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."

Comments

Limited in scope and vision...

[BWJones]

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.

Re:Limited in scope and vision...

[also-rr]

Quite often the best business ideas (as in, the basis for a business that makes money) are evolutionary, not revolutionary. It's a worthy goal to take the state of the art and add something that just makes it better.

Think how much Linux is benefiting from things like desktop interface improvements - it's not cutting edge amazing ideas, but it does have value. The same thing applies in business.

Really the right place for basic research is in the public domain where the stakes are high and the rewards few and far between. It makes the search for groundbreaking ideas more efficient because people can trade information with no fear or losing out on millions.

This also means that the basic research is then available to businesses who can add *their* value in turning it into something usable for the rest of us... along with another bunch of businesses ensuring that competition brings it's benefits to bear. To look back at the Linux analogy, this is essentially how we are seeing the Open Source model turn out high quality at low cost - the research is all public, and the refinements to make it accessable are driven by people who want to sell it.

Re:As opposed as I am to any...

[dgatwood]

True, but a heads-up display is the wrong answer to the wrong question. What we need is a transparent backlight with an LCD windshield (or an OLED windshield). I'll explain.

With an LCD windshield, coupled with a sufficiently advanced computer and external cameras, the car could use overlay boxes to alert the driver to potential hazards. For example, it could alert the driver to pedestrians standing beside the road, large animals beside the road, police motorcycles sitting in the bushes, etc. All of these things represent potential traffic hazards, as any of these things could suddenly go from being beside the road to being on it very quickly. (I know that law enforcement would hate this because of the reduced ability to set up speed traps, but the improvement in overall safety is hard to dismiss, and might even make speed limits less critical except in inclement weather.)

Even better. by combining it with cameras in the car to measure the position of the driver's head, since the entire windshield (and, ideally, the side windows) would be LCD panels, you could do other things like darkening a small portion of the panel so that the sun is reduced in brightness to a more manageable level on a bright, sunny day. Ditto for overly bright car headlights, the light bridges on police cars when they park next to road construction (yeah, like being distracted by bright, flashing lights is going to make me drive BETTER!?!), and so on.

Finally, this would be one step towards having fully automated driving. As the reliability of external threat detection improves, it will eventually evolve to the point that people don't actually have to touch the wheel except in the event of a computer failure. That's many years down the road, but you have to crawl before you can run.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that a heads-up display isn't a good idea for reducing driver distraction. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But any such technology should be combined with what I'm describing here to maximize driver safety FIRST, then reduce distraction as a side effect.