you invest 50% of the capital (or less) for 70-80% of the profits only after 80% of the work has been done. Unfortunately, you miss out on prospects for real impact by focusing on the next marketing tool rather than the next disease cure.
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So drivers can read email while driving.
That's just fucking retarded. People have trouble driving while "reading" the road and traffic conditions. Why split their concentration any more?
Don't you need internet access on your cell phone before mobile search engines hit it big? In which case there would need to be almost nothing different than current websites. Maybe they should focus on getting decent broadband to mobile phones in the area of $20 a month before worrying about super-duper mobile phone websites. Otherwise nobody will use the websites....
I want my flying car.
Hot tip to VC... if you really want to do something with a database, pick one of the existing "flyweight" OS databases and put together a sales and support organization... don't reinvent the wheel.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Do you really want to be funded by these vulture capitalists?
With real-time traffic updates, navigation, and information feeds ...
http://www.dash.net/
Rocket
Rocket Your humble build servant.
...for that article. Visually break up the different ideas so the reader can easily scan them.
It's kinda like the Internets. It's a series of tubes. The VC's could throw their money down my virtual toilet and when they are done they can wipe their asses with my vaporware paper. From VC to VT to VP = Profit!
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Are these the brilliant ideas that will change the world (and make you rich in the process)?"
They may change the world and the certainly will make somebody rich if they do succeed, but that person will probably NOT be the poor developer or inventor who came up with the idea in the first place. They don't call it "vulture capital" for nothing you know. If the idea or invention is a spectacular success then the inventor may receive some millions after the financiers have received their billions. Remember what happened to the inventor of the blue LED...there is a lesson to be learned there.
I must've missed the first five minutes... what's a VC?
Draper thinks there's an opening for a startup that can deliver most of the benefits of standard Big Blue products without millions of lines of code or an army of consultants and IT managers. "I'm not sure yet what this company would look like," Draper says, "but it would not have the technology baggage of the entrenched monopolists. If it can penetrate the market cleverly like we did with Hotmail and Skype, it might not take that much funding."
What he'll invest: $3 million for a working application
And if the folks at Postgres are smart, they've just found a way to add $3MM to their foundation funds with a simple email...
Kidding aside, one thing that _would_ be interesting to see--high-quality, moderate cost OLAP analytics engines, preferably running ROLAP on top of an engine such as PostgreSQL. Maybe they're out there, but I don't see much of them (other than Mondrian). As the commercial OLAP market is structured now, it's hard for midsize companies to justify the outflow for decent analytics. No lack of demand though, just need something at the right price point...
...material diversions to the driver's attention, with the advent of the cellphone, that ship, as they say, has sailed.
He says he's willing to invest in new search applications that, for example, depend as much on voice recognition as on text input
Am I really the only person who feels like an idiot when I have to talk to a computer?
Does Rimer _want_ to support bad ideas? As they say, where there's a will, there's a way (to $300 million.)
Maybe he'll support my idea of dragging Arctic ice to the Sahara desert.
Have you read my journal today?
"drive and check e-mail at the same time. That's vastly safer than drivers looking down and taking one or both hands off the wheel to play with their BlackBerry" - Jonathan Fram
This fool wants to pay people to put email in the hands of people driving down the road. These are people who can't drive their giant SUVs already, read signs, use their signals. He thinks putting their Blackberries in a virtual page on the rear end of the car in front will be safe, not just make them tailgate even more.
Combining the yuppie inability to spell in email with the yuppie inability to drive in traffic. This guy should win the Darwin Awards as sponsor of fish bicycles.
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make install -not war
Who says you need internet access on your phone for this? Those are the types of assumptions that hinder innovation. Couldn't you do some kind of query/response to a server somewhere? One of the things that always seems kind of obvious AFTER some kind of innovation is what assumptions were thought about in a different way. Think of the problem, and how it could be solved, without getting caught up in what already exists. That is just one way to do it, obviously another is to try and use what already exists. But all ways should be looked at to solve problems.
