[claudiulodro]

It's wild to realize that this list of like a hundred innovative businesses is just what people are launching today, and there will be a whole new batch tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on. Just today's list is thousands and thousands of aggregated hours of work by hundreds of people for speculative riches with good odds of the businesses failing. And the stuff that gets onto one of these lists is just a small fraction of what gets launched every day!

This site may have been intended to inspire startup founders or side-project hustlers, but it does the opposite for me: it has shown me the folly of trying to make it as one of those!

Going forward I'm sticking to proven, local, likely service-based businesses.

Thanks, stevematzai. Very enlightening site, even if it didn't help in the way you would have liked. :)

[stevematzal]

Thanks Claudio for the enlightening comment. It's true and I'm feeling a bit like this myself, going over lots of business ideas daily for the past month or so made me realize the same thing and this is why I've started doing some research into what makes an idea more likely to succeed (or not). I don't want to discourage anyone from the process of creation because the act of creation is inherently human and through all this aggregated creative effort we are progressing and improving little by little and this is how, in my opinion, the site should be used, to improve upon existing ideas little by little. On the other side, knowing that there are a lot of creative people out there spreading their ideas should give one more courage to do the same, this is another thing that I realized. I'm thinking of myself as an insignificant little spec of dust in the galaxy and this thought actually gives me courage. We are condemned to be creative, we are condemned to try and fail again and again and succeed some times, we are condemned to progress.

[ghostbrainalpha]

Don't give up on the idea of being an entrepreneur.

Just realize that MOST ideas are iterative and not truly innovative. Nothing wrong with that, but there is going to be a ton of competition when you build a Chrome Plugin that does one neat copy and paste... even if it is very useful.

(Useful Tool Example:) Citationsy for Chrome: Cite anything in one-click right from Chrome

And honestly a lot of ideas might be interesting or funny... but they aren't even good ideas.

(Funny but Stupid Example:) howlongisyourdong.com is now on product hunt: GROW UP YOUR E-PENIS RIGHT NOW :

And some ideas are just wishes for things that obviously aren't going to turn out well in execution.

(Product won't match customer desire Example:) Your mobile app needs a website. I built Flycricket to generate and host a site for you!:

If you come up with an idea that is truly disruptive, that isn't something everyone in your field has been asking for for years. You should pursue it. But it should stand out on a list like this, not fit right in.

Edit: Many people do well building out the extremely obvious ideas that everyone wants. But to do well that way you should be talented, work extremely hard, and be well funded if you want to beat the competition.

[stevematzal]

Surprisingly, even silly ideas can transform into great business ideas with the proper execution. A guy became a millionaire in the 70's with Pet Rock; you wouldn't think that anyone in his right mind would buy a rock as a pet but there you go, people are predictably irrational when it comes to financial matters.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

But the reason we remember the Pet Rock is because it was the silly idea that managed to be successful. No one remembers the thousands of floor tiling businesses that were successful or the thousands of silly ideas that were unsuccessful.

[preommr]

Well, hang on.

There aren't thousands. There's like 200+ on that list right now.

And if I am understanding this right, a lot of those don't seem like they're "daily"

There's also a lot of pointless and silly stuff in there. For example, the one about a microwave that stops before it rings, or the one that filters top level domains (tlds).

An entire section isn't even real businesses, just wishes for one.

There are only a handful of actual serious businesses that can generate money listed here. Something like ~10. Even assuming this was daily, that would be 3k+ new serious businesses per year. That should be way higher, like 10x as much given how low the barrier to entry is for a modern day business (especially in software).

[claudiulodro]

My point exactly! Legitimate online businesses compete for attention with nonsense and every other legitimate online business. Regardless of the viability of the idea, a new online product is a snowflake competing for attention in an avalanche.

All things considered, it is much easier to get a paying customer with a proven local business idea than an online business.

[Vivtek]

I'm honestly glad not to be alone in getting that same feeling.