Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 1001 posts

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

#241

Post by Jzast »

ColanR wrote: post #67
jandrewrogers wrote: post #20

Here are a few, and I frequently have these conversations with VCs, albeit biased toward areas I work in: - Spatiotemporal analytics usually in the context of IoT. Most people currently repurpose cartographic tools for this purpose but the impedance match is poor and the tools are seriously lacking elementary functionality. There is no magic technology here, just exceptional UX/UI and an understanding of the problem…

> AI based on algorithmic induction tech i.e. not the usual DNN and ML tech everyone calls AI. This is way more interesting if you have a novel approach. Any chance you can elaborate on what you're talking about here?

I believe he is referring to AI that can generate new ideas, similar to 'thinking' versus pattern recognition, which is 'I've seen something like that before (during training!).

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

#242

Post by fpig »

weavie wrote: post #209
BillinghamJ wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like a malnutrition issue no? If all you were eating is bacon and nothing else.

But does anecdotally disprove the pure calories in, calories out rule.

The meaning of that rule is generally "if you consume less calories than you use, it is physically impossible not to lose weight". Which is definitely true.

You can eat more than you use and not gain weight if you are not metabolising the food efficiently, but you can't eat less than you use and not lose weight. The former is limited by how badly you are able to mess up your body, the latter is limited by the fundamental laws of physics.

If you're at a calorie deficit, you will lose weight no matter what you're eating or what state your body is in.

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

#243

Post by lngnmn »

I think this is a wrong question, or at least oversimplified view. The real recipe is to be highly qualified on whatever you do and ready to catch an opportunity and ride on an emerging trend. Today the buzzwords are about security, a few years ago it was about services for selfies of teens. On a larger scale there is already biotech bubble and emerging AI bubble, etc.

Basically, the strategy should be to follow the money (the demand) and to love what you do (be above average). This, it seems, the most probable way to get noticed, to get funding (for abilities) and to succeed. The markets are stochastic.

For example, if you ask yourself, how come that such piles of Java crap as Hadoop came to be so popular, the answer would be that the biotech industry has almost unlimited hot money that time and huge demand for big data processing tools, so even such poorly designed and implemented by amateurs crap would be a good-enough tool.

Suppose, I would like to make a similar tool, order of magnitude less wasteful, based on ideas from Plan9, Erlang, based on ZFS, etc, in other works, do it the right way, would I get any funding? No, because there is no real demand for quality solution when a crappy one is OK. There are exceptions, of course, how, for example, nginx became a well-crafted improvement over apache, but this is indeed an exception.

So, go to the valley and keep looking. There, it seems, no other way. The principle is that there must be a strong demand backed by big money (Wall Street investors), so even a half-backed result could be easily sold and re-used to return investments and even make some profit.

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

#244

Post by zump »

cel1ne wrote: post #168
zump wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Why can some people get by with less sleep than others and thus be more productive? - How can I determine the best time to sleep? - What food to eat before sleep? - How can I be productive all the way until I fall asleep? - Why no sleep drug without harsh side effects? Just a few things I'd like to see research into...

For decades there haven been a lot of research on sleep if you bother to look up medical and neurological papers. Also you're mixing up many different aspects. Feeling sleepy doesn't mean you're sleepy. Motivation is a different thing altogether.

> Feeling sleepy doesn't mean you're sleepy

So power through?

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

#245

Post by some1else »

JamesBarney wrote: post #154

A marketplace for specialized micro-consulting(30 minutes to an hour). I've seen plenty of projects that are rife with anti-patterns because a team was unfamiliar with a problem or technology and made a bunch of bad decisions while they were still coming up to speed. The use-case I envision would fix this. Because it's really a travesty that when we're the least familiar with technologies is when we make some of the…

Please don't call people Gurus. I've had at least three lousy experiences working with people who referred to themselves as Gurus. Some of them didn't even know the dictionary definition of the word. I feel I have dodged a number of bullets since then, by developing a healthy prejudice against self-titled Gurus.

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

#246

Post by caretStick »

Getting off of HN? Bahaha. Basically the real world. And startups... There are two classes of problems, ones where intermediate steps to solutions are not viable or marketable, meaning government and big corporate or just socialized progress will eventually open the door. The 2nd class is where every solution with a component along the solution path results in something marketable and you can spend your career doing startup BS instead of corporate, academic, or government BS.

Also study some goddamned math, logic, and science. I say this because I don't want to choke any more superstitious co-founders. Closet is going to burst. They always think they can grease you into believing their stupid plan and that that somehow makes it real, right up to the point that you stab their stupid eye socket and they see the truth, but it's too late.

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

#247

Post by Sophistifunk »

arjie wrote: post #92
joering2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about online storage that you will charge me only when I pull data? I have 20TB of data that I would like to access about 1MB statistically per year (!!) only I don't know which of that 20TB its located. Sure there is AWS and then Glaciar but with my limited knowledge with AWS you need to spin a computer and then set the rules how those files are accessible and it already goes into tens or hundreds of bucks per m…

Do the economics of the task make sense? Is cold storage actually cheaper?

Therein lies the game; the colder your storage, the more redundant copies you need of every block if you want good odds of retrieval. The only way to know a block is still good is to load it and hash it.

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

#248

Post by ap46 »

ehnto wrote: post #138
mccolin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human element of home inspection is invaluable. That interaction between homeowner (or prospective) and a knowledgeable professional is critical. But drones as tools for that professional could be great.

I think he may have been referring to rental inspections, of the quarterly kind. A pretty standard checklist. "Is there mess, is there mould, is there damage, are there pets and is that allowed?"

For that we need CHAPPIE like humanoids. Which are either packed up on the roof w/ solar charging or in janitor closet.

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

#249

Post by Draiken »

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…

This "calories in, calories out" idea is dangerously wrong.

I have problems with my weight and my wife is anorexic. We live day-to-day with the fight against obesity (for years) and that's hardly a rule, much less golden.

The only constant I see on this whole food/nutrition industry is how little information is accurate. Millions of diets and nutrition "experts" saying whatever they hear works without testing anything. The classic "worked for me, must work for everyone".

I agree the obesity problem is there to be solved, but don't oversimplify it to 3 bullet points. That's irresponsible to say the least.

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

#250

Post by Sophistifunk »

Lxr wrote: post #152

A good native LaTeX editor, with quality on par with modern IDEs (deep understanding of syntax and semantics, intellisense, etc).

What do you think is the intersection of "needs to do a lot of LaTeX" and "pays for software" groups? Honest question.
Post reply on HN