YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS We’ve selected 15 new business ideas this week that will provide entrepreneurs with plenty of inspiration. Spotted from countries all around the world, these ideas offer a taste of what’s to come.

2. YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS
20-26 March 2014

3. Top 10 business ideas & opportunities for 2014
We’ve selected 15 new business ideas that will provide
entrepreneurs with plenty of inspiration. Spotted from
countries all around the world, these ideas offer a taste of
what’s to come.
YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS
20-26 March 2014

4. This is part of a series of articles that looks at
entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the
ground through crowdfunding. At the time of writing,
each of these innovations is currently seeking
funding.
Cycling in the city can be a dangerous
business, regardless of the experience
levels of the rider. We recently wrote
about Fly6, which has turned rear bike
lights into cameras to deter motorists from
making bad judgments, and now Lumen
is the world’s first commercially available
retro-reflective bicycle, offering greater
safety at night through a coating that
lights up in car headlights.
Read more about Lumen »
1. Reflective bike uses cat’s eyes technology to save lives

5. Almost everything we do or say on our
mobile and tablet devices is recorded and
archived, comprising a huge database of
moments in our lives. While futuristic
services such as Eterni.me intend to use
them to help recreate loved ones after
they’ve died, Tx.to is a startup that lets
anyone print their favorite text message
conversations onto decorative scrolls as a
memento.
Read more about Tx.to »
2. Service prints SMS histories onto miniature scrolls

6. The art market is a notoriously messy and
unpredictable one, but nevertheless a
cash cow for gallery owners and dealers.
In the past we have seen platforms such
as Artsy make the discovery and
purchase of famous and lesser-known
works a little bit easier, and now a new
service called ArtRank aims to quantify
the value of artists in the emerging fields
of net.art and street art.
Read more about ArtRank »
3. Site uses algorithms to tell collectors when to buy and sell
emerging art

7. Investing money in the right places isn’t
easy if you don’t have the know-how, and
especially if you don’t have the money in
the first place. However, even a small
amount of cash can be placed into
shares, and Acorns is a new app that
rounds up users’ purchases to the nearest
dollar and automatically invests the
difference in a stock of their choice.
Read more about Acorns »
4. App turns small change into an investment portfolio

8. Energy prices are rising thanks to the
scarcity of non-renewable resources, and
this is prompting consumers to look more
favorably on alternative solutions not
currently offered by major utilities firms,
such as Germany-based AOTERRA‘s
solution which places energy-intensive
cloud servers into customers’ homes and
harnesses the excess heat to warm the
properties. Another company now hoping
to win over dissatisfied consumers is the
Netherland’s Vandebron, which lets them
pick the type of green energy they’d like to
buy, as well as where it comes from.
Read more about Vandebron »
5. Energy marketplace lets customers choose their green power
source

9. Consumers are already using their tablets
and mobile devices in the kitchen in place
of their battered old cook books, so it’s not
too much of a leap to imagine appliances
that can sync with them to make cooking
a bit easier. In the past, we’ve seen the
Prep Pad measure the nutritional content
of the items being chopped on it, and now
Drop is another smart kitchen scale that
can adjust recipes on the fly if users put
too much of one ingredient in.
Read more about Drop »
6. iPad-integrated kitchen scale could turn an amateur into a pro
chef

10. Weird Of The Week: This is part of a series of
articles that looks at some of the most bizarre and
niche business ideas we see here at Springwise.
Baggage can be a contentious issue at
airports, with passengers often facing
extra fees if they go over the limit for any
checked-in luggage. Last year, Samoa Air
even became the first airline to introduce
a pay-by-weight system for its customers.
Offering a cheeky solution for consumers
hoping to avoid these fees, Bulgaria’s
Jaktogo is a lightweight jacket that can
help passengers ‘smuggle’ 10kg of extra
luggage into airplanes.
Read more about Jaktogo »
7. Jacket helps airline passengers dodge luggage fees

