Adrien Joly - Ideas

Ideas are worthless. Execution matters! => Feel free to steal any of my ideas!

Check out my practical tips and references on how to bring an idea to execution, and create a successful startup: Startup Noob Guide.

Goals I’d love to contribute to

Please contact me if you’re excited or curious about any of these topics. I’d be happy to discuss!

Help humans learn and grow towards a better society

• Empower smartphone users for pro-activity rather than consumption of apps and notifications, by designing a intent-based Smartphone UI.

  #ui, mobile,empowerment

• Reduce stress, frustration and unmet expectations sometimes caused by digital discussion channels, by designing communication software that enable their users to convey a varying level of distance and/or engagement, whatever the modality. (SMS/messaging, collaboration platforms like Slack, community forums, email, video calls…)

  #communication

• Educate and train people more effectively, by providing accessible tools to create engaging learning and self-training material.

  #education

• Encourage our social circles to share honest, down-to-earth and passionate updates rather than showing off for popularity on social media. (join the discussion on Pitchcard)

  #social, communication

• A replacement to Facebook/Twitter’s feed that displays interesting activities to undertake, instead of passive consumption of friends’ updates

  #social, empowerment

• Tourists to experience how historic places used to look and feel, by exploring them in Augmented Reality

  #ar, vr, xr, tourism, education

• A wifi access-point that gives access to a local web server (that serves exercises for students) + shares limited internet access (e.g. no email, no chat). Using a Intel Edison / Arduino / Raspberry board ?

  #hardware, teaching

• “Picky VC”: A form or chat bot that can tell if a startup idea is bullshit or not, based on its pitch

  #business, education

• “Recipegram/recipechart”: A book of recipes, in which each recipe is explained by a flowchart showing the combinations from its ingredients to the final result.

  #knowledge

Help humans achieve their goals

• A app-less phone based on a terminal/box that realizes fonctionality based on the nature of entered data, cf medium.com

  #nophone, hardware, communication, empowerment, knowledge-management

• Make it easy and efficient to find the right professional, whatever the need. Yellow pages based on facts.

  #matchmaking, knowledge-management

• a web service in which users would post a job they want to get done by a professional, and professionals would compete with public offers, so that the user can pick the most relevant/convincing one

  #business, discovery

• a shazam-like app to find the right web/mobile app for your current need, based on a description of how the app would look like

  #empowerment, discovery

• A productivity app in which ToDos, notes and journaling are interconnected.

  #productivity, knowledge-management, empowerment

• A good todo-list app ✅📲 (similar to Swipes Personal) for web and mobile that would be subscription-based if you want sync to work out of the box, and free to use if you setup your own back-end.

  #productivity

• A mobile (web) app to quickly take notes and update tasks in any card of my personal Trello board. Potential technical enabler: open source markdown viewer and editor

  #productivity

• a Google-Inbox-inspired task management UI (with bundles and snooze) that also allows re-ordering tasks

  #productivity

• Tasks2agenda: a productivity app that “fills” remaining work timeslots of my calendar with tasks from my todolist, according to my objectives/rules and deadlines. so that I always know what I have to do, when.

  #productivity

• possibility to answer “can I finish report (2 hrs, for xxx) for Wednesday?”, because it knows my planning, my time budget per project (big picture) and extras availabilities

  #productivity

• Telegram-based task management bot

  #productivity

• script qui m’annonce mes taches wunderlist du jour (today + deadline)

  #productivity

• a web browser that keeps and maintains a structured memory of the findings you made while browsing.

  #knowledge-management

• “Next Task”: A todo-list app that helps you split big/scary tasks into smaller steps, and emphasises the next step to take towards your goals

  #productivity

• Sorting TODO tasks by mood; e.g. “lazy”, “creative”, “quick-wins”, “focus”, “learning”…

  #productivity

• “First thing in the morning”: an app that motivates you every morning to achieve the tasks you had planned for the day, by: - listing the tasks you have achieved yesterday - listing today’s tasks - displaying a motivational photo

  #motivation

• Simple and flexible task planning app that supports dependencies (e.g. when would C end, if I do A then B)

  #productivity

• “Done list”, a service that would congratulate you for all the tasks that you checked today, in your favorite todo-list app.

