Some of the best ideas come by solving a problem for separate parties simultaneously. Start up businesses often struggle to afford the overhead associated with running a full time office, and restaurants are effectively, non-earning dead space for much of the day.

That’s the background to ‘Spacious’, a start-up founded by Preston Pesek and Chris Smothers in New York, which makes use of empty restaurants by offering them up to freelancers and others without an office as an alternative to crowded coffee shops. More than 2,000 restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn are closed before 6 p.m. every day, according to the company, and it’s some of this space which they’re putting to us. Users pat $29 a day of $95 a month to use the facilities.

If this can work in New York, it should work in other major cities too. Thinking more broadly, there’s  under-utilised capacity in many sectors and spheres. How might you fill it for profit?

One of the big trends of the last few years is peer to peer services…cutting out big companies and bringing individuals together for mutual benefit. We’ve see it in accommodation through the likes of Airbnb, in lending through the likes of Zopa and now Grabr is taking the concept into the delivery market.

The platform enables travellers to take a little extra baggage for a small fee. A buyer chooses their item and anyone heading for their town or city can bid for the job. The buyer then selects who they would like to make the delivery and arranges a meeting place. The service takes advantage of journeys already taking place.

What other services, currently the domain of big companies, could lend themselves to the peer-to-peer treatment.

grabr.io