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What are some startup ideas that persistently fail?

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What are some startup ideas that persistently fail?

Edit
That is, year after year, there are entrepreneurs who attempt variations of that idea despite nobody having ever succeeded in that space before?

Answer Summary

Social recommendations and/or Recommendations based on what your friends like
Why? 
1) too much noise/low priority, lack of personal relevance 
2) Forced fit between "Friends" and what you buy.

Finding people/dates/deals nearby on your mobile device
Why? 
1) Automation of this activity does not produce sufficient value to the end user. 

Anything that makes programming "easy for non-programmers or businesspeople"
Why? 
Make Car repair "easy for non-mechanics" ... presumes people want to work on their own cars. They don't.

Yet another T-shirt site.
Why?
The market is sufficiently served by Threadless, Busted Tees, and others

Yet another dating site
Why?
1) Insufficient distinction from all of the other dating sites
2) I lie about my weight/income/humor - you lie about your fitness/degree of bitterness/coolness and thus a high level of disappointment and frustration follow. 

Trust - as a stand alone service, separate from context or other functionality
Why?
1) Trust and reputation are tightly bound to the context in which they're given, and largely useless elsewhere.
2) Insufficient number of users
3) The majority of people don't write reviews or tag meta data.

Rss readers, Kid-safe browsers, 
Why?
1) The majority of people don't care enough to learn to use the product.

Anything involving paying people to look at ads
Why?
1) Advertisers have better alternatives
2) It does not pay enough to make it worth the time for a consumer to set it up

Anything that promises to make email a thing of the past
Why?
1) Email is pervasive and works well enough
2) Alternatives require users to learn/change behavior. 

Website micro-payment donation
Why?
...

Tools that deliver personalized news
Why?
...

Avatars in a 3D internet
Why?
...

Recommendation engine / Collaborative filtering
Why?
1) Sites have better alternatives (adwords, SEO/SEM)
2) Garbage in / Garbage out. Without reliable meta data this is a non starter.
3) Hight cost of sales to get sites to sign up. 

Craigslist killer through better UI
Why?
1) It violates Craigslist Terms of service, and you will get shut off
2) Craigslist is already dead ... it just takes a while to be acknowledged; Indeed/simply Hired = Jobs category, Etsy = sell your crafts, Redfin = real estate, AirBnB = Vacations/rentals, subwaycrush = missed connections, ...

Grocery Deilvery
Why?
1) High cost to provide service and customers who are unwilling to pay 
2) People often prefer to shop (touch/taste/smell) their own groceries

Semantic Search
Why?
1) It might be that it is hard for mortals to formulate a semantic query
2) AI is hard

Just about everything in the music space
Why?
1) Music labels want to preserve their current business model
2) ...

Consumer facing video conferencing
Why?
1) Too expensive/difficult/scarce 
2) Lack of true interest/value

...

Revenue models 
Please see Josh Kaufman, Personal MBA. 
12 Standard forms of Value
and Steve Blank, on finding a revenue model. 


...

Solving problem @ the wrong layer // Where they way you look @ the problem is the problem

...

Tectonics
Market conditions and personal behavior shift; opening opportunities.

... 

What people 'think' /'say' vs. what people do
People tend to be polite and tell you what your want to hear, or what makes them look good. Their actual behavior does not match what they claim.

 

 

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