When you’ve founded and invested in as many successful startups as Idealab’s Bill Gross, you get more benefit of the doubt than most when it comes to thoughts on how to improve the company building process. Gross' vaunted track record includes some 125 companies, among them Overture Services, eSolar, UberMedia, CitySearch, Picasa, and Internet Brands.

And yet, it was his newest creation, IdeaMarket, that Gross first described to me as “pretty much the culmination of my whole life being an entrepreneur.” He added, “It’s an interesting cross between Kickstarter, Quirky, and XPrize, and we bring money, ideas, and talent/teams together to create new companies. I hope we can be the most transformative company ever in the fostering of entrepreneurship.”

Color me intrigued.

Gross and co-founder VJ Anma today announced the launch of their idea, talent, and funding marketplace with the aim of removing the friction from starting great companies. The vision is to have startup investors submit pre-funded ideas, which members of the IdeaMarket community (aka the crowd) then filter and refine through a public feedback period. Once the company vision is sufficiently crystallized, teams of prospective founders submit their proposals to execute on this idea. A “winner” is chosen through a combination of the IdeaMarket advisory board, the crowd, and the original investor who submitted the idea, and the initial funding (hopefully on the order of $500,000 per idea) is released, as well as, in some cases, additional capital raised through an AngelList-style equity crowdfunding round. Teams then get access to IdeaMarket and IdeaLab mentorship and resources much like they would in a more traditional accelerator.

At this initial stage, IdeaMarket will award 5 percent equity in the nascent venture to the idea originator and 5 percent to members of the crowd who meaningfully improved the idea during the comment period. Initial investors, which may include IdeaMarket and/or IdeaLab, will get as much as 20 percent depending on the amount they invest and IdeaMarket will get “a small piece,” in Gross’ words, that will vary from deal to deal in return for facilitating this matchmaking process. Founding teams will therefore be left 60 to 70 percent of these companies, a fairly standard figure for accelerator-stage companies with some early angel investment.

It’s not unheard of for investors to publish problems or ideas that they’d like to back. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham famously published seven such “frighteningly ambitious startup ideas” in 2012, a list that includes the next great search engine and a replacement for traditional universities. Just last week, prolific angel investor Jason Calacanis wrote his tens of thousands of email subscribers to suggest a “Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale gauntlet” over fixing the market for residential real estate reviews. In perhaps the most spectacular example, last summer, Elon Musk published his initial designs for the Hyperloop, a ultra-high speed modern transportation system, and invited anyone with the ability and the inclination to take a crack at making it a reality.

But where IdeaMarket is unique, and potentially transformative, is in the use of the crowd to refine ideas and source talent and additional investment interested in making these ideas successful. Surely both Graham and Calacanis received feedback on their rough ideas after publishing, both publicly via Twitter and in private conversations, but IdeaMarket aims to institutionalize this process to an entirely different level and to repeat it with a high level of frequency. If it works, it could mean the end of traditional accelerators and incubators as we know them. IdeaMarket has raised its own $2.5 million in funding from Idealab, Steve Case, Foundation Capital, and Steelhead Ventures to fuel the operation.

“Ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s execution that is everything,” Gross says. “But sometimes a great idea and some early backing can get you started. We hope that people find an idea they're passionate about, which is the only way that this works. We’ll see if we can be successful in see if we attracting great teams and making great companies. But I think we’re onto something special.”

IdeaMarket launches today with 20 initial ideas and commitments for funding including those around 3D printing of lenses, outsourced x-ray reading, pizza delivery robots, and Uber for trash pickup. The list of initial backers is impressively pedigreed, including PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, IronPort co-founder Scott Banister, Google developer evangelist Don Dodge, Sherpa Ventures founding partner Shervin Pishevar, former AOL CEO and Revolution Ventures partner Steve Case, and Gross, himself.

Gross and Anma hope to open the idea submission process to the general public, but initially will keep it invite only to maintain quality control and refine the broader IdeaMarket process. The goal is to eventually go one step further and remove the requirement that these ideas include pre-funding, but first IdeaMarket has to prove it can attract follow-on capital for its ventures through crowdfunding.

“We are looking to work not only with individuals with great ideas, but also universities, corporations, think-tanks and anyone who has intellectual assets that are not currently being monetized,” Gross said in a statement today. “We hope to improve the world by turning these ideas into vibrant companies that bring them to market.”

When you publish ideas and plans for executing on those ideas, you run the risk of other people “stealing” those ideas. But as Silicon Valley has proven ad nauseum, and Gross reiterates, it’s not the ideas, but the execution that makes great companies. If someone wants to pursue one of these ideas without the validation and assistance of an organization like IdeaMarket and an initial backer like Levchin or Pershivar, more power to them. If, on the other hand, someone wants that support, may the best team and the best execution plan win.

The concept for IdeaMarket grew out of Gross’ habit of adding at least one new business idea per day to his spreadsheet of projects he hopes to eventually pursue. But as that list grew beyond 1,000 potentially viable projects, he says it became clear that he would never make a meaningful dent in the list following his traditional incubator playbook. “I know some smart people and I have access to some capital, but I don’t know everyone,” he says. The result was a one-off hackathon-like event called “IdeaDay” during which Gross contributed 10 startup ideas and accepted submissions from 200 teams looking to pursue them. IdeaLab accepted and funded four of these teams, and has seen three of the four companies go on to raise outside funding. The playbook for IdeaMarket was born.

Gross is still refining the concept for IdeaMarket itself, he admits, and thus things could change as things progress. For example, IdeaMarket is not a broker dealer and has no such relationships in place, which means the organization still needs a solution to complying with SEC crowdfunding regulations. But these issues will no doubt sort themselves out. In the near term, Gross’ number one priority is to get the word out about his new company building experiment and see what kind of buy-in he can generate.

“I've always been limited in my impact,” Gross says. “I’m based in Pasadena and have limited in time to meet with people. I don’t know the best teams in India or Africa or wherever. But great ideas and great talent aren’t limited to California or even the US. I think we can unleash what we do at Idealab onto the whole world”

Gross’ impact has hardly been limited. His track record of building successful companies rivals anyone. But with IdeaMarket, he looks to have further unshackled that creative process. Taking a page from the Beatles famous song, Gross and IdeaMarket, look “get by with a little help from [his] friends.” With friends like Levchin and Case, getting by should be the least of anyone's worries.