Topic: Frighteningly Ambitious Bitcoin Startup Ideas - page 2. (Read 5254 times)

i save time by not hitting the shift key... but it's a lazy habit.

Damn, looks like your fingers are faster than mine. I was just about to say almost exactly that.

this might be disruptive to spendbitcoins.com, as then they'll have some competition while doing exactly as you describe.

imagine living in real life, today

I think that running conventional ideas with bitcoin is somewhat limiting yourself. None of the ideas suggested in the OP are unique to bitcoin, they're just doing the same ol stuff with a shiny new form of payment. And truth be told, there's no good reason for anyone to use the shiny new thing on the old ideas cause the old shiny things worked just fine (for very-much most of the people). This is just reality. No matter how much bitcoin is 'a better money', if it's not more convenient, people won't use it. And let's face it, regular money is pretty damn convenient now with internet banking etc. Not as good as bitcoin, but still, pretty damn convenient.

There's always the argument of 'less fees is a big incentive' which I totally agree, and 'instant is awesome', again I agree, but I don't think that's enough of a lure to take people away from their convention, especially given the current mainstream notion of bitcoin is generally along the idea that it facilitates shadiness which is of no additional benefit to their needs over cash/wire/paypal/whatever. To most people, it's just another money. To really have an ambitious startup idea, you have to show how bitcoin is more than just another money. None of the OP ideas do that imo.

There are some amazing opportunities for bitcoin to expand NEW areas of commerce, none of those are listed in the OP. I would love to say what I think they are, but I'm working on some of them now, so you'll just have to wait and see. Bitcoin, as you say, is amazing. But it's amazing mainly because of the new stuff we can do with it, not because we can appropriate it to the old stuff.

I just don't see
Take existing product X
Add bitcoins to get Y
Sell product Y
as frighteningly ambitious...

Don't take this too hard. It's great to see such enthusiasm from a noob. An equal amount of creativity would really blow me away. And as a final 'optimist prime' statement to counteract my 'negatron' post - having the appropriations in place will certainly make the creative ideas even stronger by a whole magnitude than if they didn't exist.

I'm still a newbie in the Bitcoin world so forgive any errors or omissions.

I'm really excited about all the possibilities that Bitcoin affords regular people, business and society in general.

This post was inspired by and article by paul graham called
"Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas" http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html.  Be warned, this post  however is a rumbling of a newbie.

The purpose of this post is get everyone to share their ideas for Bitcoin Startups, Bitcoin business and projects. What kind of Bitcoin Startup or business would you like to see? If money, time, skill or other resources was not an issue what kind of Bitcoin Startup would you start?

Hopefully these ideas should challenge conventional wisdom and push the adoption of Bitcoin by main stream businesses and people.
 
without much further ado I present my four humble ideas.

1. 100% Bitcoin Venture Capitalist firm

The bitcoin community needs Venture Capitalist firms willing to invest in Bitcoin startups.
Recently CoinLab was created to "cultivate and luanch inovative bitcoin projects"(http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/24/coinlab-attracts-500000-in-venture-capital-for-bitcoin-projects/). CoinLab will be investing in Bitcoin Startups and projects which is a great start. This got me thinking about a Bitcoin Venture Capitalist firm that is 100% funded by Bitcoins and in turn funds new companies and project in Bitcoins. I do not know if this idea would work but it would be neat to see something like this in the wild.

Assuming that Bitcoin remain viable long term a Venture Capitalist firm funded by Bitcoins would see it value increase by the fact that Bitcoin would increase in value long term. Ideally the Venture Capitalist would be investing most of it Bitcoins into the Bitcoin economy and not holding onto the Bitcoins.

2. Bitcoin Ad network

The Bitcoin community has a few Bitcoin ad networks like Anonymous ads, Operation Faboulous and the rest. What I think Bitcoin echo system needs is something large like the Google ad sense network.  This will give the Bitcoin community a way to advertise both within the Bitcoin echo system and outside the echo system. This will allow advertisers to run both Bitcoin ads and  non Bitcoin ads while paying in Bitcoins. For publishers, blogger etc, this will allow them to get paid for both Bitcoin and non Bitcoin content. These publishers would of course get paid in Bitcoins.

3. Large Affiliate Market/Network

Just like the Bitcoin Ad network above we need a large affiliate Ad network like the likes of Commision junction, Maxbounty, Clickbank, etc. The network would be 100% Bitcoin based. The advertisers would pay in Bitccoin and publishers and affiliates would get paid in Bitcoins. The ad network should be a general purpose network offering  a wide range of products and services for promotion.

4. Bitcoin Bill pay
Perhaps the most disruptive idea in my mind is a Bitcoin bill paying services. This service would take your Bitcoins and covert it to dollars and then pay most of your bills, like cell, utillites, whatever. Imagine living in a world where you get paid in Bitcoins and most of your bills could be paid in Bitcoins.

I'm looking forward to reading everyone's ideas.