Alltopstartups » STARTUP IDEAS

How Do You Identify New Startup Opportunity

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 11:36:43 +0000

Every startup begins with a new startup opportunity that can be translated into a product or service. Entrepreneurs identify new opportunities and when it is worth the time and resource you being the journey to make a solution out it for an identified market. But the top questions to answer are:

How do you identify that opportunity that needs to be exploited for the good of your target market.
Is the business opportunity is right for you.
Should the new startup focus on introducing a new product or service based on an unmet need?
How Big is the market you are going after.
Would you use your own product.
Should you select an existing product or service from one market and offer it in another.

Every idea you see our there was once an idea someone conceived, believed it can be turned into something useful and was finally executed with the resources needed to make it into product you are using right now. If you are thinking of starting your own business, there are many sources of ideas you can consider.

You could take an existing business and do it better if you think the market is big enough and you can ad a new twist to it.
You can conduct a survey to find out if there is an existing market for the idea if you think somebody will need the service or product.
You can listen to the complains of customers or your competition and build what they really want which may not be possibly implemented by the company.
You can solve your own problems if you are convinced there are some people out there who may be facing the same problem.
You can also import an idea from an existing market and offer it to another market. That product you love so much can be offered in the market you are targeting.
You can merge existing products or services and create something new out of them.
You can also visit forums and find out the pressing problems a lot of people are complaining about.

How do you identify new opportunities?

Boston Startup Weekend Witnessed 15 Teams 15 Ideas

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:18:49 +0000

Startup Weekend Boston took place between 4th and 6th June. The program witnessed 15 teams who presented startup ideas. The following teams took turns to present their ideas, progress made so far and lessons learned over the weekend. Startup weekend presents its attendees with networking, team building and learning opportunities. The weekend was fully packed with coding, more coding, business planning, prototype building all in 54 hours.

The final presentation teams for the weekend in Boston Included:

# Stuffpass.com – @stuffpass – “Bunk savings without the bunk”
# Bandock.com – @bandocksus – “Helping local musicians find more gigs”
# Hocopost.com – @hocopost – “Take Control of your online reputation”
# Referralbon.us – @referralbonus – “Watch for Jobs, Refer a friend, you get paid”
# Cogentmobile.com – @cogentmobile -
# Factolo.com – @factolo – “Making things better”
# Workwithme.org – @workwithmeorg – “Social Co-Working”
# Poundvs.com – @poundvs – “Pound your friends”
# Chirashigeo.com – @chirashigeo – “Create fun, useful, or cool experiences around places”
# GrindeStone.com – @grindstone – “Cooperative Venture Capital. Help people build & own businesses together.”
# NPITS.com – “No Pie In The Sky. For Entrepreneurs. By Entrepreneurs.”
# NaughtyNutritionist.com
# Convertible-Heels.com – @day2niteheels – “Convertible heels for work or play”
# Vidicul.us – @VidiculusVideo – “Snark & Heckle”
# NodeRabbit.com – @noderabbit – “Go-Live In Five”
# MeetImpact.com – “New England Innovator’s Revolution”

Top 4 Winners of The MIT Arab Business Plan Competition

Thomas Oppong — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:42:14 +0000

MIT Arab Competition is designed to encourage all entrepreneurs in the region to start their own company and, ultimately, create a nest of leading firms in the Arab world. This year, a lot of teams applied to participate, and the list was narrowed to Top 30 Business Plans.

Download The Top 30 Semi-Finalists Catalogue 2010 here

The Four winners of the competition include: The Little Engineer, BioBusiness, Arabia Coach and EG-Bioinformatics. These teams met the following requirements to be considered for the ultimate prize.
The eligibility rules are as follows:

1. At least three team members per application entry
2. At least two of the 3 team members must be Arab nationals
3. Companies submitting cannot have previously been funded or making substantial revenues from sales

Startup Idea : Twitter Version Of Digg

Thomas Oppong — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:42:52 +0000

I made a collection of Startup Ideas worth Exploring in 2010 just before the beginning of the year. One of my favorite ideas among the list was :

Twitter Version of Digg
I believe there are just too many useful twits that are difficult to trace or follow on twitter. A news aggregation of all twits on twitter designed like Digg where popular news will be the most twitted news or story is the idea. The concept or the basic idea to make this a killer app is in the design.

Designing a site an app like that just for twitter will be perfect. I know there are a lot of sites like tweetmeme which is the closest to what I am talking about, but an app with the twist like digg will open a lot of doors for new applications, plugins and buttons to go with it.

I am still thinking about a way to make this happen. If you are interested, you can get in touch with me and we can take it from there. I would love to to be a part of your team if you intend to try this alone.

