Category Archives: Tuesday Terrible Startup Ideas

A new terrible startup idea every Tuesday. From concept, to user interviews, to wireframes. An exercise in product design and idea iteration.

Tues Startup: It’s like Yelp, but for Toilets

my new website will collect user reports and reviews of toilets around the world

this will help many travelers prepare for how to judge an entire society by their toilets

to get academics interested, we will flag people who post reviews as either natives or tourist, and have automatic translation capabilities

you can read about the inspiration behind this startup here

Alright, prior art check:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/union-square-public-toilet-san-francisco

yelp-toilets

okay this is promising… people are trying to use yelp to review toilets… let’s keep going

http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2014/03/07/flushd/

Yelp may be great for reviews about restaurants, hair stylists or the nearest gas station. But if you find yourself in need of a public restroom, Flushd, a slickly designed app for iPhone and iPad, promises relief.

Flushd displays a list of public restrooms based on a user’s current location. The app uses data from Foursquare to identify the bathrooms.

It’s by no means the first of its kind, but Flushd has some promising features. People can offer up their own toilets for sharing by adding them to the list in the app. Features such as sorting—whether the bathroom has a changing table, for instance—are expected in the next version of the app, due in about three months.

“We want to make the bathroom experience better,” says James Edwards, creator of Flushd and CEO of Ahhh Media, the maker of the app. “Our goal is to offer an easy button for relief.”

What they don’t tell you in the press release: Flushd is a free app but if it gets popular, Ahhh Media plans to start charging and will donate a portion of the revenue to organizations working on sanitation issues.

 

NOOOOO I have been sniped. But now the market is open to the idea… I need merely make a better website than they did and reap their users… 😛

 

Tues Startup: Social Media Network of Pigeons, Avian.io

Recently I asked someone who shared a link with me where he found it. He told me “from the internet”.

Well, yes, almost all hyperlinks are found and shared on the internet as a matter of fact.

BUT IMAGINE IF

You extended the pigeon protocol to the concept of social media.

Say you want to share an article, youtube video, or other link with a friend.

  1. you install the Avian.io app and hit “ave it!”
    tues1-1
  2. a robot prints the link out and attaches it to a Certified Pigeon. that pigeon finds you, poops on your head to get your attention, and gives you the link
    tues1-2
  3. if you “like” the link,
    tues1-3
  4. you feed the pigeon some crackers so that when it returns to the sender
    tues1-4
  5. the sender then knows how much you appreciate the link based on how much the pigeon poops on him/her 30 minutes later
    tues1-5

This Tuesday Terrible Startup Idea post brought to you by “it’s still Tuesday in Hawaii”.

Oh, check this out, someone was paid to write this article, and it wasn’t even April Fools: http://www.globalresearch.ca/circumventing-invasive-internet-surveillance-with-carrier-pigeons/5341180?print=1 They came up with a “coo-ing” Twitter-like startup name called Coo-ee , haha.