It's like looking back on the comments around flying before airplanes where they thought it was impossible because things were too heavy, so they tried to make things really light in order to fly. That is why I love the "50,100, 150 years ago" section in Scientific American magazine. It is really interesting to read the thoughts on science from those time periods. Sometimes it is amazing at how forward-thinking they were, and sometimes it is funny to see how far off they were.
Always look at your assumptions, and consider how to eliminate them if they are hindering your solution. Like Google's recent comments on PC power supplies (a href=http://informationweek.com/hardware/showArti
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What he wants now: Concierge-grade trip planning over the Web. Imagine getting a message on your BlackBerry alerting you that your villa is booked, dinner reservations are confirmed, and a driver will pick you up in an hour for the flight to Belize. It's not live agents making that happen, but software that taps into the growing number of travel-industry databases - of hotel chains, restaurants, limo services, amusement parks - to assemble smarter, more personalized itineraries than can be found on major travel hubs like Orbitz and Travelocity.
Look at Rearden Commerce. Plus, we get to throw around the latest tech buzz words too (SOA, SaaS, AJAX, etc)!
Disclamer: Employee of said company.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
The parent post is sickening! It needs to be removed from this site right now or I will call up the ADL or SPLC. Free speech is not allowed if it's about hatred of non-whites.
TFA mentions that one of the VC wants to fund a new RDBMS product to take on Oracle. What he apparently doesn't know is that there are already better products on the market, which have no chance in hell of getting any significant mind-share away from Oracle.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What they want now: A driver's tech fantasy fully realized: an in-dash computer with a keyboard built into the steering wheel and a full-screen heads-up display projected on the windshield.
What they'll invest: $5 million for a deeply qualified 20-person team to deliver a prototype and a plan for pitching a commercial version to automakers within three years
Gee, a whole $5 million for a DEEPLY QUALIFIED 20 PERSON TEAM FOR 3 YEARS. LOL.
Apparently, on-shore development teams need not apply.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
. . . for some freakin' hierarchical content markup?
5 out of the 20 were about different ways to advertise. One was about a way to automate product placement on TV shows and in movies.
There are a lot of technology-gone-horribly-wrong scenarios; the one that leaves me in a cold sweat is inescapable advertising.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Can you speak louder?
Its hard to hear you with my black dick in your mouth.
The missing field in that CNN list of VCs, what they'll buy and what they'll pay, is "What they'll let you keep:". When a VC gives you money to startup a company, they get most of the equity in the company. So they can sell it when (if) its value goes up on the value of the product you develop. They'll make you spend that money you get from them on developing their company. Expenses and operations designed to increase the apparent value of their company, even when that doesn't reflect the actual value of the product. And with the majority ownership, they'll make "your" company do whatever they want, including fire you. While they keep everything you contributed to the corporation. If you're lucky, the new guys will make the company worth enough that you'll get something when they sell it. But of course they'll probably dilute your ownership by issuing "new shares" to new investors, from which they'll keep the money.
And the majority of the corporations they "invest in" fail - justified only by the few that pay for the whole lot.
It's not always like that, not on every point. But that's the way to bet: the VCs certainly do.
By all means listen to what they want. But if you can do it without VC money, do it. Or just make sure to sell them only minority stakes, and don't get diluted out of power over your own vision.
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make install -not war
Don't forget, this is a list of projects they are willing to discuss publicly. They don't have to worry about someone stealing an old concept for a product and they might just get someone to call them up with a way to do it. They guard the innovative stuff a little more jealously.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Although a quick Google can answer most of them.
Anyway, "VC" can be:
"Venture Captialist" - someone who fronts money to startup companies or other risky ventures in the hope that their idea will hit big and the VC will reap a huge reward; or
"Victoria Cross" - the highest Commonwealth award for valour in the face of the enemy; or
"Viet Cong" - the insergent wing of the North Vietnamese Army, active in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
At the proposal meeting: "We have this terrrific battery that lasts longer than any Lith-ion batteries out there. The only problem we have, that we are sure we can fix, is that one may occasionally explode."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic
d .html?pg=2 letting you do email, searches, etc. through a voice-only interface as far back as 1999!
