startup spaces

Need a startup idea? Venture firm Y Combinator has already done some of the intial thinking for you, classifying the spaces in which they’d like to see startup ideas. Some of my favorites from their list:

9. Photo/video sharing services. A lot of the most popular sites on the web are for photo sharing. But the sites classified as social networks are also largely about photo sharing. As much as people like to share words (IM and email and blogging are “word sharing” apps), they probably like to share pictures more. It’s less work and the results are usually more interesting. I think there is huge growth still to come. There may ultimately be 30 different subtypes of image/video sharing service, half of which remain to be discovered.

I love-love flickr but I have to admit that that’s only one way of sharing photos. What about sharing where graffiti is encouraged? Or where camera phones, not PCs, are the based platform? Or where geography trump ownership as the primary means of organization?

13. Online learning. US schools are often bad. A lot of parents realize it, and would be interested in ways for their kids to learn more. Till recently, schools, like newspapers, had geographical monopolies. But the web changes that. How can you teach kids now that you can reach them through the web? The possible answers are a lot more interesting than just putting books online.

Amen. I run into people all over who are looking for practical education to help their career or fit their interests without having to go back to school. On the flip side, Adaptive Path has started virtual seminars and the tools are lackluster. They’re all stuck in one-point-oh-land, mimicing offline presentation behaviors. Why would you mimic something that didn’t work that well in the first place?

28. Fixing email overload. A lot of people, including me, feel they get too much email. A solution would find a ready market. But the best solution may not be anything as obvious as a new mail reader.

If this isn’t a problem for you now, it might be a problem soon. Emails are easy to cc and forward, but hard to consume and manage. It’s become a feed, not an inbox. People and organizations are ready to pay money to solve the information anxiety from email. Somebody save us.