Oh dear, the secret of Y-Combinator's success is finally revealed - blind luck! ;)

Real ideas start with real problems.

Just off the top of my head...

1) Have you ever tried to debug an HPC program running on 700,000 cores? You are probably using a patched version of GDB and it's darn painful!

2) Why are we still using a 1970s designed programming language in embedded systems that almost guarantees baked in bugs around memory management and multi-threading?

3) What do we do about data strangulation by the big players that is going on in the web right now?

4) Why are we using presentational markup for the web rather than semantic?

5) How to bust up a travel industry that is basically a brutal cartel of the big players?

6) And it would be really, really nice if I could get my repeat prescription without having to phone both the surgery and the pharmacist, then drive to town, pay for parking, find they can't issue my meds because the pharmacist went off to do his xmas shopping, and wait for an hour until he gets back, and then have to repeat these shenanigans the following month...

7) Why do so many applications, especially those in Python, fail to take advantage of multiple cores, and what can be done about it? We live in a multi-core world now folks...even embedded ARM chips are multi-core. Related: how to solve the conflict between CPU-bound and I/O bound threads?

8) Why is there no really clean, simple way to write decent, scalable web applications? Fotango tried this many years ago with Zimki and they were on to something until Canon closed them down. There choice of JavaScript was not ideal but the best choice at the time.

9) Why, when I am planning my next trip to Philippines can't I put in my start point, and an end point and have the system generate a sample itinerary for me? If I say "yes" my accommodation should be booked automagically for me according to my budget preferences. As well as a web app there could be a mobile app that points me to my next port of call on my journey.

10) Why oh why do we insist on using a general purpose, multi-tasking, multi-user desktop operating system in applications it was never designed for - and where a single user, single process, text-mode, lightweight, multi-thread OS would be far superior?

11) Why is it when I book a flight online I feel like I'm being sneakily ripped off? I would love to see more transparent pricing of flights, and legitimate regulated price comparison.

12) Why is it that when you see a speaker give a presentation at a conference they almost always have to struggle with the presentation system for five minutes before starting?

13) Why is the US system of skilled migrant visas in such a sorry-arsed state - and why aren't tech companies working together to get this sorted? Even a basic site listing which companies would actually be prepared to fill out the relevant form to sponsor you for would be a good start. Many big companies are very vague on this point (I won't name and shame).

14) Why is the teaching of practical philosophy so shockingly bad? Book of Life is one of the best sites out there on this, but could do with some stiffer competition.

15) The baby bidet idea I liked - what comes out in the first few weeks after birth can only be described as "alien toxic goo". To go with it, a mobile app that, by emitting a cunning and mysterious range of coloured lights, weird music, and bird-like tweets sends them off to sleep - I'd have bought it - AI be damned!

... etc etc etc

Do any of these suggest possible solutions that solve problems? I'm not saying the above are in any way potential business success stories, but hopefully they point towards real-world problems.

I have a notebook filled with hundreds of such problems...

(p.s. finally, why is it easier for me, and more satisfying, to keep a paper notebook of this stuff rather than electronically?)