A Startup A Day

Background: Pownce is a Twitter-like microblogging/IM client created by Kevin Rose and the dream team design/dev combo of Daniel Burka and Leah Culver.  Facebook recently opened up their API to allow 3rd party apps to develop on their platform, which provides a unique distribution platform which leads to rapid viral growth for compelling apps.  Currently there is a read-only Facebook/Pownce app for displaying your messages, but it’s based on RSS feeds as there is not an open API for Pownce.

Prediction:  Within the next 2 months, Pownce will open its API and allow users to develop 3rd party apps.  This is based on the success Digg is having with its open API and to better compete with similar offerings like Twitter and Jaiku, both of which have open APIs. 

Likelihood (1 – 10): 9 (very likely)

Idea:  My idea is an advanced Facebook IM application that would allow users to chat and share links/files/events with each other through Facebook, using Pownce’s backend services.  The app would have the same basic functionality that the Pownce web client or desktop client currently has, but would be available for users directly through Facebook instead of having to use a separate client.

Red Flags: 

• There’s a good chance the Pownce team could come out with their own Facebook app.   
• The existing Pownce facebook app could add in these additional features and roll out to the current install base very quickly, reducing the “first to market” advantage. 
• Many developers are working on Facebook apps which has made it much more difficult for new apps to be discovered and reach critical mass

No joke, coming up with a new idea each day is pretty dang hard on my poor little excuse for a brain, so I try out various brainstorming tactics to get the creative juices flowing.  My latest approach is to look at various industry trends, make a prediction about a direction I think a company is going to take, and then come up with a startup that could be built based on that company’s new offering.

A quick example would be if I had posted back in February that I thought Twitter was going to open up their API, and the idea would be a mashup between Twitter posts and Google maps.  The trick is, someone could fully build out the application with a dummy database filling in for the API, and the second the API is release, all you’d have to do is connect to the API and presto!  You’d be first to market, and could ride the coattails of the big press release to get some great early adopter bandwagon momentum.

This was just a quick intro, first precog idea coming shortly…