Bill Gross launches Idealab.ai, a free site of AI-generated business ideas
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Bill Gross, the creator of Idealab, has opened Idealab.ai, a free search engine with more than 1.2 million business proposals that an AI produced from more than 17 million texts. Each proposal comes with a brief and can be tried out in Labs, with funding and a partner search to follow. Cloudflare will contribute $100,000 in credits to the businesses that come out of the platform.
Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab and its successor, Idealab Studio, which between them have launched more than 175 companies, unveiled Idealab.ai on Monday, October 19: a free public platform for finding business ideas generated with artificial intelligence and testing them. According to the announcement, issued from Pasadena, California, the tool uses AI to apply the method Gross has relied on to build companies at Idealab for 30 years.
The company says its system has reviewed more than 17 million sources, including articles, research, patents, filings by listed companies and community discussions, and has already produced more than 1.2 million ideas. To build them it crosses three ingredients: opportunities (problems and unmet needs), enablers (technologies, scientific advances and cost changes) and regulatory, economic, cultural or geopolitical shifts. Each idea is scored on indicators such as how urgent the need is, how mature the technology is or how viable it is in the market, and people decide which ones to pursue.
Each idea has its own brief, ideas can be filtered and saved, and a space called Labs lets users put them to the test. Coming versions will add funding applications and a way to find collaborators. Idealab has set itself the goal of linking founders worldwide to $100 million in potential funding and, in the long run, helping to create one million businesses and 100 million jobs.
Cloudflare will give $100,000 in credits to companies born on the platform and is the first partner for its Periodic Table of Business Functions, a framework covering the 118 core functions involved in setting up and running a company. Financial firm Mercury will provide the infrastructure to take in investment and bill clients. Arizona State University, a featured launch partner, will give all its students access to Idealab.ai and will showcase the ten best companies its students or faculty create from the platform's ideas. Caltech, Imperial College London and entrepreneur networks such as Endeavor and the Global Entrepreneurship Network, which is present in 200 countries, are also collaborating.
It can already be used for free at idealab.ai. Universities, accelerators and other organizations can sign up to become partners.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
A catalog of business ideas that is open and free removes the first excuse for anyone who wants to start a business but does not know where to begin. Still, a well-scored idea is not a business: the hard part is still checking that someone will pay, winning customers and getting funded, and funding and the partner search are not available yet. Nor does the company detail how much each indicator weighs when ranking the proposals, or how many people will dig into the same seam, which could crowd some niches with rivals chasing the same idea. For a freelancer or a small company, it can work as a brainstorming tool to spot needs close to their sector, as long as each proposal is tested with real customers before putting in time or money.
Source: Idealab.ai (GlobeNewswire) · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
