Reinier Evers is the founder of Springwise, a company that provides entrepreneurs with business ideas. Our previous writeup on Springwise can be found here.

What are some markets you see having a lot of potential in the near future?

Everything that makes life easier for busy consumers (time is the new currency), and everything that is upgraded, premium. Even better if these two get combined. There’s been an enormous increase in wealth, and consumers are more experienced than ever, so for virtually every category, there’s an audience out there willing to pay a big premium for a ‘best of the best’ version, something that is more beautiful, more practical, tastier and so on. From baby cribs to chocolates.

Have there been any success stories where entrepreneurs are successful with an idea obtained from Springwise?

We don’t track that, but we do know that being featured on Springwise normally results in loads of new business, to the point where some smaller entrepreneurs have even asked us to remove the article about them ‘because they couldn’t cope’ with the avalanche of requests.

How big of a company is Springwise now?

Springwise is a small company, with a big network. A small team of full time and part time members, including editor Liesbeth den Toom, oversee a network of 4000+ contributors, aka Springspotters. Which is a great way to efficiently and cost-consciously have eyes and ears in over 100 countries.

Why would a "spotter" submit their business ideas to Springwise rather than develop the idea themselves?

We ask people to submit existing businesses, i.e. ask them to act as journalists. So we’re not looking for people’s ideas for ‘not-existing-yet’ kind of ideas. If they do have those, they SHOULD of course start them themselves right away ;-)