Six years ago I open-sourced some ideas onto Github I had floating around in my head. The web has changed a lot in six years, so I thought I would revisit my ideas and see what was good and what wasn’t.
Massive Cryptocurrency API
The idea was simple, an API for sending and receiving cryptocurrency payments. While Coinpayments was listed as a previous competitor, nobody else that I know of came to the table with a solution that has survived into 2020. Coinpayments is all but the standard for crypto payments now.
Concise Meal Planning
Since 2014, meal planning apps have really kicked up. The idea was an app where you specify a budget and you get a meal plan delivered to you that meets that budget.
While I am not sure a 1:1 solution exists, there are many meal planning services now including Equalution and even apps like Myfitnesspal offer recipes now.
Kickstarter Meets Not-For-Profit
Back in 2014 and presumably in 2020, Kickstarter does not support not-for-profit projects. The idea was a platform that offered Kickstarter like fundraising for not-for-profit projects. Reading the title, I think we both know who emerged victorious in this area: GoFundMe.
Salads On Demand
The idea was a meal delivery service that delivered fresh salads to you. Since 2014, delivery services like Uber Eats and Menulog have saturated the market, in this pandemic world, you can get almost any cuisine delivered to you including salad.
The Best Pizza
I still think about this idea, finding the best pizza based on sentiment analysis. From a fun project perspective, I still think this would be cool and could be expanded to other areas.
Crypto For Fiat
The idea was a platform where users can buy and sell cryptocurrencies using fiat with as little steps as possible. Those in cryptocurrency know that the biggest player solved this problem, I am of course, talking about Coinbase.
Books to eBooks
This idea centred around being able to swap your physical books for digital copies. Due to the complicated nature of publishing and copyright, this is an idea I can never see taking off or being possible, unless publishers or someone like Amazon did it.
Nutrition Companion
You can’t stop progress. This idea involved an app that could scan barcodes and give you nutritional information. There are quite a few of these apps around now, Myfitnesspal seems to offer this functionality and then some more.
News CMS
This one gave me a laugh. This news CMS idea was something akin to WordPress with more news-organisation oriented features. News has really taken a tumble since 2014 and WordPress has improved in the features department in combination with something like Grammarly, you don’t need a dedicated CMS.
Localised Shopper
Being able to limit the scope of buying things to a particular geographical region or distance. Since 2014, we have seen many dominant players implement these features including Gumtree as well as Facebook Marketplace.
Uber For Roadside Assistance
This one was an obvious evolution of the Uber concept, it just needed time. My initial idea would have experienced regulatory issues with vetting mechanics and whatnot. Existing networks like RACQ and other roadside assistance offerings globally now offer apps and you don’t have to always be a member.
