A Startup A Day

Entries from March 2007

Secret to Startup Success: Sanook

March 15, 2007 · 3 Comments

I just got back from a quick trip to Thailand.  If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it.  Beautiful beaches, amazing artifacts, but the best part by far was the people.  Everyone we met was way chill, very friendly.  It was also apparent that they loved to have fun.  In fact, it’s so much a part of the Thai culture that they have their own word for it: Sanook.  There’s no literal English translation, but the best approximation is “fun”. 

Today I was thinking about what each of my favorite sites or blogs or services all seem to have it common, and one of the obvious common denominators is this concept of Sanook.  For example:

This definitely isn’t a new concept with developers – I personally have a ping-pong table and three old school video games right outside my door.  But send a product up the chain and it seems like the Sanook gets sucked out little by little.  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that so much of the best stuff coming out lately is being done by the small teams and startups.  There’s no committee to suck out the Sanook, so you get left with things like little inside jokes, a weekly podcast about your product while drinking a few beers, and videos showing the inside of some dude’s ear.

As I throw out ideas of my own, I’m going to try my best to infuse a little Sanook into each one.  I’ll probably even throw in a few fake startup ideas in the mix every once in a while to Sanook up this blog a bit (Coffr.com – coming soon!).  At of the end of the day, it’s not just fun but also good business sense.  Just like the old Thai saying: Sanook sells.

Got an example of a sanookalicious startup I should check out?  I’d love to hear it, post a comment or shoot me a mail at kleneway@hotmail.com. 

Categories: Not Ideas

Startup #3 – Food Me

March 15, 2007 · 2 Comments

There are lots of local restaurant sites out there. How to stand out? Simplify! Imagine a desktop widget that loops a series of tasty-looking pictures from nearby restaurants’ menus. The widget would show three things – the food, the price, and a “Food Me” button. If you see something that looks good, just click the button and the food will be delivered right to your office, home, dorm room, etc..

The set-up would be similar to Amazon’s one-click feature, where you enter your address and billing information, provide information about the type of food you generally like, etc.. Local restaurants would pay for the ability to market their food directly to “Food Me” users and work with a “Food Me” account manager to set everything up (menus, pictures, workflow for the restaurant to deliver food).

 Thoughts or comments?  Are there any good restaurant delivery sites out there that could be potential partners?  Am I the only one hoping and praying for the return of Kozmo?

Categories: Ideas

Scoble – you suck!

March 15, 2007 · 1 Comment

Have you guys checked out Robert Scoble’s new Scoble Show?  Man, what a stinker!  Here are the top ten five things I would rather do on my computer other than watch the Scoble Show:

5.  Work

4.  Spend 3 hours burying new Digg posts because they are duplicates/inaccurate/etc…

3.  Write a rebuttal to every anti-Microsoft comment on a Slashdot post

2.  Convince all of my friends to spend 30 minutes creating a profile on my new social networking site – “Sure, it’s only got 80 users now, but trust me, this is going to be the next MySpace!”

1.   Watch a 60 minute video featuring some random geeks I’ve never heard of, some shaky camera work…oh wait, nevermind…

 Seriously, whatever you do, DO NOT check out Robert Scoble’s Scoble Show, especially not this episode featuring the founder of Castfire.  Or this one about Odesk, a fantastic service I use all the time to save a ton of money/time on web development.  Or this interview with Jonathon Swartz.  Suck suck suck.  :)

Categories: Not Ideas

Startup #2 – Swap It Up

March 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Remember that guy who traded up from a giant red paperclip to a house in less than a year? SwapItUp.com builds on that concept – a virtual contest to see who can make the best series of trades.

You start off by posting something you own that you feel someone else might want. Other users can browse your item and make a trade offer. Once you accept an offer, you would achieve the next level and repeat the process with your newly acquired item.

There’s a lot of strategy involved in what trade offers to accept. For instance, you may be offered an Alf pog for your slap bracelet. You may have already completed your pog set, but you notice pogs are hot…it might be good for future trades…

There would be a few limits to make it more interesting:

- You can only stay at a level for up to 7 days. If you don’t take any offers within that time, your string ends and you have to start over.

- There are only 7 levels – the goal is to have the best 7 level swap series.  Once you complete 7 swaps, that series is retired and featured on the front page.

What do you guys think?  What types of legal issues (if any) are involved with bartering sites?  Anyone willing to swap a “Alf on Melmac” pog for a “Alf – stop eating my cat” pog?

Categories: Ideas

Startup #1 – Karma Police

March 14, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Have you done something bad? Lost some major karma points? Here’s your chance to earn them back! Simply hit up the Karma Police website and anonymously confess your sin. Other users can then view your confession and vote on an action that they feel is an appropriate penance for you to perform to restore your karmic balance.

Example: “I spilled my drink on a sofa during a party and instead of cleaning it, I just flipped the cushion over”

Options:
- Make a $50 donation to a local non-profit
- Buy a drink for the person behind you at Starbucks
- Say hello to 5 random people
- Call your mom

Users would vote on the “punishment” they feel best fits the crime. After 1 week, the votes would be tallied and the “sinner” would receive their karmic sentence.

The inspiration for this idea came from a recent visit to Thailand.  I was amazed at what a friendly and open society it was, which is partially based on their religious beliefs in earning karmic points for their next life. Also, seeing the growing momentum of a new genre of anonymous confession sites like postsecret.com. And, of course, Radiohead.

 What do you think?  Know of any sites like this that are already out there?  Got a secret you want to confess?  Post it in the comments!

Categories: Ideas

Hello, Welcome, Happy Birthday!

March 14, 2007 · 1 Comment

Hi everyone, welcome to the idea a day blog.  The purpose of this blog is to start sharing some of the random Web 2.0 ideas I come up with on a near-daily basis.  Most of these will suck, but this is just a fun exercise to challenge me to start brainstorming some new ideas and hopefully start some interesting conversations and make some new friends.

 First, a quick shout-out to Mr. Steve Poland, who was the inspiration for this blog.  If you want to see a real idea blog, check out TechquilaShots.com.  Also, another great site to check out is CambrianHouse.com.  This is a great site for people to post ideas, work on community projects, and share in any resulting revenue.  Definitely a lot of fun for all you idea junkies out there.

 Enough with the chit-chat, off to post my first idea.  Thanks for visiting, and if you see an idea you like (or hate), please comment!  Also, feel free to steal any of the ideas posted here.  To me, ideas are pretty worthless, the real value is in the development, marketing, etc…  Any ideas that I have I would love to see come to life.  I’m not going to do it.  Someone probably has or will do something similar in the near future.  Why not you?

 Oh yeah, and happy birthday!  To me.  The big 28.  Yeah.  All right, on to idea #1…

Categories: Not Ideas