2025 startup company ideas

Another half a year, more free ideas 2025-08-12 #startups

If you have a new product idea, you might as well share it for the entertainment value, because you shouldn’t expect anyone to pay you for just an idea.

Products

Not everyone wants new features, and would prefer to ‘use the existing software, uninterrupted by updates’. Solve the unwanted-software-updates problem, e.g. by soliciting anti-feature requests from previously-unheard users who want to vote for no more functional changes.

12 o’clock flashers don’t bother figuring out how to set the time on household gadgets with poor usability. Solve the household clock availability problem, without making things worse by connecting the to the Internet. Instead, include a cheap Time from NPL radio transponder, and set the time automatically.

Fake positive product reviews have existed for years, and will probably get worse. Solve the sock puppet problem, e.g. by curating and popularising precise, articulate and polite extremely negative reviews.

Software development

Software developers struggle with naming things, in part, because they don’t know the client industry’s jargon, e.g. finance, or telecoms. Solve the domain language problem, e.g. with DuoLingo, but for various problem domains’ ubiquitous languages.

Software developers lack awareness of visual design, outside software user-interface design. Solve the insufficient television series art direction nerdery problem, e.g., publish a coffee table book for each series in the style of an art exhibition catalogue, with chapters on: period, furniture, wardrobe, typography., etc.

Programming language designers who aim for expressive power still fall short of natural languages. Solve the programming language blandness problem, e.g. with a selection of profanity keywords to emphasis blocks and expressions that you really mean.

When you follow product management on social media, your feed sometimes veers off-topic, when something big happens in the world. Solve social media’s social digression problem with a mute trending topic option, until it stops trending’. Bonus points: an option to Auto-mute trending topics.

Despite user stories’ popularity, they rarely sound like a plausible conversation. Solve the widespread user story ignorance problem with a TV quiz show. Contestants attempt to identify real and made-up user stories, acted out in a company canteen, sketch-comedy style.

Cooking

Cookbooks make all sorts of standard assumptions and end up targeting the same experienced audience, despite their attempts to appear unique. Solve the cooking process optimisation problem, instead of assuming the reader will cook the recipe for the first time. For example, show me how to improve a standard recipe to optimise for nutrition, cost, speed, tastiness, or reduced equipment requirements.

Pretentious cookbooks typically insist on brands you can only buy in Paris or Rome, and ingredients you can only buy fresh on another continent. Solve the influencer cookbook brand-obsession problem, e.g., by filtering or rewriting recipes for ingredients you can actually buy in the country and city where you live.

Writing by Peter Hilton

Products

Software development

Social media

Cooking