Is my new business idea good and unique?

November 21, 2005 12:50 AM

Does anyone know of a (professional) search engines service where i can submit my (new online-business) ideas and they check (recurrent) if someone else is already up and running?

Of course most importat is that they keep my ideas in confidence (and dont start my business themself)...

posted by germanguy to Work & Money (3 answers total)

not strictly "proffessional", nor entirely what you're after (in that i don't think what you're after likely exists) but Emily Chang maintains a "list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing" (from her site) that you can browse through to see if you're ideas are already in use.
posted by tnai at 3:45 AM on November 21, 2005

Sort of a side note, but always remember that Google came after Yahoo, in terms both of popularity and IPO.

There have been a few times where I've thought up something I thought might be original, only to Google the concept and find someone else is up and running. But it's critical to remember how many potential customers exist. And how many you'd need to be successful.

Long, pointless story short: Originality is overrated. So much so that I own that domain. :-)

Also, and more to your point, for certain internal mechanisms and unique implementations, you can always try searching through the jungle that is the US Patent & Trademark Office.
posted by disillusioned at 4:41 AM on November 21, 2005

Well, you might want to follow TechCrunch which has a growing reputation for doing a good job covering new Online businesses.

VentureWire carries a lot of news on private equity backed startups (though to be honest, I wonder about their ongoing importance in the Online space). They have a free headline service http://www.venturewire.com/Product.aspx?fp=NQI.
posted by Good Brain at 5:28 PM on November 22, 2005