Hallucinating ideas

What does it take to start IT project? Ideas or money? Ideas and money? Or something else? There might be many opinions about this, and probably all of them would have their pros and cons. In my opinion, all you need to start an IT project is an idea and a strong belief that you can accomplish it. Well, only believing is not enough, there some actions have to be taken depending on if you have money or not. Do it yourself or hire someone else to do it. Even if I had loads of money, I would choose the first one - that way one can experience the joy of creating something (not for everyone that feeling is needed, and not everyone know how to code).
Even if you are a very good manager, one can't sell anything, at least not for everyone. Smart people won't buy crap unless they are fooled(and it's hard to fool smart people) or bound with other obligations. The idea doesn't have to be unique. However with unique idea it's more chances to draw attention.
One may say, that's very abstract thoughts. And one will be right. Think of it as an introduction or theoretical part of this blog entry. That's what we were doing instead of sleeping in tents before trip with kayaks - hallucinating ... generating ideas, which could draw an attention as an IT project.
First, we decided that probably we won't need to go world wide - of course, the temptation may be big, but it's harder to come up with unique solution for whole world, than for a region or country.
Then we tried to name some great online ideas and services, that somehow managed to attract people. My personal top 3 would be:
1. Google, but it's no point in creating "another google" and even if it were (some still may think so, I can argue, but I won't), I'd rather go work for Google, than compete with it. Not because of I couldn't manage to compete (it's not 100% I could manage), but because of respect to this company. If I'd to create a company one day, many things would be like in Google - but it's not the same as competing with it.
2. Skype. We argued if this solution was really unique when it appeared on the marked. Probably not. Before that, there was ICQ, Yahoo messenger and others with voice capability, but what did Skype brought to the IT world, that made it so popular?
3. And the third on the list is www.hallmark.com. It's totally different from the first 2: first one is a company with ideas, second is a software and hallmark is a service. I like the way it displays the information - it's really an art and what experience it brings to customers: always fun, always positive emotions. I especially like those hoops and yoyo e-cards.
But does our region needs another Google or Skype? Probably there would be place for another local e-card service, but still it's no unique. Not that much.
In this phase we tried to think, what kind of IT services are popular in our country. That was not hard - social networks and virtual relationships - possibility to be what You want to be and can't be in real life, find virtual friends. Not unique, but if you manage to cross this service with something else, you might come up with one.
It's not secret, that people care what their neighbors do. Not less interesting what totally strange people do, how they live, what's their daily routine. Take dozens of webcams, some volunteers to become internet stars and web server with big bandwidth. Build means(like social network) for visitors to communicate with each other and share the ideas about the taken footage. True, it's not unique, but every reality show has something totally different in it.
Another idea was to sell active recreation in Lithuanian village (more concretely at farm) with fun activities like milking a cow, cock the hay, look after and feed the cattle, etc. Less civilization as possible except the possibility to blog and capture all adventures spent there. Probably people from same country won't be interesting in this thing, but people from abroad, for whom such tasks seem exotic, might work.
At the last phase, we decided that all this was just a hallucination, as we were not executing those visions. So, probably, every vision is a hallucination first. And I have to admit, that the outcome of this discussion was affected by vine. Who knows what we could have come up to, after drinking something more strong.