Business Idea the First

Guy Kawasaki, the founder of Garage.com, once said that if you had a good business idea you should share it with as many people as possible. Most budding entrepreneurs tend to be very secretive, believing that their idea is so good that if it gets into the wrong hands it is sure to be snatched up and taken to market. (That's Hubris talking, and his evil cousin Delusion.) But the fact is, there are a lot more ideas out there than people willing to act on them. And almost every idea can benefit by the feedback, opinions, criticism and encouragement of others.

So since I've been having a lot of "what if" discussions lately, I thought I'd blog-out some of my ideas and see if anyone wants to comment. Here's the first, and this is mostly Brad's idea, but I like it so much that I've been tinkering with it some.

Mass Predictions (maybe a dumb name, but I just thought of it)

In his book "The Wisdom of Crowds," James Surowiecki outlines how a compilation of mass opinions tends to be far more accurate than betting on any given expert. He cites countless examples of this.

So what if there was a website where we could go to give and get people's predictive opinions on any number of topics, such as political races, wars, the housing market, sports, the stock market, the success of certain products, movies or types of entertainment, etc. etc. etc. Not just opinions, but your best guess as to what will happen.

You can vote as often as you want. But if you want to see the data on any given subject, you have to vote first.

Students would cite the results in papers. Publications would quote you like crazy. You could acknowledge voters who were particularly accurate, and they could use that recognition in their careers (I was in the top 5% of stock predictors, so I'm your best broker!).

You could get local information, national or worldwide. You could just get local voters. Or expert voters. Or recent voters (like for politics--which way it is leaning). You can create your own sample.

A few websites are doing this, but none very well, and none have gotten much traction.

Money would be made in advertising, which could easily be targeted by topic or by user information, such as geography. Companies could pay to have questions added. There might be the possibility of having a higher-level paid service, perhaps diagnostics, cross-tabs, etc. But it should maintain the open-for-the-public, free information, Web 2.0 feel.

I think the key would be to come out of the gates with tremendous credibility and something that captures the public imagination. Maybe you do a $1 million challenge (to charity, or something nice) to some experts. This is all stream-of-consciousness. Tell me what you think, either in the comment box on this blog, or by email privately.

Thanks.