OnStar is running a cut-back version of the Portico system from General Magic that was http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/streetcre
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
>With an LCD windshield, coupled with a sufficiently advanced computer and external cameras
Hmmmm... One crash (computer) could lead to another (car) and a new definition of Blue Screen Of Death.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Text Ads on the Fly
The Investor: Charles Moldow, venture partner, Foundation Capital
What his firm's backed: CarsDirect.com, Netflix, Simply Hired
What he wants now:: Text-messaging software that allows local merchants to send offers to mobile phones. Some companies already do this in basic form; Moldow's idea would give merchants more control. "This is bringing the blue-light special to your phone," he says. Five or so people could write the code; a sales demon is also needed to enlist merchants. Prove that you can pull this off in one city and Moldow will listen to an expansion plan.
What he'll invest: 5 Million for working technology What I'll invest: A punch in the mouth for anyone who finds a way add even more spam into my life.
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."-Oscar Wilde
It specifically said:
Just because you the poster failed to read that last word does not mean you get to then say what he wants as if it was your idea,and slam him for not thinking it. Mods, please take appropriate action regarding parent post.
That said, your idea is a paltry imitation of his. He wants more than a sales organization. He wants a company that can take on the big boys on their own turf: big database work. That means application support that goes beyond the little stuff done by most (all?) current DB smaller companies.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
I love how they want an implantable monitor. Expecially for glucose. That's been a major objective in diabetic research for decades. Millions have been spent on it. Chances are any new idea these guys get will fail as badly as the old ones. Oh, it'll get solved someday. But it sure won't be from some guy reading CNNMoney wondering what to do with his fabulous glucose monitor idea. Heck, they could probably sell the tech to novartis or lifescan for a lot more money than they'd see from VC's.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
This is "big idead" from people with money?? WTF. Their idea of changing the world is bombarding cell phone owners with ads based on where they take their dog for a walk? What the f*ck? How small minded. Could they not use that money for something really progressive???
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Sounds like an even better business plan. Make people pay $5 a month for each piece of generic content they want, like ESPN Mobile which is shutting down.
I realize most major carriers offer broadband, which is overpriced junk.
Once mobile carriers are giving 512kbit+ lines for low prices w/ out restrictions (ie. ethernet or some other port on the phone where you can plug any web capable device into it for an instant connection) and no bandwidth limits will mobile internet finally pick up.
Eventually it needs to get to the point where landlines of any type are rare; video, voice and internet all transmitted wirelessly. Only the major bandwidth users (ISPs, webhosts, etc) and people that rely on low latency should require landlines, if even them.
>Text-messaging software that allows local merchants to send offers to mobile phones. Some companies already do this in basic form; Moldow's idea would give merchants more control.
Just Fucking Great... text message spam. It's hard to think of a suitable response to this that isn't a felony.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I find this type of list extremely bizarre - while interests in finding the next major online community/activity is vauge enough to be just about anything, these really specific ones are nuts. If you don't have the human capital, the idea is completely useless - and the VCs will overpay for promises. So if theres a cutting edge research team that suggests immnense possibilities for batteries, and the VCs can't build a team by working with that very group, they're chasing rainbows.
The web-based spreadsheet thing sounds downright easy. What is the catch? Someone's willing to spend $5 million on a project that a typical student could probably implement (at least in a rough form) in a week? I don't get it.
The HUDs on autos is a good idea. Complain about safety all you want, but the fact is, mitigating distractions is the best you can do. The People have already spoken and demanded that the distractions exist -- look around for drivers talking on their phones if you don't believe me. You are never going to make it safe, so making it safer is the thing to do.
