I decided to write this post after reading Paul Graham's Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund.
It's neat that Graham just lays out ideas that his company would like to invest
in. Most people keep their ideas to themselves until they can
personally make it real. Sometimes they never act on the ideas that lie
sleeping in their brains -until someone else thinks of the same idea,
makes it work - and they cry out "That's mine!".
People have written on this topic before, usually concluding that
it's not the idea, it's the execution, or the team, and so on -- seems
to me to be a bit pointless. If we really knew the proper proportions
of idea, execution and team for success we wouldn't use our current
pachinko machine model. I would assume, however, all other things being
equal, that starting with a good idea is better than starting with a
bad one.
In the spirit of Paul Graham's post, here's a good idea that's been on my mind for awhile:
Why not have a simple geo-location service that matched where
you're going with people in cars that will be going your direction
soon? Twitter that you want to go cross-town and in seconds you get a
half dozen dynamically updated commuters that are going your way.
Combine this with point-by-point gps instructions from point A to B,
the commuter you select gets routing information that allows them to
stop at an intersection and honk to let you know your ride is here. The
service consists of three parts: (1) where you're going (and where you
are via GPS) (2) a back end database that can figure out from all the
real-time information who matches up (3) let you choose from the
options - maybe based on the kind of car, their reputation/reliability,
etc. Not too hard - in fact either Twitter or FriendFeed could be a big
hunk of this business.
If geolocation and routing allowed people with cars to pick up people
with minimum inconvenience, and if enough people with iPhone 3G-type phones could
get streamed updated directions, and if there was a simple way to
establish reputation, this could change how people commute and travel
in cities, saving a tremendous amount of energy.
Fred Wilson wrote a post back in June titled Am I Bored With "Web 2.0"?
where he confessed that he was envious of friends that were investing
in areas that "would make a difference to our children". Here's a Web 2.0 business that would make a big difference to our children if it took off.
Call it Flitter, or maybe Flitter.me!
PS. If you run with this, let me know if you need an advisor :-)
The iPhone is the first device I've used that did a "good enough" job as a phone, email reader, browser (the best mobile web browsing I've used -- in spite of the limited EDGE connectivity from ATT) that I don't take more than one device on the road. Although the 