Unvalidated Ideas #070

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Thanks for reading the Unvalidated Ideas newsletter -- it's been a great run until now, and I hope you've been able to find some inspiration in the ideas shared here!

I look forward to sending a couple more emails about what I'm doing next, and how you can get your hands on all the ideas from the premium editions, for one price.

For the last time (for now!), here's a fresh idea you can take out there and validate.

WebAssembly extensions for Excel (🗒Raw Notes)

Sector: FinTech/Software

As usual, Excel never dies. The recent news about Python getting integrated into Excel -- but there are a lot of languages that could use that level of support.

Enter WebAssembly -- it's a way to run near-native binaries built from different languages -- a sort of truly cross-platform virtual machine (similar to the JVM). In particular, it also runs well in Web and non-web Javascript contexts.

WebAssembly was originally invented for browsers, and is at home there, but it's recently gained a home outside the browser too, with the advent of WASI, the Component Model and other pieces of critical infrastructure.

Another great thing bout WebAssembly is that it can run in non-browser JS contexts, thanks to work on jco (built by the Bytecode Alliance).

Speaking of non-browser Javascript contexts, guess what Excel has? A Javascript API.

If people are excited about Python, guess how excited they'll be about all the languages that WASM supports.

One of the problems with the current "expanded universe" of WebAssembly is that it's unfortunately very bleeding edge. The tooling, language support, and just about everything else are still very nascent, even if high quality.

This idea benefits from very fast execution -- this is the kind of integration that would be a no-brainer purchase for a certain very large company that makes and maintains Excel. Almost a very long take-home interview assignment to get you a acqui-hire into Microsoft.

What was in this week's uncut edition?

Like being teased? I hope so, because here's what was in the uncut edition this week:

Ideas:

• WebAssembly extensions for Excel
• Simple██ ████████████Systems
• The███████████ Page

Bonus:

• A sneak peek at the next evolution of Unvalidated Ideas

Thanks for reading!

It's been a great time writing this letter -- I hope you enjoyed it and found something awesome.

Stay tuned for a chance to download all the ideas at once! Once the paid letter officially concludes, I'll send out one last email blast with the details.

Check out the archive for access to editions that have been previously released.

Victor (victor@unvalidatedideas.com)