The ads-to-phone stuff is depressing. No, wait. Not depressing, inspiring. I think we are really going to need to take charge of our phones before too long. We rely too much on the carriers bundling phones with services, and with phone features being a function of what somebody other than the user wants.
The p2p social-networking market sounds useful (at first), but I sure don't want to pay "transaction fees." The very fact that it will be possible to collect such fees, also means that it simply can't be really decentralized. They'll have to cripple it in some way, in order to get a piece of everyone's action. That makes it sound lame before it even gets started.
The "Green Office Space" idea sounds absolutely brilliant.
The Massive Entertainment still amazes me. 15 years ago, who knew there would be money in MUDs?!? Ok, maybe you did, but I would have laughed.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In this country, you need to multiply the salary rougly by 2.5 to get the overall yearly spending on a single "individual contributor" employee. You need to rent a building, you need to buy hardware, bandwidth, electricity, you need to pay health insurance, heating, janitorial, "morale" events, etc, etc. And $83K a year won't get you anyone "deeply qualified". It's a mid-level salary of a decent programmer in, say, WA.
Why should I care what the Viet Cong want to invest in?
->
Spreadsheets That Truly Excel
That should be easy enough. Rip the GUI off openoffice and build a web-based front-end.
The eBay of Product Placement
The only trick to this one is building a tech-driven company when everything except the hollywood exec insider contacts are a commodity. Put a hollywood exec in charge and he'll foul it up the same way the airline execs fouled up their spare parts auction company. I don't want to say they're stupid, so let me instead say that they're "not the right kind of smart." If you can somehow keep the tech guy in charge without bruising the critical hollywood exec's ego, this company should be a snap.
The Social Marketplace
The micropayment systems required here have withered on the vine. Micropayments will actually happen when some major credit card vendor (like Chase) revamps their accounting system so it can inexpensively handle sub-cent transactions and then throws the door open to all cardmembers to send and receive small payments via their existing visa/mastercard account.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The existing database companies seem to be fairly conservative and not open to new ideas. So the best way to innovate here would be with a new company. As long as they don't staff it up with experienced people.
$5 million for a working game or site that shows MMO growth potential. "It's so hard to predict what will take off," Gurley says, "that it's easier to pay more for something that's further along."
I've thought about this type of thing for a long time. There are several open source gaming engines out there, including fully functioning, community driven, MMORPGs. He mentions that it is easier to start with something further along. A few million spent on some full time developers for bug fixes and a few million on artwork and story development and a few million spent on setting up servers/bandwidth and getting marketing agreements and this sort of a setup could really take off. I say, harness the online community's desire to make things and profit on your stories and advertising.
Here's what I envision. Build one of these engines so that it accepts modules which are artwork+story in a new, open standard format. Run a site providing a short, pro quality game supported by ads. Try to get every company you can to bundle it on computers they sell and OS's they distribute. Aside from the advertising in the client/site, you sell closed source pro dev tools (with a freeware version). You sell new modules at a fraction of the price other games cost (lesser by the reused code cost). You provide free hosting for other people's modules they want to sell (a percentage off the top).
The mod community would go nuts for something like this and if you snag one of the existing cross platform engines, a lot of your work is done for you and you can reach the mostly latent linux and mac mod crew. And, seeing as the engine is open source you get free bug fixes and improvements from the open source community. I think you could make a fortune and undercut everyone. Too bad I'm too busy to put this together. Someone please, steal this idea.
Is is just me, or are most of these ideas pretty anemic? Pathogen detection sounds pretty far out, but much of the rest is questionable. They either want an incremental software upgrade or a monumental leap in the energy field.
Of course you want a li-ion battery with 5 times the power, we all do. R&D labs have been working on it for years, remember li-poly? And your investment? 2M, that's 66k / person for 2 years! And I need PhDs for this kind of work! 2M won't even cover salary and ops expenses for 1 year, let alone startup fees. A new battery is worth billions, not millions, this money is a fraction of what's needed and the 15 underpaid geniuses have to find a way to succeed where other R&D research labs have failed. This looks pretty bad.
