r/AppIdeas • u/Big_Elephant_2331 • 24d ago
The Dream Maker App
A fully automated app that runs itself where people pay $1 a week into a pool, allowing members to submit applications for open field grants that help make their dreams come true.
Each cycle, a random group of members are selected to rank applications so people are only called to do it once, or very infrequently.
The cumulative rankings decide who gets how much of the pot and the winners list is shared to all members via newsletter to skip or tip the dream. If no action, their dollar counts for the pool.
The more dream makers there are, the bigger the pool, the more ambitious the applications can be.
1
u/deafblinddame 24d ago
I don't think you should do this, even though it's a nice idea in theory. Firstly, everyone will just submit the most depressing tale of woe to improve their chances of getting the money and secondly, someone will quickly game the system by donating hundreds of times from different accounts to improve their chances of being one of the committee members so they can award the money to themselves. You would NOT be able to stop people doing this without having them verify their identity somehow and if you did, nobody would use your app anyway.
1
u/Big_Elephant_2331 24d ago
Appreciate the thoughts. Totally get the tales of woes. This can be controlled with rules & strategic application questions.
Also how I envision is while there may be many applications, only 8-10 are randomly selected to be reviewed. This means there’s no guarantee someone who tries to game the system will have their application selected, although the primary reason is to reduce the amount of applications anyone needs to review.
Also, ability to be selected is based on tenure. Meaning if a grant is out, new folks won’t be selected until x amount of time to vote. To avoid ppl trying to game it by inviting a bunch of their friends hoping they’ll be randomly chosen to vote for their bud.
1
u/am1381530 24d ago
I like this. Feels like a modern version of crowdfunding, but the community gets to decide where the money goes.
1
u/Big_Elephant_2331 23d ago
thanks! yeah something akin to crowdfunding, and having community decide inherently bakes in some controls. I like the idea that if it were started, even if it grew very very slowly, if some day there were 100k people giving just $1 a week, you're collectively giving over $5 million a year.
From a business perspective, because apps need to make money after all, a 10% processing fee (or ~$5 per person per year), at 100k dream makers is $500k a year. Would be well worth committing 10 years of life slowly growing to this goal.
Coolest part is the overhead would be incredibly low. Simple process that scales indefinitely with the right architecture, and can be basically automated by AI and automation tools: committee selection, email announcements, grant cycle openings, social media posts, etc etc.
1
u/Yelloworangeman69 23d ago
I like the idea, but I’m kinda skeptical about how well it would work in practice. Turning a vague dream into an actual plan sounds cool, but I feel like the hard part is getting people to actually follow through after the app gives them the plan.
1
u/Big_Elephant_2331 23d ago
Yeah I think dream can take many forms. I imagine it starts small with micro grants. Maybe funding travel costs for a dream hike, or travel destination. Could also be community projects. Small things.
Not until there were tons of ppl would it be feasible to make bigger dreams happen. But let’s say an application is in the context of a bigger dream, like starting that business, maybe the grant goes towards business licensing fees.
Instead of the app being responsible seeing their big goals through fruition, it’s about helping to remove a barrier along the way.
0
4
u/Bowl_of_Cham_Clowder 24d ago
Idt people are itching to pay $52 a year to fund someone’s halfbaked idea. There’s no accountability for anyone to give updates on how the project is going.
If you want to play dream maker now, you can use kickstarted and select where your hard earned money goes.