YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS
We’ve selected 15 new business ideas this week that will
provide entrepreneurs with plenty of inspiration. Spotted from
countries all around the world, these ideas offer a taste of
what’s to come.
3. YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS !
Top 10 business ideas & opportunities for 2014!
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We’ve selected 15 new business ideas that will provide
entrepreneurs with plenty of inspiration. Spotted from
!
countries all around the world, these ideas offer a taste of
!
what’s to come.!
!!
4. 1. AI resurrector lets people Skype their dead relatives
Weird Of The Week: This is part of a series of
articles that looks at some of the most bizarre and
niche business ideas we see here at Springwise.!
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The death of a loved one is an irreparable
loss, but tokens of the departed can help
grievers to remember what it was like
when they were alive and appreciate their
existence. While projects such as DNA
Memorial enable future generations to
learn more about their passed relatives’
genetic makeup, a new startup called
Eterni.me is going much further. By
trawling traces of their online activity, the
company wants to reconstruct people’s
personalities with an artificially intelligent
version that friends and family can ‘chat’
to after they’re gone.!
Read more about Eterni.me »!
5. 2. 3-storey tricycle is a roving kitchen, restaurant and bar
Food trucks have been a common sight in
cities since the 19th century, but the
rising rates of traffic congestion mean that
they’re not very efficient at remaining on
the move if the market demands it. In the
past we’ve seen Velopresso deliver eco,
pedal-powered coffee to the streets of
London, and now Vietnamese bar Ta đi
Ôtô is aiming to go one better by fitting an
entire restaurant — kitchen included —
onto a roving mobile structure steered by
tricycle.!
Read more about Ta đi Ôtô »!
6. 3. Samsung is getting smartphones to cure cancer while owners
sleep
Considering how useful smartphones are,
there’s still plenty of untapped potential.
Locket has already gone some way to
earn smartphone owners cash by turning
their lock screens into ad space, and now
a new app called Power Sleep harnesses
the computational power of the devices to
crunch data at a time when they’re
otherwise not in use.!
Read more about Power Sleep »!
7. 4. Vending machine salads are organic and made fresh each day
Vending machine food isn’t typically
known as an example of fine dining,
instead serving to provide a quick fix
when customers can’t get their hands on
some proper food. While we’ve previously
seen innovations such as Yves Behar’s
Briggo aim to deliver barista-quality
coffee from nothing but a robotic kiosk,
Farmer’s Fridge is now hoping to do the
same for salads — creating healthy,
gourmet meals from fresh, high quality
ingredients each morning, delivered
through vending machines.!
Read more about Farmer’s Fridge »!
8. 5. Bitcoin alternative promises to boost global solar energy
Digital currencies have become a more
promising proposition thanks to the
tentative success of Bitcoin, which has
even inspired the semi-serious efforts of
both dogecoin and Coinye in recent
months. Now SolarCoin is hoping to
provide another option that is backed by
the production of solar energy. !
Read more about SolarCoin »!
9. 6. MakerBot’s kids’ book teaches them about 3D printing
We featured Brooklyn-based MakerBot on
these pages back in 2010 thanks to its
efforts to bring 3D printing to the masses
with its initial range of build-your-own
desktop machines. Now the project has
created LEO the Maker Prince, a
children’s storybook that helps them learn
about 3D printing and then download files
to bring the characters to life.!
Read more about LEO the Maker Prince »!
10. 7. Floating hydroponic unit enables coastal veg farming
Rapid growth of the world’s population
has made food security much more of a
serious issue in recent years, prompting
food producers to look beyond the
traditional model of land-based
agriculture. While urban farming has in
the past seen locations such as city
rooftops harnessed for growing plants,
now SEALEAF is a device that could help
coastal cities turn their seafronts into local
farms.!
Read more about the SEALEAF »!
11. 8. Dating service for busy people helps them find low-maintenance
relationships
When it comes to online dating, sites can
become controversial if they facilitate
relationships that don’t strike a healthy or
socially-accepted balance. In the past,
we’ve seen Miss Travel come under fire
for enabling women to get men to fund
their globetrotting plans in exchange for
letting them accompany them. Just in
time for Valentine’s day, the UK’s
PartTimeLove.co.uk is now connecting
potential partners who don’t necessarily
have the time to commit to an everyday
relationship.!
Read more about PartTimeLove.co.uk »!
12. 9. Thanks to ads, Instagrams printed for free
Consumers love to have a tangible
version of the smartphone photos they
take, leading to almost an entirely new
industry dedicated to helping them print
their Instagrams. Flag is another, but with
a twist. The startup lets users print 20
museum quality photos a month for free,
thanks to small ads placed on the back of
each print.!
Read more about Flag »!
13. 10. Greeting cards double as small gift boxes
Without a present to go with them,
greeting cards can sometimes be a bit
disappointing, but sending a gift almost
makes the card redundant when a tag
can be added instead. For gift-givers who
find themselves paralyzed by this
dilemma, greetabl is a startup aiming to
disrupt the industry with its foldable
greetings cards that can hold small gifts.!
Read more about greetabl »!
14. 11. Smart band for teens lets them game, check tweets and express
their personality
While existing smartwatches might let
anyone push their smartphone
notifications to their wrist, that’s perhaps
not enough of a pull to sway the teen
market. Offering a plethora of functionality
and customization, the NEX band is a
modular bracelet designed to let young
users send secret messages, unlock
game levels and personalize their look.!
Read more about the NEX »!
15. 12. Wall-mounted panel enables and organizes guests’ home wifi use
This is part of a series of articles that looks at
entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the
ground through crowdfunding. At the time of
writing, each of these innovations is currently
seeking funding.!
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Getting a visitor onto the home’s wifi
network usually involves reciting long
strings of letters and numbers, and even
then there often isn’t any way to control
their access to shared files and devices.
Currently seeking funding through
Kickstarter, Pylon is a wall-mounted panel
that simply requires guests to tap their
phone to connect to the wifi, with
restrictions set by the homeowner.!
Read more about Pylon »!
16. 13. App uses daily quizzes to quantify users’ existence
There have been a number of wearable
sensors and quantified self apps that help
determine users’ fitness progress or
emotional health, but fail to log more
mundane activities. Aiming to deliver
cold, hard facts about users’ everyday
habits, Reporter lets users set themselves
mini surveys to glean data about the
small or big moments in their lives,
turning them into pretty infographics.!
Read more about Reporter »!
17. 14. Marketing events with secret speakers priced as low as AUD 1
Regardless of the industry, week-long
conferences can be expensive and —
worst of all — tend to drag on a bit.
Forgoing the name tags and endless
lectures on similar topics, Australia’s Real
Big Things is a series of 2-hour events for
digital marketers that charges customers
by their ticket number.!
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Read more about Real Big Things »!
18. 15. Venue lets visitors work, play, and climb
It’s often said that with a healthy body
comes a healthy mind — getting a good
amount of exercise can help stimulate the
mental processes required for higher
productivity rates. Offering a space for
both physical and mental activities,
Brooklyn Boulders is a rock climbing
facility that also provides a collaborative
work space.!
Read more about Brooklyn Boulders »!