FTA: One idea offered $5 million for a deeply qualified 20-person team...commercial version to automakers within three years. That's 86k per person per year, clearly not enough.
As to software, you want a working version of the next MMO, web-based Excel, cell phone search? If I'm that far along, why do I need your money? If I have established a user base in one city or an established user community, what's the difference between your $5M and a $5M loan? Venture Capital is defined as high risk, but if I have working tech and a defined user base, you're basically an investor.
BTW, what's this about the 20 smartest companies to start now? It seems to me that most of these would be bad companies to start now. If you had a working version and really needed the VC, well then here's your hookup. But starting some of these ideas now could be really fatal (i.e. spreadsheet blown away by Google's, NetSuite upgrading their software).
The only way I can see any of these working is for an existing company to gather a team and apply for this VC with hopes of a quick turnaround. Even then, the company will definitely be dumping a chunk of their own money on the project, so I don't see how the VC will get a reasonable cut.
These are not the 20 smartest ideas, just 20 reasonably good ones.
Ah hello, can I have the $5 mill? I think sharepoint does exactly what she wants... Geeze some of these are just as silly.
I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you drive down that gravel road. I might get chipped, and not in a good way.
I, for one, welcome our cracked $10,000 LCD windshield overlords...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Yes, they are, and they are looking at a very short term for how long most of them will be viable. I didn't see anyone wanting to invest in my 250 mpg car, for example, there's one with legs. You can see it at www.coultersmithing.com/kart.html. (don't all visit at once, I don't think my site will withstand a slashdotting, so I didn't make the link clickable) This is real, it works, and is "too much fun" to drive. Don't really need money per se, but need to set up manuf and dealerships. I'm already getting orders from local people who have driven the thing.
I agree with nearly everything you mentioned; especially the JOIN clause. It's should match for simple joins, obviously being overwritten for outer joins, etc...
I'm not sure what you meant by the insert though. It sounds like you are inserting by column. I recommend that you ALWAYS give the column_name.
Computer: "Please select mode of death: quick and painless or slow and horrible."
Fry: "Yeah, I'd like to place a collect call..."
Computer: "You have selected: slow and horrible."
Trip Planning 2.0 ....software that taps into the growing number of travel-industry databases....
:D
What he wants now:
What he'll invest: $5 million to create a working prototype within two years
I know of several free tools that will tap into pretty much anyone's database.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
So, we've started a pool here in the office about how long it will take for someone to post a reply that tells you they had a 2400 baud modem. And then someone else will post about their 300 baud modem. And then someone else will need to pipe up who admin'ed a BBS using semaphore and carrier pigeons.
;-)
But of course, we know you're not *really* old until you used the original nam shub sneakernet with Sumerian clay tablets...man, Slashdot is the best
Actually, as much as I hate to say it, free speech is always allowed.
No one says you have to agree with it, and in the case of trolls like this, wait for the mods to bury it.
Then read at +3 or above if you don't want to see it.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Who says you need internet access on your phone for this? Those are the types of assumptions that hinder innovation. Couldn't you do some kind of query/response to a server somewhere?
You could, but it's not as good as direct Internet access. What use is a web search engine if only a tiny fraction of the pages are readable on a mobile? I suppose you could make a mobile-only search engine, but you'd be pretty limited in the kind of information you can access regardless.
Regarding the "Flyweight Database", what I would like to see is a dynamic RDBMS or a type-free RDBMS. One could create columns on the fly and the dynamic nature would better match dynamic languages like PHP. Strong typing found in Java and Oracle is so 80's IMO.
Types or formatting restrictions could be incrementally added as needed when a table matures. The US needs to have nimble companies to stay ahead of the educated 3rd world, and dynamic DB's are one way to do it.
Table-ized A.I.
Who says you need internet access on your phone for this? Those are the types of assumptions that hinder innovation. Couldn't you do some kind of query/response to a server somewhere?
