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Re:Billion Dollar Startup Ideas [video] by fxtentacle on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:47AM (#25109914)
I believe that greatly depends on how you define the idea. In my definition, the idea for Google was: "Get advertisers to pay for a free information portal." That idea doesn't seem much different to "Advertisers pay for a free newspaper", which was common practice at the time. Similarly, "Advertisers pay for free classified ads" was common, too, but it's how Facebook started out. "Pay for a car ride" = Uber also doesn't seem that new. Or how about "Rent out rooms for money" = AirBnb.

In my opinion, all of those are ideas that aren't really new. But they were executed in a new way and that made all the difference.

HomeAway was already well-known and successful at the time when AirBnb was founded. But the latter reached more potential landlords, due to their specific execution.

I remember using AltaVista for years before I ever heard about Google. So their business idea and business model wasn't new. Their initial execution was incredible, though.

And before I heard of Facebook, I was using MySpace, which was kind of the same basic idea, but pretty badly executed. Until 2 years after the iPhone came out, MySpace was actually larger than Facebook. So my guess would be that it was Facebook's superior execution of their mobile experience that crowned them.

Re:Billion Dollar Startup Ideas [video] by Retric on Monday November 16, 2020 @07:59AM (#25111068)
When people talk about ideas it’s not that great ideas win, it’s bad ideas lose. Starting by selling books online like Amazon is better than selling pet food online like Pets.com from both a shipping cost per lb and the value of having a usefully huge selection vs basically selling commodities.

Pet owners often care about buying the same food every time, but few people are buying hundreds of copies of the same book.

Re:Billion Dollar Startup Ideas [video] by worldsayshi on Monday November 16, 2020 @05:05AM (#25110039)
The important ideas that made those companies get big wasn't what problem to solve but how to solve it. Google had PageRank and various other smart ways to make their search better than the competitors at the time. Facebook had better UX. Airbnb made renting out rooms ten times easier.

The important ideas here is in the realm of "how". And that realm is both ideas and execution. Ideas of how to execute?

Re:Billion Dollar Startup Ideas [video] by crusty on Monday November 16, 2020 @08:47AM (#25111534)
"...advertisers pay for free classifieds" - profit or brain melt?