Pre-startup weekend idea list

Startup Weekend is rad. I skipped the first 10 or so of them we had in Seattle because I stupidly thought I was too cool for it. “Every weekend is a startup weekend for me,” I’d say. I finally went to my first one back in November, and recruited a killer team of 3 people (Jason Strutz, Hisun Kim, and Darrell Garbe) to work on SeeSaw (a mobile social app similar to Hashable).

It was an adrenaline rush to work in a competitive environment with great people. I now always recommend Startup Weekend to people looking for programmers or designers. Personally, I enjoyed having the chance to pitch an idea, get people’s responses, and do a basic implementation to get the idea out of my brain.

In preparation for the next event, as a follow up to my post on evaluating ideas, here are some of the ideas I’ve noodled-up the last 6 months or so. When evaluating these, I’m trying to place an emphasis on customer pain, clear business model, and the execution of the idea.

The spreadsheet ranks ideas based on the prospective market, virality, retention, monetization, and level of effort. I have a proclivity for social apps because they are more viral (and I just love them).

I’m eager for your feedback. Please leave a comment if one of these ideas catches your eye. Especially leave a comment if you think an idea is dumb (to save me time working on it).

Use this link to open full spreadsheet.

You should always share your ideas, by the way. In this day and age, if you find yourself saying “we’re in stealth mode,” or worse – just keeping an idea to yourself, you’re stupid. Remember, it’s the execution that matters anyway.