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Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#181

Post by eggie »

aabajian wrote: post #151

The leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease. >90% of these cases can be attributed to an overweight population. It's not an easy problem to solve, but there has to be a way to fix it. Lots of calorie counting apps, activity trackers, motivational reminder apps, etc. Obesity is very complicated, but there are three basic facts: 1. Calories in, calories out is the golden rule. 2. The vast majority of calories…

And yet control of the food supply is dominated by a tiny number of slow-moving, conservative companies who appear to spend most of their efforts engineering crops to behave like biological instantiations of intellectual property. Yield is the primary objective, not nutritional quality. Farmers integrated in this system have given up a huge amount of their autonomy and also influence over the breeds of crops and animals that they raise. Crop and livestock genetic diversity has plummeted, and we have removed the local experts from the breeding process.

I am shocked by the amount of effort going into fixing health problems post-hoc relative to efforts aimed at improving the foods we eat. In fact, we seem to be going backwards. The intellectual vanguard is pushing organic + non-GMO produce, heirloom foodstuffs, artisan food practices, and other regressive (if high-quality) patterns that won't encourage nutritional improvement for the majority of people.

We should be applying ourselves to improving food. It's completely overlooked because it's seen as a solved problem. I can completely understand why, but I think it's pretty clear, given the health problems in the west, that there is more to be done.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#182

Post by sunshinejoy »

burgalon wrote: post #166

Here are my thoughts 1) Free p2p money transfers / gateway to bitcoin or other crypto-currency so that it's more widely adopted 2) Better open bank accounts - allowing open transparent accounting for organizations and companies 3) Solve democracy - better analytical tools for mass discussion, arguments and decision making which will encourage use of facts and science, and discourage politics 4) Human-Machine interfac…

For 3) Solve democracy, a friend showed me pol.is (neat demo of it: https://pol.is/demo/2demo).

Anyway, it's description is..."pol.is brings AI & machine learning to participatory democracy. Scale up outreach in online consultation & get powerful insights that can shape and legitimize policy." It would be amazing if U.S. politics could be grounded in legitimate understanding of each other.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#183

Post by cel1ne »

WA wrote: post #165

Contraception. Almost everybody needs it. The current solution of flooding the body with hormones works, but causes side effects. The pill for men won't make it. My prediction is that we'll have some other non-hormonal contraception within the next 20-30 years, probably invented by a startup that wants to disrupt this billion dollar market.

Just wanted to add that, when taking on big-pharma, you should prepare being sued out of principle. There are so many patents in their hands.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#184

Post by nkkollaw »

nicolaslem wrote: post #156
tyingq wrote: post #3

The old shared hosting market is still pretty large. But it is stuck with ancient stuff like cpanel and mostly dominated by stagnant players like EIG, GoDaddy, and the like. Seems like there's room for a move something like what DigitalOcean did in the VPS space.

And you are talking about mostly hosting PHP application. For some stacks these stagnant players do not even exist. The user experience of deploying a Python/Django code to production is so bad in my opinion that I started a shared hosting service focused only on that: https://prodmatic.com

You need to change the hero image, IMO, it looks very templatey.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#185

Post by socket0 »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #178
aabajian wrote: post #151

The leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease. >90% of these cases can be attributed to an overweight population. It's not an easy problem to solve, but there has to be a way to fix it. Lots of calorie counting apps, activity trackers, motivational reminder apps, etc. Obesity is very complicated, but there are three basic facts: 1. Calories in, calories out is the golden rule. 2. The vast majority of calories…

time to test the market for gravy flavored e-cigarettes!

Make mine deep-fried potato products, and I'm in. Although something nausiating to kill any appetite might be more productive.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#186

Post by cel1ne »

sunshinejoy wrote: post #182
burgalon wrote: post #166

Here are my thoughts 1) Free p2p money transfers / gateway to bitcoin or other crypto-currency so that it's more widely adopted 2) Better open bank accounts - allowing open transparent accounting for organizations and companies 3) Solve democracy - better analytical tools for mass discussion, arguments and decision making which will encourage use of facts and science, and discourage politics 4) Human-Machine interfac…

For 3) Solve democracy, a friend showed me pol.is (neat demo of it: https://pol.is/demo/2demo ). Anyway, it's description is..."pol.is brings AI & machine learning to participatory democracy. Scale up outreach in online consultation & get powerful insights that can shape and legitimize policy." It would be amazing if U.S. politics could be grounded in legitimate understanding of each other.