  #motivation, well-being

• a shortcut to paste (⌘V) a URL directly as a Markdown link

  #productivity

• “Copy That”: An app that would convert a screenshot into a PDF with OCR’ed / copy-paste-able text.

  #interoperability

Make (personal) knowledge easier to find and harder to loose

• A service to help me keep a history of the people I know, and make them sercheable from my inbox, by sending me a daily email listing what contacts I added or updated in my Google Contacts that day. Potential technical enabler: People API - Google Developers

  #knowledge-management, journaling

• My dream #productivity app:

  • overview of projects; ~ Trello + Next Step
  • markdown notes with images and embeds; ~ Notion
  • task mgmt with tags, swipe-to-snooze and custom ordering; ~ Ticktick
  • journaling + history; ~ Git commits
  • web clipper; ~ Evernote
  • bookmarks; ~Diggo
  #productivity, knowledge-management

• A browser extension to create a Google Contact (with photo) from a LinkedIn profile page

  #knowledge-management, interoperability

• Retrospect on the topics I’ve been interested in, during the past months and years, based on the watching history of my YouTube account

  #knowledge-management, journaling

• Script to automatically backup book/reading highlights from app.blinkist.com to google drive

  #knowledge-management, journaling

• AlbumKeeper: a personal list of favorite music albums that can play from various streaming platforms. and a bookmarklet/extension for quickly adding an album found on the web.

  #music, curation, journaling

• a search engine that allows users to explain the structure of the results they expect, like in GraphQL

  #knowledge-management, discovery, information-retrieval

• A bookmarklet to grab inspiring quotes from any website + a mobile app that pushes one of those quotes every morning

  #motivation, curation

• Compile multiple FAQ pages into a neat wiki-like summary (ex: a decision tree of solutions based on several specific cases)

  #knowledge-management

• “Hey…you!”: A mobile app to recall names and faces of acquaintances / students / contacts, for each company / class / place. Would find and fetch photos from Linkedin, Google Images, and work offline.

  #knowledge-management

• An infinite outliner that works offline, is easy to edit from phone, and auto-transforms URLs into their page title.

  #knowledge-management

• A language/format for expressing legal terms (e.g. terms of service) in a concise and clear manner, based on difference with “usual” terms

  #knowledge-management

• “Captain Log”: A web platform for developers to keep (and optionally share) a diary/log of their learnings, like if they were tweeting while working.

  #knowledge-management, journaling

• A browser extension that would measure how much time you spend reading and writing emails to each of your contacts

  #productivity

• A map of local bars, based on my preferences and activity: friends, business meeting, etc…

  #discovery

• “Headphones Time”: A popcorn-time-like app for collecting and playing playlists of tracks from various streaming services. (Youtube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify…) (similarly to openwhyd.org)

  #music, curation, discovery

• A simple way to stream nice indie films (i.e. a popcorn time for the kind of films that are accepted at the sundance festival)

  #tv, discovery

• A service to regularly test other services, to make sure I can still rely on them. (ex: my data is still synchronized/indexed on those services)

  #business

• An Amazon-like web marketplace that would tell you where to find every product, in real stores near you, right now.

  #business, discovery, information-retrieval

• An offline map of closest ATMs, in the whole world

  #business, information-retrieval

• Improve “Card this to trello” (Chome extension) so that it uploads a screenshot of the current page to the card. chrome.google.com

  #curation, productivity, tools

• A bookmarking tool that would capture content into a personal topic/project, and allow to integrate it later into an outline / hierarchical notepad (i.e. think “Evernote + Workflowy/Diigo”) + mobile ui to “reply” easily to some of the bullet points

  #knowledge-management, curation, journaling

• “Products around me”: An “around me” app for searching a specific item to buy (e.g “scissors”) in surrounding stores

  #business, information-retrieval

• A micro-blog of notes to keep track of personal activities

  #journaling

• Spreadsheet in which new data is entered at the top (antichronological records)

