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 :-)
This is effectively hitchhiking, with the same drawback: Do you really want to get in a car with a random stranger? The reputation system helps, but it's certainly not foolproof. And when you're talking about actually trusting your person to a stranger, rather than just some money in an online auction, it won't take many bad apples to wreck the whole system.
Posted by: Cujo | Jul 22, 2008 at 07:58 AM