Looking for a cofounder

Since we can't all meet The Woz at our summer jobs, some sites to help you locate a potential co founder -

• Cofoundr - Allows you to see brief details about members before you sign up. Must have work or school address to sign up.
  
• Partnerup - The best developed of all 3 sites, will dig more into this one later.
  
• FounderLink - Still in development, no preview available, I had to sign up (private email allowed) just to see that there were 0 posts and 0 everything else.
  

And now I'm going to drive my parents up to Napa today (for their very first wine tasting!)

Startup ideas - 1

Universal texting - as in you can text landline phones.

• How would you display the message? (Convert text to voice mail on the answering machine?)
• Would this be easier with VoIP landlines?
  
• Is this even useful? (Should this be the first question I should have asked?)
  
• Well, its useful to text other appliances in your home (like turn on the heat or the oven or whatever). I even read about this appliance which is a refrigerator till you text it and then it turns on as an oven. From defrosting to dinner all by means of a text message...
  

Hey a geek can dream can't she?

Tech startups - advanced degrees, founder ages, etc

The EETimes reports on a new study by the Kauffman foundation about the founders of technology and engineering startups.

3 interesting takeaways -

• The average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders was 39 when they started their companies.

• U.S.-born tech founders with MBAs established companies more quickly (in 13 years) than others. Tech founders with PhDs typically waited 21 years(!)

• U.S.-born tech founders holding CS and IT degrees founded companies sooner after graduating than engineering degree holders (14.3 years vs. 17.6 years).

Note that the study only included US born tech founders. I wonder how the numbers would vary for non-US born tech founders founding tech companies in the US.

Even more reason to get an MBA!

New series - startup ideas

Disclaimer - This series is an attempt to capture some of the quote-unquote startup ideas buzzing around in my head. For all I know, there are already startups that do this very thing, do something similar but better, or have tried and failed to do the exact same thing. No due diligence has been done on any of these ideas.

User generated content is everywhere. How about a startup that integrates all kinds of user generated content and offers a seamless way to search for it and to buy it for reproduction/reuse?

The reproduction is not restricted to main stream media but to other user generated content like blogs, etc. The website would allow simple uploads, allow users to tag or categorize the content and offer a targeted search or feeds for certain tags for the end consumer of the content. Royalties would be seamlessly paid to the generator. (Side idea - is there a way to figure out that content has been reused elsewhere?)

ShutterPoint already does something similar but is restricted to stock photography. This is also similar to CNNs iReport but in this case the citizen journalist could actually get paid.

Startup-Z could integrate all sorts of content - images, video, audio (also a way to monetize blog posts for reprinting in mass media??)