Ideas Journal

This is my ideas journal!

I've put lots of time and effort into thinking through them. Feel free to steal them if you wish. I'd like it if you gave me the credit, and reached out to me for collaboration. I can be reached at innovation@shirish.me.

Feb 2025 Note: I created a mess a year ago by assuming genAI would be a useful assistant in writing these essays and expanding my ideas. I was terribly wrong. Even the worst piece of my writing is better than the trite, boring, repetitive slop that LLM's generate. I'm not linking them here for the moment. This feature WILL be back soon.

Oct 2025 Note: I undid all the AI slop, summarized them all, and changed the title of this section from "Steal this Ideas / Ideas Blog" to Ideas Journal. It'll be a living document, where I'll keep moving things around, keep adding the ideas as them come in!

May 2026 Note: I removed all the slop images from this section. It hurt because I had spent significant portion of my time three years ago generating them. But it's okay. I'll survive. There was very limited intentionality in those from me. They looked great and I spent a long time learning the prompts, but I learned nothing. The lesson is to not be a chump and run off with the hottest fad ever. I'll eventually get around to putting hand-drawn illustrations here. I've been taking art classes recently.

Shirish Pokharel

Ideas Journal

Wouldn’t it be cool if gas powered cars were replaced by tiny electric vehicles for public transport in Kathmandu? Kathmandu could even get a replacement for the infamously polluting Bikram Tempos, but in EV form!

Reading time: 1 minutes

Let’s teach young students leadership, 3d printing, and organizing skills, by having them organize a program to clean National Parks of litter.

Reading time: 3 minutes

If all the private schools in Kathmandu collaborated on a joint school bus system, they’d all save money, and the city will see reduced traffic.

Reading time: 1 minutes

Budhanilkantha school could do more to invest in innovation, and deploying existing innovation orgs it in real-world usecases.

Reading time: 1 minutes

Kathmandu valley could use Black Soldier Fly Larvae to convert organic waste to high-protein insects that can be used as bird or fish feed.

Reading time: 2 minutes

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What might it take to start a chhyang brewkit business in Kathmandu, and would it be legal?

Reading time: 1 minutes

If we could train and unpskill Nepali labor traveling abroad, could we significantly increase the earned income? Could such a potential increase fund the training itself?

Reading time: 2 minutes

The idea is to preserve traditional houses in Kathmandu and Lalitpur by rebuilding them, adding new floors, and leasing the added space to investors. Rental income is shared with homeowners, creating financial benefits for residents while safeguarding heritage.

Reading time: 2 minutes

Marcha, or rice starter yeast, is a coloby of mold, yeast and bacteria. Each geographical origin has a unique bio-signature. It’s not a valued commodity in Nepal, but what if we preserved it and commercialized it?

Reading time: 1 minutes

There’s a potential for Nepali craftsmen and technologists to gain a foot ahead in fabrication of wood and plastic with traditional design. Somebody’s gotta start the ball rolling. I can volunteer with seed fund.

Reading time: 3 minutes

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A few Nepali organizations are currently doing outsourced research. The scale is at most, a dozen ongoing projects at the most. What if we scaled this up, and made Nepal a center for most low-cost research in public health, environmental science, math, etc?

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Can we restore abandoned village houses, equip them with basic services (water, electricity, simple furnishings) and let long‑term tourists stay in them. The guests would stay weeks to months, paying a modest rent, and hire available local manpower.

Reading time: 2 minutes

Littering and a lack of ownership of shared hygeine are big problems with urban sanitation in Kathmandu. Might a city-wide competition among schools and students to keep their communities clean and well-informed change the dynamic?

Reading time: 2 minutes

Are there low-lying fruits with tourism upscaling that don’t involve massive and expensive infrastructure programs or marketing campaigns? What might be the cheapest way to get more boogie tourists to come, and spend more?

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Would a business that just sell heavily-custom, animated ecards for weddings and other major life events make sense, or has genAI completely destroyed that market?

This is the best idea I’ve ever had. I’m willing to spend the rest of my life working towards it. I don’t know how to put it at the top of this page, but if you encounter this, please read this!

Reading time: 9 minutes

Can we convince the retired and the elderly to gather together into ‘day schools’? Would it be viable, or are there too many competing social/cultural blockers in either direction? My main goal is to get my grandparents going out, working out, and making and taking to (new) friends!

Reading time: 4 minutes

Can we connect service providers in Nepal with potential Nepali customers abroad and create a thriving marketplace without competing with other major platforms? Or if such a place already exists, can somebody tell me wher eit exists please?

Reading time: 4 minutes

Nepali culture is cool and well-liked. We have talented singers, performers etc. Can we create an industry to sell our performance abroad, without massive investment in marketing and infrastructure like Japanese and Korean governments? Or is it too big an ask?

Reading time: 6 minutes

This is me ideating on all the cool sections I’d want on this site, and if it’s just a wild fantasy that’ll never be realized.

Reading time: 5 minutes

Nepali currency is massively overvalued for it’s relative usage in the global economy. It’s value against the dollar (and by general proxy most other currencies) going down will be good for the local market, and for the entire economy in the long term.

Reading time: 13 minutes

A challenge with innovating in mass‑produced pottery is creating new concrete molds and turning them into mass product. The cost of a new mold is high enough that you need to sell hundreds or thousands of your final product to justify the initial mold investment. 3D printing the molds to...

Reading time: 8 minutes

It’s one of my small, sillier ideas. I’m excited about it because it’s easy to implement, and I love food! It also relates to my other idea, which is the school/club for the retired folks idea.

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How do you start with leadership when you don’t have an organization to lead? How do you build a community when all you have is friend groups. I’m trying to figure out the way ahead.

Reading time: 7 minutes

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