The problem is not making the tools, it's getting everybody to learn and use them.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#187

Post by DiabloD3 »

aabajian wrote: post #151

The leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease. >90% of these cases can be attributed to an overweight population. It's not an easy problem to solve, but there has to be a way to fix it. Lots of calorie counting apps, activity trackers, motivational reminder apps, etc. Obesity is very complicated, but there are three basic facts: 1. Calories in, calories out is the golden rule. 2. The vast majority of calories…

Calories in, calories out is not the golden rule, and this has been scientifically proven false.

Also, hilarious adventure I went on once: I ate 4000 calories of bacon a day and nothing else for a month... ended up cutting it off a little early because I was losing weight too quickly.

Your second and third points however are scientifically supported, but do not confuse this with "obesity is complicated." It is not how many calories you eat, it is where they come from.

I used to weigh 340 pounds, I went strictly Paleo, did not increase caloric burn, did not decrease caloric intake in any meaningful way, hit 214 in a year, and then continued dropping; roughly 2000 calories a day and not a lot of exercise (was afraid of joint damage due to weighing so much).

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#188

Post by nailer »

WA wrote: post #165

Contraception. Almost everybody needs it. The current solution of flooding the body with hormones works, but causes side effects. The pill for men won't make it. My prediction is that we'll have some other non-hormonal contraception within the next 20-30 years, probably invented by a startup that wants to disrupt this billion dollar market.

This pill won't because depression and inability to maintain an erection are side effects. But one in future may.

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#189

Post by senex »

dirtyaura wrote: post #96
cperciva wrote: post #64

Figure out a way to reduce the not-in-San-Francisco penalty for startups. There are some very good reasons why startups flock to the bay area, including "lots of available talent" and "that's where the VCs are", but there are also problems with being in the bay area -- talent is considerably more expensive (due in part to the cost of housing) and visa issues (particularly under the current presidency) being the first…

I wonder if this is really solvable by technology and tools? In my opinion, tools for effective remote working are there. Github, Slack style communication, collaborative project management tools, CI tools in cloud. Design tools could be more collaborative, but it ain't a showstopper. Video conferencing still sucks now and then, but 50 years after the Mother of All Demos, it starts to be usable enough :) I feel that…

A related market for some of this tech: remote interviews. I've seen lots of solutions for this: collaborative code editors, hangouts, Skype etc. There are frequently problems with bandwidth and friction with coordination (handoff to other interviewers).

Solution to "frictionless" remote work / collaboration among teams (not just engineers) seems similar to interview problem. The target market may also be distinct (teams don't remote work, but remote interviews are common).

moocs might benefit too?

Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?

#190

Post by senex »

dirtyaura wrote: post #96
cperciva wrote: post #64

Figure out a way to reduce the not-in-San-Francisco penalty for startups. There are some very good reasons why startups flock to the bay area, including "lots of available talent" and "that's where the VCs are", but there are also problems with being in the bay area -- talent is considerably more expensive (due in part to the cost of housing) and visa issues (particularly under the current presidency) being the first…

I wonder if this is really solvable by technology and tools? In my opinion, tools for effective remote working are there. Github, Slack style communication, collaborative project management tools, CI tools in cloud. Design tools could be more collaborative, but it ain't a showstopper. Video conferencing still sucks now and then, but 50 years after the Mother of All Demos, it starts to be usable enough :) I feel that…

A related market for some of this tech: remote interviews. I've seen lots of solutions for this: collaborative code editors, hangouts, Skype etc. There are frequently problems with bandwidth and friction with coordination (handoff to other interviewers).

Solution to "frictionless" remote work / collaboration among teams (not just engineers) seems similar to interview problem. The target market may also be distinct (teams don't remote work, but remote interviews are common).

moocs might benefit too?

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