Every day we see threads here where people want advice but are afraid to talk about what they're doing. It's completely understandable for you think that your idea is special and no one else has ever had it before, and that if you ever expose it to the light of day you will remain poor forever while getting Zuckerberg'ed by someone else on this forum.

But it's wrong. I guarantee you that someone else has had your idea before you. Lots of someones probably. It's not about the idea, it's about the execution.

More importantly though, if you really want to give a new ventuer the best chance to succeed you need feedback. And if you're asking for feedback and/or advice you need to put the idea out there for people to see.

It understandably takes a while for people to believe this, and it's damn near impossible to beat it in to their heads with just words. Either you believe A or you believe B, and in my experience only watching what happens when people are open versus when people are closed can change someone's viewpoint.

So for the next month or so I'm going to post all kinds of ideas in this thread. Some of them are things I've though about for a while (I have an ideas book on me at almost all times, and I recommend you do it too) and some of them are new ideas that I'll come up with over the course of this exercise. Truthfully, while I hope and expect a lot of posters to get something out of this, it is as much for me to keep thinking of new things as it is for you to see that no one is going to steal them and keep you from success.

I'm not going to say that my ideas are as good or better than anything you guys are working on, that would be ridiculous and pretty conceited. In fact my ideas will almost certainly be worse on average. But I bet there are one or two good ones in here, at least good enough to illustrate my point.

And I bet at the end of this we'll have tons of discussion about these, have a better understanding of a bunch of different markets, and NOT A SINGLE IDEA will have been implemented by a 2p2er here in a way that would preclude me from making money on it (if we decide a market exists).

So that's what I hope is going to happen here. I'll post business ideas, hopefully we can get lots of feedback and discussion on them, and no one will be able to corner the market on me

great idea and looking forward to reading. i always keep an ideas file on my iphone as well.

interesting idea ...subscribed .

Your thread idea is good.

sounds cool, i'll follow

i think this is right. i've heard alot that ideas are worth nothing, but implementation is the big step between success and failure

Careful, it might get stolen.

Awesome thread, can we post our ideas here too and you shoot them down as well?

Had an idea a couple months ago that kinda came from an NVG thread about creating a website for poker scammers. Specifically players who have taken money as a means of direct theft. Not a site for Multi-accounting/Colluding/Chip dumping, but a site for people who essentially stole stakes. I actually got started on it, but have not done anything in a while.

Create a website with 2 parts.

Part 1 is famous/ named players. These don't have to be actually "famous", but more people who would be potentially asking to borrow money based on their reputation and what their real life name is. This part would include a brief description with hopefully a picture and outstanding debts that they have, or previously outstanding debts that have been resolved.

Part 2 is a database of online screen names that are guilty of scamming. This part would be way more difficult to organize and to police than the first part, imo. It would be a list of online names/ known/ thought aliases and the amounts of money in question. Since 99% of these scammers will have had the money sent from someone on the same site or across a different site, I was thinking these scams would need to be verified with a username who transferred the money.


The key to the site would be the ability to "Dispute/ Resolve a Scam." Obviously it could be re-named to something that sounds more positive,etc. It would allow the individual from part 1, or the account owner of part 2 to come forward and dispute the claims against them, or put the website in a position to help broker a deal. The website would not directly get involved with any negotiations, just provide a method of contact between the 2 parties, which would be required to report the scam. In the case of a real-life scammer from part 1, it would probably be assumed that the individuals could contact each other.

Basically the way to make $$ is to make it into a point of gossip to be used in discussions not on the website, and have a twitter feed that hopefully eventually semi to high profile poker news resources will follow and learn about people who may be going busto. Advertising would be 100% source of income and the website would not charge anything if $$ was returned.

subscribed. Thread has great potential.

Yes, definitely! Let the ideas flow

But no secretive "I want to start an X, but I can't tell you what makes it special" ideas. If you aren't willing to open up about something, I'll ask a mod to remove the discussion on it.

x-posted.

Let the ideas roll!

subscribed

agreeg

This is something I've always sort of agreed with but never really understood and struggled with.

1. If I have a great idea I 100% agree to tell relevant people about it without any barriers to get feedback on the idea. Happy to talk to anyone that seems interested in it who could give crucial feedback. 99% of the time this is an important step
2. If I have a great idea I'm likely to act on, I'm not going to announce it to the world before I've done anything. You're inviting competition if it's really a good idea. Why start the race at the same time when you can get a good head start.

Even though people say ideas have no value, I think they do to some extent, the problem is people grossly over value their ideas.

I think the point is that people underestimate the value of feedback and overestimate their idea/the uniqueness of it, not that ideas are in every way worthless and that there is no advantage to a head start, just much less than people think, esp relative to the worth of feedback.

Anyways, awesome thread, hopefully I can contribute something to it.