If you have a new twist to this idea, please share it

The Rise And Fall of Startup Ideas And Companies

Thomas Oppong — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:26:32 +0000

Most Entrepreneurs have gone through this phase of building a company

You conceives an idea, get excited about it or
Identify a problem and believe it can be developed into a company.
If your idea is organic, read this
You write it in your journal or idea bank , tell a friend about it,
You receive either a negative or positive feedback
You either drop the idea or get a little motivated to further expand it
Makes a research about the viability of the idea
You begin to add flesh to bones in writing
If your research proved otherwise you drop it here and pick another idea or
You found out that its really a problem and a solution can be carved out of it
You write your Elevator Pitch and being to tell others, possibly somebody who can connect you to an investor
If you intend to do an elevator pitch read this
You can make it happen yourself so you bootstrap and pitch it after a year or two at techCrunch 70 or
You put together an executive summary and possibly a full 30 page business plan or
If you are a geek or a nerd you avoid the business plan and put together a prototype or demo and apply to Y Combinator
If you cannot build it yourself, your leverage is a well documented plan and a paper prototype
You begin to search for Angel investors through your network on twitter, LinkedIn or facebook
To increase your chances of getting funded you apply to Techstars, F8, startup weekend or Startup Demo
As of now you are still alone, either you will rise alone or fall alone.
If you made a good pitch to your network of friends , you have one or two follow you as co -founders
You go through the selection process at Techcrunch 70, Y combinator, Techstars, Startup Weekend
You pitch your idea to a section of angel investors and venture capitalists
Fortunately the judges were merciful
You have qualified for funds
If you have been lucky to this extent, you must listen to this from venture hacks
Angel investors send their scouts after you if you are lucky
Fortunately you now have the luxury of choice.
As of now you may still b in the idea phase of your startup, let me take a coffee break and get back to you in my next post cheers.

Related posts:
1. The Rise And Fall of Startup Ideas And Companies 2
2. Boston Startup Weekend Witnessed 15 Teams 15 Ideas
3. 12 Companies Made It To The Founder Showcase

Innovalley Wins Top Honors at Barcelona Pitch Slam 2010

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:06:33 +0000

The Innovate!2010 Barcelona Pitch Slam was held at Barcelona Activa on Thursday, 8 April 2010. 12 Innovate!100 semifinalists pitched their startups, and Innovalley was named winner of the Pitch Slam. The company is the newest member of the Innovate!100 list of the 100 most promising technology startups.

Innovalley designs,makes and sells smart apparel .The company’s “goal is to make technology meet other fields such as apparel and fashion, to increase the usefulness of our everyday items, creating user friendly experiences and great designs everyone would like to wear. ”

40 Startup Pitches At Copenhagen Startup Weekend 2010

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:52:39 +0000

Startup Weekend gathers a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more for a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. The program has already met with success in over 52 cities and 12 countries and growing.

At the Copenhagen Startup Weekend, Copenhagen, Denmark there were 110+ participants and 40 pitches were narrowed down to 14 which was further reduced to 11 teams.

All top 40 startups are summarized on the homepage of the program, but unfortunately links to the various startups were not provided. The ideas that were presented are available for your assessment

Online Video Startup Ideas You Should Explore In 2010

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:34:13 +0000

Online video sites like Youtube, vimeo, and ustream have features that make them unique. Web TV has come to stay,but there are a lot of other features that online video lover and users would love to see in any of the video services listed above. I believe that a lot of other startups will spring up that will provide something different from what we are used to online.

In the coming years some companies or startups will or may provide the following services as a technology for other startups or even build a product them. If you know of a startup that provides these features or services, do not hesitate to share it.

Zoom effect in a Playing video .The ability to pause a video and zoom it to have a vivid picture of a background image or personality.This could be a feature that can be added to any of the video services already being provided. Google’s Real time images of maps of streets and various regions and even the new biking routes is the beginning of new technologies we are yet to experience. There is just so ,much that can be explored in a playing video, be it a recorded video or real time video being streamed. The details of a streaming video is what I am looking for.

Activating a 3D effect in a streaming Video. Avatar (the movie) brought a new dimension to the theatres. A 3D version of the movie made it even better on screen. A lot of people preferred that, and I must confess it was good to watch. What I want to see and I hope somebody is either doing it or will be done soon is a feature in a streaming video that makes it possible to view it in 3D without a special tool. The movie or clip should not necessarily be shot in 3D. People would love to see how their videos will turn out in 3D and you will get lots of traffic and exposure. Watch out for Youtube, Google could provide such a feature for video lovers.

