5 Worst and 5 Best Ideas – Assignment for Venture Lab Virtual Course

The reason for my this post is to share with you all the first warm up exercise we were given i.e. To work with your initial team to brainstorm your 5 worst startup ideas and 5 best startup ideas and submit one idea in form of Business Model Canvas

http://eesley.blogspot.com/2012/03/forming-teams-brainstorming-ideas.html

The exercise seems simple, but it was fun when all team members were sharing their worst and best ideas. In addition, when we picked the one idea either worst or best and put it in Business Model Canvas format. It provoke your thoughts to think little different for your product or startup.

Following is the idea that I finally submitted :

– KA-B02: Interactive Programming for Kids Product (Kashi)

• – Create an app or product that allows kids from age 5 to 15 to learn programming in more interactive way.

• – A drag and drop interface with drawing aspect to help them learn programming concepts and create fun computer programs

• – Unlike other programming tools, kids won’t need to know the underline syntax and programming, it will be first step to help them develop the products or program in a interactive and visual way

Following is the Business Model Canvas of my Idea:

KashifAhmed – Business Model Canvas – Kids Programming Idea

You would probably like to know all my 5 worst and 5 best ideas for this exercise as well (Note: The best ideas are actually NOT THE BEST I have, but I do like them It was really fun to come up with Worst ideas If I hadn’t pick the Kids Programming app idea, my second best would have been “GenX and GenY learning portal app”. See details below:

Kashi Worst Ideas:

• KA-W01: Create a Social Network geared towards each culture globally. Adhere to their culture values and restrictions.
• KA-W02: Create Garments that do not get wet in Rain – Special clothing like dress shirts etc that do not get wet in water 
• KA-W03: Special shoes that lets you walk on water
• KA-W04: Create Facebook Rival – Simple and personal and secure – like Google came after yahoo and msn
• KA-W05: App that let’s you browse any social media and file sharing site in the world by passing company’s firewall. Let anyone use facebook or other website while at work using our app and being anonymous with no tracking left. Spoof IP and data packets and mac addresses so you can’t be traced sa well

Kashi’s Close to Best Ideas:

– KA-B01: Social Intranet website/portal framework for the enterprises

• For all enterprise employees working in the corporate, create custom intranet portal with social media features to help increase collaboration and communication across different teams and employees

• allows to find information via collaboration and increase group learning

• Unlike facebook, twitter, Salesforces, and Jive – this would be intranet content rich website with social media like interface to promote collaboration

KA-B02: Interactive Programming for Kids Product (Kashi)

• Create an app or product that allows kids from age 5 to 15 to learn programming in more interactive way.

• A drag and drop interface with drawing aspect to help them learn programming concepts and create fun computer programs 

• Unlike other programming tools, kids won’t need to know the underline syntax and programming, it will be first step to help them develop the products or program in a interactive and visual way

KA-B03: Audio Language translator app to help communicate with people in different languages (Kashi)

• A mobile app that anyone who interact with people who speak different language can use to translate what other person is saying in one language to another and respond accordingly as well

• E.g. you speak a sentence in English and the output is in Spanish for the listener. Similarly, when other person speak in Spanish, it translate it to English for you.

• Promote cross culture communication and learning different languages.

KA-B04: Create a Taleo (www.taleo.com) rival product for hiring 

• Most of the organizations are using Taleo as their hiring tool currently.

• The problem face by the candidates are that they have to create same profile for each organization they are applying for, which is tons of work. There is no synchronization.

• The data require to complete the profile and the interface is so 90′s.

• Create a similar but better product where candidate needs to create a profile once and distribute to all organization who are using our tool.Less work on candidate’s end and effectiveness for job application.

• Tool must incorporate all the cutting edge technologies and social media aspect for the recruiters and provide them complete details about the candidate.

KA-B05: GenX and GenY Information Sharing Portal Web and Mobile app.

• GenX – baby boomers or current managers or higher rank executives or successful entrepreneurs or people with special or expert skills and experience

• GenY – young generations in school or colleges, aspiring entrepreneurs, people who are at early stage in their career or anyone who needs expert advice on anything

• An Information portal where both parties can sign up and share their expertise in exchange for their respective time to help each other in learning about their respective areas of interest

• E.g. I request 15 mins of Waren Buffet time for a coffee in exchange of 2 hours of my time to him or 2 hours of credit to Warrent Buffet to use the resource for any information gathering he needs.

• Current issue is that people are not that connected with right resource or have reach. we want to create a framework that allows them to connect and share information and help each other grow

Well, that’s all I had to share today. If you like any of the above ideas, I would love to hear. If you have any worst or best ideas that you like to share, please post in the comments.

Chao!

Kashif Ahmed (Kashi)