20 Current Ideas

According to this article on CNN Money, the following ten ideas today's venture capitalists are willing to sponsor:

1. iDrive: "A driver's tech fantasy fully realized: an in-dash computer with a keyboard built into the steering wheel and a full-screen heads-up display projected on the windshield."
2. Flyweight Database:"A new database company. Don't yawn. Draper loves startups that can upend corporate giants with simple products and cheap technology."
3. Better Energizer: "Khosla, a legendary Silicon Valley VC whose winners have included Juniper Networks and Redback Networks, and Kaul are looking for an engineering team to build a lithium-ion battery with five times the life of anything found in cell phones, PDAs, or cameras."
4. Spreadsheets:"A Web-based platform to make company spreadsheets--for revenue forecasting and other analytical chores - more easily viewed, updated, and shared by managers."
5. Patient Monitoring to Go: "An engineering team to design implantable wireless devices capable of 24/7 patient and data monitoring for conditions such as heart disease and diabetes."
6. New Tricks for Old Drugs: "A team of researchers that can identify, patent, and market new uses for prescription drugs with expiring patents. The typical drug discovery process at a large pharmaceutical company can last 15 years and cost $500 million. But "repurposed drugs"--already approved by the FDA for safety in treating specific illnesses--can be turned around quickly and cheaply and used to treat other maladies."
7. Search for Small Screen:"Delivery of new types of Web search to mobile phones. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are all taking a swipe at this, but Rimer believes they're betting on a losing strategy by simply shrinking their existing desktop features into a handheld package."
8. GPS-Guided Coupons: "PS-enabled ads and coupons piped to your mobile phone at just the right time and place. Location-based marketing is a concept that's been bandied about for years, but only now is the required technology becoming cheap enough to implement. "
9. Text Ads on the Fly: "Text-messaging software that allows local merchants to send offers to mobile phones. Some companies already do this in basic form; Moldow's idea would give merchants more control. "This is bringing the blue-light special to your phone," he says. Five or so people could write the code; a sales demon is also needed to enlist merchants."
10. The eBay of Product Placement: "Lee, a co-founder of application-hosting company Corio, is prospecting for a team to develop an online auction site that would aggregate product-placement opportunities and put them in front of advertisers the instant they emerge - often when scripts are finalized by writers and producers. To augment the service, Lee says, the startup might also measure the results by tracking viewership or box-office figures against the resulting sales of the product that was placed."

Not the greatest of ideas, though practical ones given their market. This also points to the fact that the entrepreneurs have to know what is needed in the market, to start their business.