24 Business Ideas for 2024
I’m always coming up with new business ideas. My guiding principle for a good idea is whether I would pay money for it.
This ensures that I don’t build something that isn’t useful to anyone — at least I will get value out of it.
Following that philosophy, here’s 24 business ideas I’ve come up with.
Software for event creators (Outvizor)
My personal opinion is that it should be much easier to bring groups of people together in-person for meaningful conversations and connections.
This would start off as a free tool that lets you create custom sequences for your event or gathering, but then would eventually expand to empower the people that are putting in the work to help us connect better in-person (I call them ‘event creators’).
You can read more about this idea here and sign up to be an early user.
Better explanations website
I’m a fan of David Deutsch’s work. Central to his work is this idea that good explanations have certain qualities about them which make them better than others.
So this would be a website where you can see the best explanations for certain phenomena, and then the implications of those explanations.
People could vote and or discuss why an explanation is better than others. The moderators would be the ones responsible for sorting and ranking the explanations.
Car course
Americans love our cars. I think it would be cool to have a course where you can drive your car through, and either it’s a maze you have to get through, or you have to run over zombie figures while avoiding civilians, or some other type of gamified experience.
Local small event aggregator
If you live in a city, odds are there’s cool things going on nearby where you live, it’s just hard to find them since the data is always scattered. So this website and newsletter would subscribe to hotels, restaurants, bars, museums, etc.. and add their events to a database. Each event would be given a solo score, a couple score, family score, and friends score, so you can easily find something that’s right for you or your crew.
Party bus app
In cities, especially in tourist destinations, you’ll often see ‘party’ buses riding around.
If there was an app that you could download and hop on a party bus, I think it would be a really cool way to get around when you’re just going out for the night.
It should also bring in more revenue for the party bus operators, and help them provide a better experience for customers who, for example, don’t necessarily want to ride the entire trip, but are happy to hop on and hop off for a bit.
Lockers to share expensive or large items in apartment building
This already exists, but I’m not sure why it’s not more common as I haven’t seen it in any of the buildings I’ve lived in. An example would be renting a nice vacuum so you don’t need to own one.
I think if you partner with building owners then that would be the way to go since you could transfer the risk of loss/theft to them (who could add loss or theft penalties to rent for example). And perhaps they can offer it as an amenity, which means your customer would be the building (as generally it’s better to have businesses as customers instead of consumers).
Web app for finding and sharing data charts/visualizations
Content creators that cover news and trends need a way to discover interesting data. But so much of it is behind paywalls, or scattered.
So this would be a curation of data visualizations from across the web. TikTokers and other digital content creators would pay for premium content and access. And our imprint would be on any data piece, which would make growth much easier and organic.
Similar to Statista. But Statista is expensive.
Could also add a course on risk, statistics, and probability as additional or add-on product (like dribble.com but for data).
Tool to help you find your authentic voice online
I’ve seen a lot of audience building tools pop up recently. They utilize AI and other tech to make it easier to grow an online following on social media platforms.
However, I haven’t seen anything that focuses on helping find your authentic voice. So this tool would help you do just that. As finding your authentic voice is fundamental to building and growing a lasting audience online (unless you’re building an anonymous account of course).
This would be a browser extension and a web app. It would have features like:
- Recommending things from across the web to respond to (so not just social media)
- An ‘improv’ mode, where you must respond to a piece of content within a few seconds, or pass. And then you can decide whether to save for later or post each response after the improv session.
- Gamify the process. For example, from the curated tweets provided, you could get points for reading a tweet (or other curated item), more points for creating a draft, and more points for responding
Database of weekly meal prep chefs
I’ve seen a few tweets about hiring a chef to visit you weekly and cook a few meals for your household.
I think this is a really cool concept, and something I would pay for. So this website would be exclusively for this type of service. There would be a database of chefs that offer weekly meal prep, and a way to easily contact and book them.
The business model would likely be that the chefs pay when there’s a booking.
Website for trending recipes and ingredients
This website would help make cooking more fun and social by highlighting recipes and ingredients that are trending across the web. It would start off as a daily or weekly newsletter sent.
In the premium version, users have access to the entire database of recipe data, and possibly some other premium features like being able to easily order the necessary ingredients online (via API integration like Instacart).
AI Customer Service trainer for businesses
What problem does it solve? — help businesses improve their customer experience.
A business purchases it, sets the tone and mood they are shooting for, and employees can log in and train. The app would consider the tone and inflection of the person’s voice, and help them improve. It would provide different scenarios to test out (e.g. a difficult customer).
The pitch is to train your employees like Apple and Starbucks does.
Nespresso for yogurt (thicBot)
The process of pasteurizing milk at home to make yogurt is tedious. This yogurt machine would let you make thick yogurt at home simply by pouring milk in, popping in a starter culture pod, and pressing start.
