March 17, 2010

Needed: Idea Marketplace

In case you haven't noticed it, Marketplaces are the latest Next Big Thing. I am not sure, but I think the latest trend started with the iPhone App Store, but has quickly picked up pace, inspiring the Android market place, and half a dozen or so other ripoff clones. Then a few people decided to take it a little further, and make other marketplace sites. One of the latest is the Google App Marketplace.

The concept is simple enough. Provide a single place where both sellers and buyers can get together to buy and sell software. Ok, sounds a lot like eBay, but for non-tangibles. One of the keys to making these marketplaces is specialization, which is why eBay isn't included as the the start of this latest thing. eBay was for old junk, but these marketplaces are where you go for specific things you can't get elsewhere, or, at least, stuff that isn't readily available elsewhere.

While it is true that you can get iPhone apps elsewhere, there are barriers to entry (you have to void your warranty by jailbreaking your phone). The upside is that the store and it's almost exclusive nature brings a large number of buyers together, and that just about anyone who can program can put together an app and get it on there. The down side is that you don't control all the terms. If you are willing to play by the rules of the marketplace operators, you can benefit considerably.

What I would like to see is a marketplace for ideas. Well, not exactly, cause there are lots of people with ideas that could flood the place with junk. Finding quality ideas amidst all that junk would make it in-effective. Another problem is, how do you sell your ideas without telling the buyer what your idea is before he pays for it.

If an Idea Marketplace were to work, it would have to entice and protect both buyer and seller. For it to entice buyers, the ideas would have to be more than vague notions. They would be more like complete business plans with complete product specification documents. We are talking about quite a bit of work required before the idea would be allowed on the site. There would be a submission process, with the marketplace ensuring completeness and viability (similar to what Ventureworthy tries to do). There would obviously need to be categories and search tools to make finding the right idea very easy. This would also protect the buyers, because they would be getting a well developed concept that would then be more easily developed.

The enticement to the seller is that the buyers are there. In order to protect the seller, the buyer would be able to limit access to specific information, and maybe there would be some kind of agreement not to steal ideas from the system (this last idea would be a tough sell for those in the market to buy ideas). Once the buyer was interested in an idea, they could schedule a pitch/introduction/demo much like VC's do now. The pitch would of course be the same kind of thing that those seeking venture capital already do, with perhaps, slightly more robust media content using the marketplace tools.

I have no idea how to go about initiating such an idea. It would almost need a bunch of VC's and Angel Investors to get together to promote it. The trick in operating it is in maintaining quality in terms of complete idea packages. They would need to have a lot of tutorial material to demonstrate how to make sure your idea is complete. The system would also need to have some kind of negotiation system built right in, that would allow complex investment/purchase agreements (with multiple investors getting different levels of ownership and control). If any of you want to start something like this, or if there is one that I don't know about, let me know. I would love to use it.

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