  #tools

• Conceptual / semantically-linked wiki

  #info

• Upload a directory (or set of web links) to the cloud in a grouped manner, so that they can safely be deleted from computer’s desktop, or browser

  #info

• Last.fm tab for Facebook band pages, to display the list of their next gigs/concerts

  #info

• Multipurpose web-capture bookmarklet, to an “open” backend (e.g. google spreadsheet)

  #info

• App to quickly add a freshly-met person (in order to keep in touch), by entering their twitter handle or email, and storing the location of encounter and common topic of interest

  #info

• “My index”: an efficient way to display and search links to my private documents across several platforms at once (e.g. wunderlist, gmail, gdocs, trello, diigo, evernote…)

  #info

• Bookmarklet that sends an article to Pocket or Kindle, and keeps the source so that it can be easily retweeted.

  #info

• Archival tool to store middle-resolution version of photos on Google Drive (free) + link to the hi-res version (e.g. stored on DVD)

  #info

• A service that agregates opinions about topics (e.g. Technologies), and allows comparing one with another. e.g. Emberjs vs Angularjs?

• A way to group my incoming email based on my Google Contacts groups -> productforums.google.com

• A chrome extension that links each contact to their corresponding contact details form on contacts.google.com

Help product makers be more successful and efficient

• a way to visually represent the impact of refactoring software on the structure of the source code

  #software-craft

• an language-agnostic – but CI-compatible – way to setup, run and cleanup automated end-to-end API tests

  #software-craft

• a GitHub Action to list the TODO comments that were added and removed in a Pull Request

  #dev

• a visual regression plugin for Cypress that retries until the snapshot of the page matches the expected state

• ProjectFarm: a dashboard that displays analytics (and other usage & interest feedback) of 12 projects on 1 screen

• A programming language/framework that allows overriding sub-components declaratively, like in CSS

• a CLI to share side-project ideas and be matched with other ideas to collaborate on

  #dev

• a Firebase/Parse wrapper that would implement Meteor reactive collections’s API, without having to use Meteor as backend

  #dev

• an IDE that proposes javascript snippets when I type “// want HTTP request with 3 retries” (or similar queries)

  #dev

• un chatbot slack / CLI (en ligne) a qui tu explique ton idée de startup, il la compare a des produits de product hunt en se basant sur les mots clés pour voir si tu te dégonfles

  #dev

• un CLI a qui tu proposes des noms de domaine, et il te dit si c’est pris ou pas. sinon il te donne le tarif d’ovh.

  #dev

• a mixpanel-like analytics tool that plugs into a service’s back-end (instead of front-end trackers, as typically done)

  #dev

• A 1poll-powered page that would allow visitors to submit (and vote on) feature requests, and be notified on their status

• A service that logs error 404 pages and other user browsing anomalies, in order for the developer to prioritize fixes to make on the site

  #dev

• A service to log data entries through a simple api, and allow real-time last-first display of logs.

  #info

• A notification engine that relies on two models: objectives (ex. make the user come back to the site within 2 days) and a user acceptance model (ex. don’t send 3 “XXX followed you” notifications in a row)

  #dev

• A script that can prove that a set of changes on a codebase (e.g. git commits) do not imply any functional change (I.e. the exact same things happen before/after the change, at runtime), by comparing their AST. This could make code reviews useless, when refactoring.

  #refactoring

Life, leisure and entertainment

• Discover bars and clubs based on your taste in music (e.g. based on listening history)

  #music

• Minimal multiplayer games.

• Whozzup: Share your availability status and propose fun plans to local friends, in order to meet up quickly!

  #comm

• A way to explore my Wunderlist ToDo-lists from Apple TV 3, and play Youtube URLs from it.

  #tv

• “Vinder”: A Tinder-like dating app for vegetarian and vegan people.

  #app

• A fun public event in which speakers have to improvise a presentation, given a random set of slides

  #afk

• “Fair Date”: A doodle-like service that recommends a central place to meet (e.g. for dinner) based on the current location of the guests, so that they spend the same amount of time getting there.

