💰 Free Startup Ideas from Tech Twitter

Quibi for financial literacy, 5 dating app ideas, and 1 idea from Balaji he'll give you $1000 BTC to build today

Jun 25, 2020

Yo! ✌️ I’m Brett! I am a Product Manager, musician, and Twitter power user. Twitter is where all the action happens in the tech industry but it’s not easy to keep up with. I write this weekly newsletter to help people stay informed on the most important discussions happening on Tech Twitter.

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When starting a company, it’s usually best to use your experiences, passions, and insights to come up with your own ideas. That said, not everyone is an ✨idea guy✨

Below is a small collection of startup ideas and frameworks for generating ideas from Tech Twitter over the last few months.

💡 Ideas

Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis

I’m offering $1000 in BTC for a good open source app to export from Twitter. It should: - take in a Twitter API key - download all followers - rank by some criteria - send each a DM with specified message (eg link to Substack) up to daily DM limits More details below.

Dennis Crowley @dens

Free startup idea: A buy-online-and-install-it-yourself speed camera system you can place in your yard / neighborhood. Takes photos of plates if 20%/10mph speed limit, auto issues ticket based off DMV record.

Aaron W. Gordon @A_W_Gordon

I wrote about how we cannot talk about police reform without talking about traffic enforcement. And we cannot talk about that without getting over our hatred for speed cameras https://t.co/83xLHUPbcl

Tommy Leep @leepnet

The clothing basics site Organics Basics is experimenting with a Low Impact Website. It doesn't load unnecessary images, limits light emitted by the screen, minimizes power consumption, etc. Startup idea: service that enables this concept. h/t @purrmin

The Low Impact Website | Organic BasicsAn online store that prevents 70% of the carbon emissions. Underwear, activewear and essentials made ethically in Europe with organic cotton, TENCEL™ and recycled materials.lowimpact.organicbasics.com

Blake Robbins @blakeir

Request for Startup: A bookmark app that auto-triggers to save when I take a screenshot. My phone’s camera roll is full of interesting sites, stories, tweets, Reddit posts, etc. that I always come back to.

Blake Robbins @blakeir

Request for Startup: An online dollar store for both products and services. (A mix between Fiverr and Wish)

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Request for product: Spellcheck/Grammarly for Nonviolent Communication

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Request for product: Long-Term Stock Exchange but for Democracy

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Request for Startups: 5/ Stock markets for ideas & things, or 21st century polling company.

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

I’m excited to see a world where someone discovers some meme, idea, or artist & then stakes it Economically it’d look like speculation (eg crypto), & socially it’d look like collectibles, effectively quantifying sentiment You’d go to a website & see “communism down 20 % today”

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Requests for Startups: 4/ DATING apps: a/ Experiment w/ new data sources (e.g. Goodreads, Spotify) b/ Experiment w/ new social mechanics (e.g audio, video) c/ Use games. Ex: OMGPop (h/t @msg) d/ HQ Trivia for dating (h/t @benrbn) e/ Matchmaking:

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Request for product: I want to match make my friends. I want an app that creates a seamless experience for my friends to swipe right on each other & then I want credit for making the match. I know lots of people who also want to do this for their friends.

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Requests for Startups: 1/ Twitter for Money, or Social Network for Receipts. Can autogenerate group chats around receipts. Can create user profiles that express identity based on what people purchase (e.g. support this artist, donate to charity, etc)

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

What people spend money on is sometimes more interesting (or indicative) of what they think. Someone will be successful building a *real* Twitter for money (purchases, investments, donations, p2p—opt in, of course). The Venmo feed wasn't it, but it was onto something.

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Requests for Startups: 2/ Twitter meets Quora:

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

Request for Product: If Twitter & Quora had a baby. Something that combines the timely, Github-for-thinking, building-block nature of Twitter w/ the timeless, searchable, compounding-knowledge nature of Quora. A true social network around knowledge. Not news. Not photos.

Shahed Khan @_shahedk

Request for startup: Quibi but for financial literacy If you’re building this—please send me a DM!

Andreas Klinger ✌️ @andreasklinger

💬 People will focus more on async Startup Idea: Build a slack killer focusing async discussions (pattern mix of forum, pull requests and google docs) but also allow sync-chat for where it's useful (eg watercooler, emergencies). But hurry @twistappteam and @Threads are fast.

Brett Goldstein @thatguyBG

RFS - a chrome plugin that shows LinkedIn profiles of the PMs and designers who work on each feature on the website you're visiting. Let's see who is brave enough to ship dark patterns then 😈

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

Also, this is getting out of hand 🍆 https://t.co/A1FCv7WhCE

And my personal favorite 😜

logan bartlett @loganbartlett

$100M idea: Regional paper- and office-supply distributor with an emphasis on servicing small-business clients. Main corporate office in NYC and branches in Scranton, Albany, Utica, Akron, Nashua, Buffalo and Rochester.

🏗 Frameworks

There are only two ways to start a business - bundling or unbundling. Dave’s tweet below goes without saying that there are STILL billion dollar businesses to be built around unbundling Facebook.

Dave Goldblatt @davegoldblatt

@zck Most of these are billion dollar startups

Greg always shares great frameworks for social. Here are some from this past month.

Greg Isenberg @gregisenberg

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug - Bring back Path - Bring back Turntable.FM - Bring back Rdio - Bring back Sunrise It's worth listening to these people to understand what they really are asking for

Greg Isenberg @gregisenberg

Building "the anti-product" is often a successful way to build compelling products How do you build the: - The anti-Instagram - The anti-YouTube - The anti-Amazon - The anti-Netflix - etc You'll be surprised with what you come up with