Matt Baril

Idea #23 Warehouse companies can rent based on their space need. Inventory & shipping is managed for them

Working for an e-commerce company, I realized that it can be a serious problem for us to ship to Europe. A typical delivery takes 4 to 6 weeks and can be held in customs for a very long time and customer might even be charged taxes as well. It makes doing business difficult. The normal answer to that is to buy a warehouse and have stock in Europe, however this isn't always very useful for smaller e-commerce organizations.

The idea would be to buy or rent a warehouse which would be divided based on customers' needs; any customer could rent the amount of square feet they need. The warehouse would be dynamically divided to meet customers' needs. In order to accommodate smaller businesses, inventory as well as shipping would be automatically managed for them. If they close a sale on the continent, the warehouse would package and ship for their customer's customer. That should be appealing to any small e-commerce website who wants to improve sales on another continent without the high fix costs and risk associated with buying or renting a large warehouse.

Idea #22 Cuisine and recipe website that fully taps into Social Media opportunities: videos, pictures, etc

I love cooking, but I suck at it, so I usually go on a couple of different websites to get the best and easiest recipes. Most websites let users send their recipes and rate them, but when it comes to actually cook it usually feels very lonely. Nine times out of ten, things don't turn out as planned, at least in my experience. My idea would be to have a website that fetches recipes from all the most popular websites, but would allow users to send their pictures and their videos. That would allow people to watch how it's done before actually doing it. On top of that, an online communication tool would make asking questions live very easily and quick. So if you're stuck and nothing works, send a message to other users and wait for a Samaritans to help you out.

Idea #21 Business case studies database. Businesses can submit their cases & users pay, d/l and rate them

Something that's really useful in business is a case study. It helps to understand how a certain company has dealt with a problem or an opportunity and most importantly the outcome from their actions. It comes in handy when dealing with things that have not yet been properly tested or studied. These are things that are so new or rare that you won't find it in a school book so you're usually left with two options: 1) jump blindfolded or 2) learn from people who have jumped blindfolded before you.

I like the second option better and I wish there was a platform on which we could share case studies. As a student, I have worked on a couple of them and I believe I learn a lot more from them than from books. I also know that many people are looking for case studies and the idea here would be to offer that platform where people could share. People who have written a case study could sell it. Case studies would be classified by tags, rated by users and a summary would be available. The website would be targeted to scholars, business people and students in general, trying to connected all these people together.

Idea #20 Annotation app that would let you annotate real books and share your notes with others

Using a mobile device, one would be allowed to take notes directly from a real book via an electronic pen or the device keyboard. The camera would recognize the page and the book you're reading and would add your comments or notes exactly where you want it to appear in the book. That person could make their notes available to friends or the world or even keep them private. People who want to see the notes would then have to use their mobile device and the app which would make all the notes and comments appear in the book through the screen of the device.

Idea #19 Kiva for entrepreneurs. 30sec pitch, short business plan, founders' resume & micro investments

Kiva.org is a great website on which you can make micro-loans to poorer people on the globe. For instance, a young Bangladeshi might need $1000 to buy a small herd to make a living and you have the opportunity to give money to help. It would definitely be interesting if we could do the same for our local entrepreneurs. Micro-lending would be made easier and investors would have the opportunity to make 7-10% in interest while local entrepreneurs would have access to inexpensive financial leverages.

Kiva relies on pride and honor for people to pay their loans back and it works really well for them. Call me a pessimistic, but I don't believe that system would work in our society and therefore young businesses would have to offer assets against the loan and legal papers would have to be signed. That means a physical office would have to be set up. The company would take a small fee for all transaction.

Investors would have access to a 30 seconds pitch, videos, description of the company, the main idea or a summary of the business plan. Investors and entrepreneurs would have a way to communicate through the website and answers could be made public. The website would be a platform to connect investors and entrepreneurs.