Startup Idea - Geek Proxies

I have a lot of crazy ideas while I type things into the glowing boxes which live on my desk. I’m never going to have time to make something of them but maybe somebody else will. Maybe that person will make a bunch of money from the idea. And maybe that person will send me a finder’s fee and I can retire. In a hot climate. With a drink that has a little umbrella in it and some pineapple. A real man’s drink.

Today’s idea is about how businesses interact with the public and more specifically with geeks. As a geek when I’m dealing with a company I have different needs from what I’m going to call “regular people”. Let me explain with an example: I have a friend who just had a house built. He’s one of us, a geek. So when he interacted with the building company he had geeky requirements. He didn’t want people calling him he wanted e-mails. When he went to pick out a kitchen he didn’t want to flip through a book of draw handles he wanted a tablet app which gave him the ability to see renderings of draws and handles in his kitchen.

What he needs is a geek proxy service. This proxy transforms regular interactions into geekier ones. Geekier? How? The service would act as an intermediary and provide somebody who will work with the house building company and with my friend so his interactions are what he wants.

I think another great example is around grocery receipts. This is what I typically get

Yawn

This is just a big long list of what I bought. That is really only useful for a couple of things

1. Knowing the price of an individual item
   2. Using the receipt as proof of purchase

I don’t feel like either of these are common use cases. Most stores now allow you to return goods based on the records they have attached to your frequent buyer card and in a grocery store who cares how much you spend on an individual good?

Wouldn’t it be neater to get

And that’s what the startup could do. Figure out geekier ways to communicate information and, instead of waiting for businesses to step up, just step into the gap themselves.