Branding Videos Companies are finding different ways to make their presence felt online.Some companies make their own videos and distribute them on various video sites to promote themselves. My question is : Is it possible to provide a service that makes possible for companies to find all videos uploaded by others that features the company in the video. Companies can the compete to place ads in popular videos and provide incentives or commissions for those who uploaded them. Users can then earn some money with every view or click. If the video its a hit, the owner can charge monthly fees.

Automatic Language Translator for Videos on Demand . Most videos or movies recording in different languages makes it difficult for users to watch them without subtitles. As video streaming gets popular . I would love to see features like automatic language translators for videos without necessarily uploading a different language versions for it. Subtitles help, but sometimes its a distraction especially if you want to concentrate on the content of the material. Real time videos being streamed form different parts of the world in say a technology or startup conference will be easier to follow.

Further Reading
Top 12 Sites To Watch Videos That Are Better Than YouTube
Google TV with HDMI pass-through?

Startup Ideas Worth Exploring In 2010

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:25:50 +0000

Every startup on the web today begun with an idea the founder conceived. It probably was among a lot of other ideas the founder was considering. Year after year new startups are built and launched with or without investor support. The initial idea has always been a starting point– not a blueprint, but mostly a question that seeks to solve a problem. I have been thinking about these ideas and have been conducting a lot of research to see their potential in the year 2010. The Startup Ideas worth Exploring in 2010 includes

Location based ads for consumers.
Consumers spend lots of time on the internet looking for products to buy. You can help by providing mobile application that sends specific ads to users in locations they prefer. Persuading customers to sign up for a steady barrage of marketing offers may prove the bigger challenge. Enterprises pay to send micro messages as ads to consumers.

Redefine IT Departments of Enterprises
Consider building an application for the IT department of Enterprises that will help in their daily and routine jobs of finding solutions to problems in their company. Add a collaboration tool that enable them to share within the LAN or WAN.

Ebay Competitor
If you google “Frustrations of EBay Customers” , you can find so many problems that customers go through when using ebay. Some of them are difficult for eBay to implement because of the structure and nature of their business. You can identify particular once that have received the most complain and make it into a startup. You can tap into their API if need be to solve it.

IPhone application marketer.
Raising app awareness at the app store is a huge problem for iphone developers. Currently there are 150,000 applications recorded. is a marketing problem. Applications are buried a week or two after its official acceptance to the appstore. You can build a mobile application or even a web app that makes it easy for developers to blast campaigns about their apps to their target market.

Product and Service wish list + SMS
Shoppers and internet purchasers add products to their shopping carts all the time. Sometimes some of these products are not bought by user, but if there are discounts on them consumers may consider buying. Your task is to develop a web app that makes it easy for consumers to add their wish list to their accounts, you will then send them notifications via email, feeds, or sms if they are discounts on the products they select. You can even allow them to buy from your platform.

Enterprise wiki + project management + Yammer.
Employees collaborate to accomplish so many tasks at various companies. Allow your users select colleagues and send notes both long and short. New employees can sign up in the network for training through media exchanges. In simple terms give them socialtext, yammer and a project management feature on a single dashboard.

Customer 2.0
Customer feedback for enterprises on a single platform. Enterprises pay to access information customer complains for their company. Businesses will be looking to customers, partners and other company sources for the ideas and innovation through the feedback. Getsatisfaction uservoice are doing well, but I think it’s just the beginning. There are still opportunities to serve the new customer who now has a voice.

People and contact aggregation for sales.
Allow your users to see how they are connected to other people who could be a lead for sales, which is an excellent tool in generating new contacts of your own for sales purposes. This should just be focused on sales leads. Companies would sign their sales executives on if you give them opportunity to connect with others on the internet that can help them make a sale.

User generated Magazine
Allow users to Subscribe and create their own magazines. Aggregate all top magazines online and allow users to combine articles and create their own version. Partner with subscription and paid magazines. Users can download their magazines for a fee.

TV/Radio Programs Aggregation
Aggregate movies or TV shows programs for the week being shown in users geographical area based on particular stations/channel. Users pay subscription fees to be updated weekly on any location of their choice.

Virtual TechCamp
Hundreds of technology meetings are organized all over the word every year. Most Technology followers and startup founders wish they were present at such functions. Your responsibility is to create a virtual camp online that can be likened to Techcrunch 50, Seedcamp ,Web 2.0 conference, Mobile Conference, Facebook Garage, Barcamp etc. Provide oppoertunity for pitches to be made in real time .

Twitter Version of Digg
There are just too many useful twits that are difficult to trace or follow on twitter. How about a news aggregation of all twits on twitter designed like Digg where popular news will be the most twitted news or story.

7 Days and $500: One Man’s Plan to Bootstrap A Startup In A Week (readwriteweb.com)