Tell us about you
Your skills, interests, capital, and where you want to build.
For builders, founders, and working professionals
business ideas. Free.
Discover the idea for you or improve the one you have,
and we’ll help you build it.
"I’ve spent my life turning ideas into businesses. 175+ so far.
Idealab.ai is how I help you build the next one."Bill GrossWhy it's free →
We are proud to partner with these great organizations to help us reach more entrepreneurs globally:
“Idealab.ai is a shortcut to product-market fit and I am excited to put it in the hands of our students …”
“… Idealab.ai’s ambition to make entrepreneurship more accessible aligns with our work to help new businesses build and grow online.”
Matthew PrinceCo-founder & CEOCloudflare“By pairing Idealab.ai with the creativity and abilities of the 200,000 degree-seeking students that enroll annually, … we’re building a global engine for entrepreneurship, job creation, and real-world impact.”
Dr. Michael CrowPresidentArizona State University“Caltech is expanding its entrepreneurial programs for students with classes, internships, business plan competitions and more, and we look forward to bringing even more ideas to students and graduates with this system.”
Fred FarinaChief Innovation and Corporate
Partnerships OfficerCaltech“Idealab.ai brings that same force to the very start of the journey, putting a million ideas in front of the people who will build …”
Linda RottenbergCo-founder & CEOEndeavor“Making business ideas freely available through Idealab.ai gives more people in the communities we serve a starting point …”
Jeff HoffmanChairmanGlobal Entrepreneurship Network“Bill Gross is masterminding the next level of entrepreneurship, building the foundation for a world in which the creation of new value can be accessible to everyone.”
Rita Gunther McGrathAcademic Director in Executive Education and professor of management at
Columbia Business School“It will help entrepreneurs and venture builders in our region explore, identify and unlock massive opportunities. Most of all, it will give hope that AI can create opportunities for new companies, not just eliminate jobs.”
Ahmed AlfiFounderFlat6Labs“Idealab.ai puts a real business idea, and the tools to build it, into the hands of many more people.”
Fatoumata BâFounder & Executive ChairJanngoHow it works
From a real-world problem to an idea you can build on.
Find your idea
Ideas that fit you, each with its evidence and what to build first.
Make it your own
Test it with customers and change it as you learn.
Behind every idea: news, research, patents, financial filings, customer complaints, and more, compiled using Bill Gross's methods.
See how ideas are madePreview · Idea brief #597693
In-silico odorant-receptor screen for aroma and chemicals
New maps link a molecule’s shape to the human smell receptors it may activate.
Capital to start
$300K
Time to market
6 months
Why now
Better maps between molecular shape and smell, plus improved ways to study smell receptors, now provide usable training data.
Living Legacy for Cognitive Care
Artificial intelligence (AI), software that finds patterns in information, can now sort family photos, recordings, and stories together.
- Capital to start*
- $180K
- Time to market*
- 4 months
Why now
Multimodal AI, software that can sort different kinds of media, now organizes decades of scattered family material, while population aging and worry about memory loss make families more ready to preserve it.
Explore our idea engine.
The more we know, the better the results & ranking.
Building the idea
The Periodic Table of Business Functions.
These are the distilled elements that make up all businesses. See all 118, how they interact with automation, and the stage of development when they activate. Coming soon in 2027.
Explore the tablePartnerships
Give your people an idea worth their years.
Universities
Give students a stronger starting point.
Every idea in the engine solves a real problem with a real market behind it, so the business cases students build are worth learning from.
Learn more →Accelerators & incubators
Help founders find a better fit.
Founders can test their idea against real problems and real markets, so they know it fits before they commit to it.
Learn more →Cities & governments
Open new paths for your region.
Help people in your region, including those between jobs, find ideas they can build into businesses.
Learn more →Investors
Look more closely at the idea.
Check the ideas behind companies you're considering against the engine, and help them improve.
Learn more →Corporate innovation
Put your IP to work on the world's problems.
Your patents can solve more problems than the ones you filed them for. We'll show you the ideas hiding in what you already own, privately.
Problem-first.
We start from real problems people and markets have, then find where your IP fits. Every opportunity comes with a reason it matters now.
Action-ready.
Every idea comes with a 90-day roadmap, shaped to the pathways your organization moves ideas forward.
Live, not a snapshot.
Run new assets, or re-run existing ones, and see what they open up as the world changes.
Proven method.
Bill Gross's 50 years of building companies, and 175+ launched at Idealab, applied to your IP.