11. This is part of a series of articles that looks at
entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the
ground through crowdfunding. At the time of writing,
each of these innovations is currently seeking
funding.
Parents often express concern over the
effect technology is having on their
children. As the thinking goes, kids these
days have replaced playing in the park
with Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto,
and their imaginations are being eroded
by tech that does all the thinking for them.
Springwise recently wrote about Loop —
a gaming system that aims to tackle the
first issue with gameplay that takes place
outdoors — and now Japanese innovators
have developed Moff, a smart bracelet
that lets kids use any object as a toy in a
number of imagination-based smartphone
games. Read more about Moff »
8. Smartband for kids turns any object into a toy

12. One way to motivate humans to do
anything is to provide rewards when they
achieve and punishment when they fail,
which has been the basis of apps such as
GymPact, the platform that uses money
as a tool for stimulus for keeping fit.
Reworking the model for students,
StudyPact gives students financial prizes
for completing a set amount of work each
week, with penalties for missed deadlines.
Read more about Studypact »
9. Service charges users when they don’t do their study, pays them
when they do

13. Locating items that are somewhere in one
of masses of boxes can often be like
trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Smart technologies are now making this
process easier, and self-storage startup
Boxbee is already enabling customers to
digitally inventorize their stored
belongings. Now Japanese stationery
company King Jim is letting homeowners
do the same thing at home with its
NeutralBOX, which comes with an app
that lets users keep a visual inventory or
scan boxes to easily see what’s in them.
Read more about NeutralBOX »
10. Smart cardboard boxes turn homes into a self-storage unit

14. Handing over money to charity is enough
for some to feel good about themselves,
but nonprofits and social good
organizations often find it difficult to elicit
donations without offering something in
return. We’ve already seen gaming site
GoodGames let users raise money
simply by playing ad-supported titles, and
now the UK’s Guilty Pledgers is hoping
to do something similar for music —
charging partygoers for adding an
embarrassing track to a Spotify playlist,
and then sending the cash to charity.
Read more about Guilty Pledgers »
11. App forces users to give to charity for playing cheesy tracks on
Spotify

15. When you’re ill, the last thing you want to
worry about is whether you’re taking the
right pills at the right time, or if you’re
about the run out. We recently saw
Walgreens and TaskRabbit take the pain
out of getting medicine for cold and flu
sufferers by delivering it to their door
within a couple of hours. Now online
pharmacy PillPack is mailing any
prescription direct to patients,
conveniently organized, dated and refilled
when necessary.
Read more about Athos »
12. Online pharmacy makes pill regimens less confusing

16. Being able to travel in a private jet is the
pipe dream of many, but the reality is that
its a luxury preserved for the moneyed
few. In the past we’ve seen platforms
such as JetSuite enable fractional
ownership of jets, but startup Flytenow is
making private air travel more affordable
with ride sharing for small planes.
Read more about Flytenow »
13. Uber for fliers lets anyone catch a ride in a small plane

17. The problem with most transport apps is
that they rely on fixed data from transport
company schedules and don’t truly reflect
exactly what’s going on with the city’s
trains and buses at any given moment.
Operating like a Waze for public transport,
Israel’s Ototo app crowdsources real-time
information from passengers to give users
the best suggestions for their commute.
Read more about Ototo »
14. Crowdsourced transit app shows what time the bus will really
come

18. Consumers in the West typically take for
granted the purchases they make every
day that are out of the reach of others in
poverty. The ‘buy one, give one’ model
aims to tackle this problem by matching
small purchases and donating them to
those in need, such as bus tickets through
Detroit’s WeRide program, or a pair of
shoes through the popular TOMS brand.
Operating on a much grander scale,
Canada’s World Housing is now using
the model to help build shelter for families
in the poorest parts of the world.
Read more about World Housing »
15. Buy a house, give one to a family in need

19. What is Springwise?
Springwise scans the globe for the most promising, unique and innovative business
ventures, ideas and concepts that are ready for regional or international adaptation,
expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation.
Springwise headquarters is in close contact with more than 17,000 Springspotters in over
150 countries worldwide, who provide us with details of the latest innovations in their
countries. These are compiled and assessed by our editorial team, and the best examples
are published to provide entrepreneurial inspiration to our readers around the world!
Springwise publishes a Daily and a Weekly newsletter, to which you can subscribe
for free, they are sent to more than 170,000 people.
Established in 2002, Springwise is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
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