Yeah!
What we could do is set up this server, and design some sort of transmission protocol to handle the query/response that you mentioned.
Of course, one server would (understandably) be limited in terms of what it could offer, and how many queries it could handle at once. What we'd really need to do is set up many of these servers - each could help share the load, and each could have different content on them.
Of course, with millions of cellphone users, we'd need many, many servers to handle the load. And with the amount of information available today, no one server could provide any sizable fraction of the content. Well, let's set up thousands of servers, then.
Now, with all these servers, it sure would be nice to let them talk to each other as well - this way they can keep tabs on what everyone else is offering. Also, it's getting pretty cumbersome to try and find one server out of thousands - we'll need some sort of naming system, and likely hierarchical, to sort it all out.
Hmm.. now if only we could tie this all up together in some sort of futuristic Interconnecting network, you might be onto something!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I'm a dreamer too, and the idea of having a heads-up-display in my car is at first fascinating. But after more thought about how the real world works, I really seems to me like the making of a new nightmare.
First of all, there really isn't any place on any given windshield where you could put an email window or whatever without blocking/obscuring some part of the road or side of the road, and ultimately causing you to have to make extra effort to try to look around it when you need to see.
Second, even if the image is floating 15 feet in front of you, focusing on graphics is a distraction from the real world. Anybody who has driven behind an SUV with TVs playing in the back seat can tell you that watching that TV for even a few seconds can cause real distraction from driving.
Finally, the ugly truth of marketing space and hackers. Look around you at how marketers have found a way to use up almost every type of available space for advertising. Do you think they're gonna miss out on a chance to show you ads while you're driving too? Pop-up ads while driving will suck, no doubt about that. Worse, if it can read your email, it has to be connected to the internet, and anyone who knows anything about that knows there's just no way to truly protect anything on the interenet from hackers. How about that first virus that randomly turns your display solid black or really bright white or whatever blocks your vision worse.
And if that's not enough, imagine trying to get fancy HUD to work right when it crashes or freezes up while you're driving. You know, especially techy people like us aren't gonna be able to wait until we get there to try and fix it... So now we're troubleshooting our computer, no doubt on the phone with support, on a screen that's in front of our windshields while we're also maybe trying to drive without killing anyone.
I dunno... it sounds good on paper, but I honestly hope it doesn't happen.
The Investor: Amanda Reed, partner, Palomar Ventures
What she's backed: Attensity, Edgewater Networks
What she wants now: A Web-based platform to make company spreadsheets--for revenue forecasting and other analytical chores - more easily viewed, updated, and shared by managers. Many small-business execs still rely on e-mailing Excel files around the office to share data forecasts. Software apps like NetSuite import data but not the formulas embedded in spreadsheets.
Doesn't google spreadsheets do that?
I'm going to indulge in it a little.
1. We don't need an LCD windshield. Because no matter what you put in front of the driver, they're looking at IT and not the ROAD. Focus on any foreground image and the background image loses focus. Any time the driver removes his/her focus from the road ahead. The rub of this is that focus on the road then blurs the foreground image and distracts the driver.
2. They have these things called sunglasses for bright sunny days. Go to any 7-11 and you can buy cheapies for $10. The issue isn't that people are blinded by headlights, or other such bright alerting device, it's that these need not be that bright. Alert, don't distract.
3. Who wants automated driving? I, for one, like to drive. I'm pretty sure, due to the popularity of motorsports, that I'm not nearly the only one.
4. Anything that turns the attention of the driver off of the road ahead and to some other device, readout, or whatever IS a distraction. Anything that can have the effect of annoying the driver, whether it be yelling into a cellphone, a heated argument with the person in the shotgun seat, or smacking the kids in the back seat, is distracting. A HUD is nothing more than a distraction. There is a reason why the instrument cluster sits where it sits and is organized the way it's organized. It's because drivers need only twitch their eyes momentarily downward to scan the gauges for all of the relevant information they require, and then resume their forward focus.