• an alarm clock that would project weather report, agenda and inspirational quotes on my wall + good morning music

  #hardware

• A series of short episodes representing famous film directors trying to convince a studio with a crazy script idea, followed by and extract of the actual film #tv #series #comedy

  #crea

• A “Zapping” of what happened (and what normal life looked like) for every year since 2000 B.C., in 3 minutes per episode #tv #series

  #crea

• “5 minutes to kill”: an app that fills 5 minutes (e.g. between two pomodoro tasks, or while waiting in line) with quick reads from pocket/readitlater, short videos from youtube, fun facts, and quizzes… #procrastination

  #tv

• “Tea time”: A thermometer-based device that could be put on a tea cup, and would ring when the tea is at optimal consumption temperature. (in order to not forget drinking the tea)

  #hardware

• A browser extension that recognizes all songs cited on a web page and allows to play them all.

  #music

• A service that delivers all items that did not pass airport boarding security (e.g. Perfumes, food, knives) back to their owner’s home

  #biz

• A yelp-like platform that boosts the visibility of new venues

  #biz

• A music video jukebox that displays quick interesting facts about the artist, the song, or the period of time it was made. (could be a great feature for playem.org)

  #tv

• Tourism: Generation of cartoville-like city maps with recommended places based on personal preferences

  #info

• A recommender system for theatre plays, similar to last.fm

  #info

• Find good concerts of local/emerging bands -> www.ideaswatch.com

  #info

• App to quickly note/save bass lines / mélodies

• A web-based remote control for openwhyd.org (for when playing music on another computer)

• “Upbeat50”, a smart spotify 50-track playlist based on your favorite upbeat tracks. To sync for offline listening during commute to work. Would be updated every week or month.

  #music

Enablers for fairness and justice

• “Fair Wifi”: Routers that enforce Quality of Service (QoS) rules and fair bandwidth sharing between users, for “Free Wifi” spots in hotels, restaurants and bars.

  #hardware, biz

• App that times the duration of speech of each participant of a vocal conversation, by recognizing their voice.

  #app

• “Gratefulness jar”: a platform to share testimonials about people (e.g. name_of_person helped me solve my problem, thank you!”, so that they can be displayed to others. => money-free alternative to “donate” buttons

  #comm

• An algorithm to detect rhetorical abuse and bullshit in conversation, and would underline them in social media discussion. (like spell check)

  #info

• A manifesto that startup owners would sign to promise that they would open-source their product whenever they decide to shut it down.

Enrich collaboration, interpersonal communication and interaction

• Canned replies for any app (virtual keyboard + screen scraping, alternative to chatbots)

  #app

• Collaborative Q&A notepad => chatbot that asks one question at a time?

  #comm

• “Freelance Directory”: A chatbot or web ui in which freelancers can toggle technologies for which then would like to receive missions, and share missions to relevant colleagues depending on underlying technologies

  #WIP

• “Reason for call”: Add “subject” to phone calls, like for email. => tells concisely to the callee why I’d like to talk to him, so that he can decide to take the call or not

  #comm

• “The Second Chatroom”: A way for a group of co-located people to share URLs and notes quickly and collectively from their smartphones, without having to sign up / install anything. (need expressed during a Meteor meetup)

  #comm

• A banner that offers to help you increase the quality of your Skype/Hangout call (eg. close apps, switch wifi)

  #comm

• Saas for aggregating and delivering (in a personalised manner, e.g. email digest) notifications from various apps

  #dev

• “Quodle” (Doodle for Q&A): quickly create a public page that can accept anonymous questions, and allows the recipient/company to give (official) replies publicly

  #comm

• Keyword-based local chatrooms -> www.ideaswatch.com

  #comm

• Service to help young music bands find gigs to open for (www.ideaswatch.com)

• 1poll: a simple doodle alternative that would allow participants to add dates (and vote for them) in a textual format, in a vertical list instead of a table

• A service that allows visitors to fix typos on any blog, and get rewarded for it

  #biz

Last update was November 22th, 2020. History

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