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The head of Pasadena-based incubator Idealab announced a new idea today at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Forbes reports. And it's a big one. More accurately, it's a lot – perhaps millions – of smaller ones.
Described as 'a curated crowd-sourced marketplace to take on the problems in the world,' IdeaMarket, Bill Gross's new venture, will function as a clearinghouse for startup concepts. Anyone can post an idea and, if someone else offers to build it, the original thinker can invest along with others.
Like business writer James Altucher, who advises his readers to write down ten fresh ideas every day, Gross finds himself coming up with potential businesses all the time but lacks the wherewithal to make them all tangible realities. “I try to write an idea every day in my spreadsheet, so I have thousands of ideas, literally, some of them great, some of them not,” Gross said in an interview, as reported by Re/Code. “But there’s only a limited number that I can do myself, maybe four a year.”
Gross believes that ideas are in nearly infinite supply, and there's capital enough to support all the best of them. “Great entrepreneurs are the scarce resource,” he said in an interview. “They have to shift the idea and shape it to be their idea. They’ll find something close to their passion and then adjust it.”
Other tech luminaries are already contributing to IdeaMarket. Currently floating ideas include an app alerting commuters to dangerous road conditions, a service allowing dentists to crowdsource for x-ray technicians, and, of course, plenty of robots.
Since 1996, Gross and Idealab have already helped 425 businesses launch, with 40 making it to IPO or acquisition. “IdeaMarket is the culmination of my whole life,” Gross said in an interview. “It’s turning what I do into a machine.”
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