It will also be able to produce protein powder from the excess whey byproduct of the yogurt. So customers will have cheaper access to a higher quality protein powder as well.
Read the full pitch here.
Pre-made marinades, curries, and sauces
The problem this solves is that most marinades/sauces sold at the store are either not good or contain too many preservatives. Making marinades from scratch however takes too much time. So this will save time and also be a better product, with a better selection than most grocery stores at the moment.
In-person scheduling tool
This would be a scheduling tool for people who prefer in-person meetings (like me).
Scheduling tools exist, but they don’t necessarily have location-dependent schedules, since they are intended for business meetings, where video or audio chat is the default and availability is binary (either you’re working and available or you’re not).
I’m currently building this with vibetrack.co, if you’re interested and/or want some custom features let me know.
Grocery store recipe flyer
What problem does it solve? — help guide grocery store customers on meals they could make with ingredients in store. This would be paid for by grocery store owners, as a way to differentiate from other stores.
It would be a self-serve platform eventually, where grocery store employees could login and create their own flyers, reward customers, etc…
It could be offered for free at first, with a sponsor displayed somewhere on the flyer. The flyer will have recipes with ingredients listed, and where to find those ingredients. Customers can upload a picture of their creation and tag the company account for a chance to win a gift card, and be featured in the flyer the following week.
Database of niche services
What problem does it solve? — Help people discover new services, and help niche services get more clients. Japan for example has hangout services, where you can pay for company with someone. Right now it’s tough to determine what niche services or experiences exist in a certain area.
RFID-enabled golf balls
TopGolf has gotten really popular. Which is probably not ideal for traditional golfing ranges. So give them 80% of the fun with 20% of the tech (and cost). As seeing specifically how far you hit a ball and being able to compete with friends is most of the value/fun in TopGolf for casual fans. These golf balls will be sold directly to driving ranges and golf courses, who can then sell it to their customers.
Self-serve saunas
What problem does it solve? — easy access to a sauna in neighborhoods where there are none.
Research on saunas show that they are great for your health. But in America, it’s not always easy to access a sauna.
You can buy a membership to a gym or spa, which may have them, but sometimes (for me at least) all you want is access to a sauna and be in and out.
So this would be a very simple and convenient way to access a sauna, and perhaps a cold plunge as well (so you could hop back and forth). There would also be an option to book private sauna rooms, in case you want to go just by yourself or with friends.
You could also sell coffee and other healthy snacks and supplements inside for additional revenue streams.
Audit of materials found in your home
What problem does it solve? — the time it takes to go through all your household and food items and figure out what is potentially harmful, and find alternatives.
BPA’s, which are linked to some major health ailments, are in many of our common products, due to an oversight from the FDA and governing bodies some years ago.
So this service would provide an audits of materials and food found in your home, with a personalized report and recommendations to improve. It would use the audits to build a database of materials and products, and eventually build a self-service platform and offering for households.
Software for clothing stylists
This would be a web app to help stylists manage their clients.
There are AI-powered apps for managing your own wardrobe, but I think clothing is an area where it’s still better to have a human involved who has a deep understanding of people, fabrics, fit, and self-expression.
So this app would make it easy to source new outfits, recommend new clothing items, and schedule in-person styling sessions.
Bingo Bar App
What problem does it solve? — Gamify the bar experience in a low stakes way, and give singles/solo people something to do at a bar.
This would be a simple bingo app, for which the winner gets a drink of their choice. The winner can also pass on the winning to someone else, as a way to encourage connection (help with the loneliness epidemic). This could integrate with the Toast API if a restaurant is using Toast.
A database of financial, fitness, nutrition, style, dating advisors
What problem does it solve? — Finding quality advisors. The thinking behind getting an advisor (at least in America) is flawed.
Most rich people think a financial advisor is necessary, when it increasingly isn’t.
Instead, advisors of another type may help improve your quality of life more significantly. Just like people will have a general doctor, who refers to more specific doctors, this platform will serve as the general advisor whose sole job is to find the biggest point of leverage for the person to improve their life, and recommend the most appropriate advisor. The challenge would be to change the thinking around advising, and also to find advisors who are playing the long game, and not trying to keep clients on for the long term and maximize their own revenue instead of helping clients reach goals.
Daily food deals across food delivery apps
This would help people save money on eating out by providing well-timed, daily emails on nearby restaurants offering deals. It could get data from Uber Eats or DoorDash for example.
Of course these are just ideas, the next step is understanding the market place — what are the current options for buyers, and why is no one building the idea?
Thanks for reading!
Which of these ideas would you be a user of? Which ones would you invest in?
