Hey all! Based on this post, I wanted to start a networking thread for all of us to share our business ideas and creative side projects to see if there is any overlap in what we're working towards. This is difficult work and if anybody has shared ideas or goals, they should be aware of that and maybe we can can get some collaboration going. And even if there's no direct overlap, having a community to brainstorm and bounce ideas off of is still great support in of itself. I've also started a #networking channel in our community chatroom, so hop on there as well if you're interested!

So I'll start us off:


EatSimply

This is my main business idea right now, and I'm fairly serious about it.

The core product is basically a meal planner, akin to what you see on eatthismuch.com, something where you input your basic info (weight, age, diet, allergies, etc.) and you'd get an easily customizable list of meals for the day, where you can mix and match recipes, products, local restaurants, etc. until you find a combination you like and you don't have to worry about whether you're getting enough of this nutrient or that nutrient, and no calorie or food tracking like with MyFitnessPal, that's too much work. Something that's just really easy to use, just whip out your phone and get some nearby food suggestions for the day without having to track or worry about how healthy it is or whether you're getting enough of a certain nutrient.

The idea came to me a few years back when I realized I was a bit underweight and wanted to start gaining some, and one of my main strategies was to start going to the gym regularly and start some strength training to put on some muscle mass. But before that I wanted to get my diet in order- didn't want to start pushing myself while eating junk. So I started looking around for various apps and services that would help me with this. I thought there would surely be something, because this seemed like something that is pretty universal (eating healthy) but to my surprise, there were very few options out there that worked for me. The only thing I really found were apps like MyFitnessPal, but that requires you to track every single meal, which works if you're really serious about your health, but I saw an opportunity here. Everything else is either way too simple / vague, focused on weight loss, or just based on bogus science. One of my favorite examples of the latter was that when I was living in Los Angeles, the juice bar down the block sold their weekly "juice cleanses" for like $500. They sold tons of them, even though that stuff has no basis in science, because everyone wants to be healthy, it's just that convenience wins out at the end of the day. So that's what I want to build and the problem I want to solve. I want something that is easy and simple to use for everyone, no matter what their weight and fitness goals happen to be. If we can get this core feature working well, I think there's tons of potential a platform like this. Users will pay for premium features, such as grocery list generation / tracking, family meals, budget planning.. restaurants will pay for sponsorship in our algorithm (basically high-margin advertisement the user doesn't even notice), I've talked to other companies who'd be interested in having api access, and industries like food delivery are blowing up right now- but they all just capitalize on the convenience aspect. If we're able to combine that with a health platform you're already using, I think it becomes a no-brainer.

So that's the gist of the business plan. By trade I'm a software engineer and can handle building out most of the technology, so it would be great to have someone on board who's focused on the business / marketing end of things. A UX designer would also be awesome. This is of course not to say having other engineers would not also be helpful- my progress has been fairly slow on my own, and I don't have a whole lot of experience with hardcore algorithm development, which the entire product is based on.


Ongaku

The rest of my ideas are more side projects for fun rather than being seriously business focused, at least for now. Obviously if something starts actually taking off there are ways to monetize them. This is an idea I have for a collaborative music streaming and discovery app, similar to turntable.fm or plug.dj before they shut down. I'm fairly serious about building this out as well, although as mentioned above there aren't really any business plans to it yet, it's just a side project at the moment.

Basically the main idea would be to create rooms where friends can collaboratively manage playlists or take turns choosing music to listen to together in real-time. The apps mentioned above have shut down, but you can still find information and screenshots of them online if you give 'em a quick google. One differentiator I wanted to build in was more of a hands off approach in comparison to the above apps. They were very, mm.. "active" experiences, meaning you needed to be at your computer, online with other people, actively choosing music everytime the song switched, chatting with other people, etc. That's how it was designed. But a lot of the time I just want music in the background while I'm on my way to work or just chilling out, so I thought it would be neat if we allowed collaboratively managed playlists that were just standard shoutcast-compatible urls, meaning you could simply plug it in to whatever device you wanted, your phone, whatever music player you use on your laptop, etc.

This leads into the next part, where I wanted to build a kind of community where you discover new music recommendations through your friends. All these new music services that are coming out are all based on these personal algorithms without any interaction with other people, but imagine instead you received a new album recommendation in person while chatting with a friend of yours. Of course you're going to go check it out, actual personal recommendations from people you know carry a lot of weight. You could be on the way to work when a new artist you haven't heard of pops up in the playlist, because your friend added it, so this aids music discovery through your friends.

I also think this aspect of it can aid in my computer science studies, we can use machine learning to find other actual people that have similar tastes to you and you can follow what they listen to and discover new artists that way. Put all these things together and I think you get a pretty unique music platform that doesn't really exist today. Also due to the nature of this project, if anyone else is interested in topics like computer science, algorithms, and machine learning, don't hesitate to get involved! I'm very new to these fields which is part of the reason I'm working on projects that will aid in my study. I'm an experienced software developer but dropped out of college pretty early on so don't have a lot of that sort of knowledge I might have picked up if I went on to get my degree.


Summary

So as mentioned several times, by trade I'm a software engineer so my side projects tend to be focused on building various kinds of apps and related technology. I always have a few things I'm working on, and would love to hear what everyone else in the community is either working on or just random ideas you have!