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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?

#391

Post by nickjackson »

mrweasel wrote: post #370
mslot wrote: post #352

I always think there are huge opportunities for growth in intra-EU trade. It's a market with over 500M people and a $17 trillion GDP. While the EU has taken away a lot of trade barriers, language and unfamiliar regulations remain a huge barrier, but also a huge potential for growth. If a company in California has ample opportunities to sell in Florida (>2000 miles away), why then is it significantly more difficult fo…

You could most likely make a decent living just handling VAT calculations and registration for companies.

I've been looking into this a bit, but put off by the fact that EU VAT for digital products isnt really being enforced upon US companies, so not sure there is much of a market for it. Also, as a brit I'm not sure how brexit might screw up the business model.

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

#392

Post by Tepix »

Provide a paid subscription to Android updates for old popular phones. Don't add new features (unless it's easy), just make sure they remain secure.

Phones are lasting longer and longer, the main reason to get a new one is no longer that it's too slow, it's the lack of updates. It's very wasteful.

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

#393

Post by gonzo »

betageek wrote: post #336
ctrl_freak wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add on to this, my understanding is that technically "calories in, calories out" is correct in the sense that weight gain/loss depends on the net caloric intake for your body. But your base metabolic rate, and as a result your daily energy expenditure, is affected by many different things, including the composition of the calories and the timing of the consumption. Insulin plays a major role in weight gain/loss, a…

Exactly, no breakdown of thermodynamics needed, any calories not efficiently processed into usable energy will be emitted as waste.

Or ... Stored. Which is the problem.

If we really did eliminate the excess, nobody would be overweight.

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

#394

Post by csl »

narag wrote: post #382
BjoernKW wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you suggest going about overcoming these differences? I live in the EU. I've thought about this for some time and I can't really think of a scalable approach. One aspect of the problem is taxes and regulations, which for the most part has to be addressed politically. The different jurisdictions are a cause for friction, too. The even more significant barrier however is the linguistic and cultural one. It's…

Then the opportunity could be creating a company that solves these problems for other companies.

So, a consultancy company then? Which we all know only scales with the number of employees.

Most people in Europe use Gmail, right? So they must already have figured out this stuff.

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

#395

Post by TulliusCicero »

adventured wrote: post #380
emptyfile wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually shocking there's not a EU wide Amazon.

There is, it's Amazon. They're closing in on $20 billion in European sales, growing at double digits, with something like 50,000 employees. If you look at what they're doing in Europe, Amazon is getting more aggressive by the year in terms of expanding and investing there.

I think what the poster was saying is that the major sites are still country-specific, like I moved to Germany and here I use amazon.de, amazon.uk is a different site, so is amazon.fr, etc.

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

#396

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Tepix wrote: post #363
messel wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is keeper, I'm at 350+ ideal weight around 230-240lbs (6'7") and looking for something to shake up my consumption that makes sense. I regularly exercise (20hrs/week low-medium impact) but eat fast foods

How did you calculate your ideal weight? Isn't it more around 210lbs?

Isn't an ideal weight a complex function of things like occupation and personal taste. A brick-layer probably needs to carry more muscle, than people in other occupations; some people probably prefer to look more muscular/toned (etc.).

Surely there's not an objective ideal weight for any particular person?

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

#397

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

sah2ed wrote: post #239
xorcist wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't reading a book about React before they started working with it be preferrable? That's something I've seen getting much worse over the past decade with the proliferation of frameworks. What you call "getting up to speed" is tempting to call "playing with". People work with tools that they have no knowledge of. Learning on the job is good, but I think one should have at least an idea of how the tools are suppo…

> Wouldn't reading a book about React before they started working with it be preferrable? Great in theory but difficult in practice. Developers rarely ever have the luxury to pick up a book as a means of getting up to speed when there exists online resources like Google and StackOverflow where you can easily find posts that answer your query string(s) verbatim.

But you don't necessarily know what you don't know.

If you don't know enough to ask high quality questions, SO and Google won't help you.

If you're lucky, G will lead you to tuts and repos with useful code.

If you're not, you'll make a ton of stupid beginner mistake and be overdrawn on the technical debt account before you even start.

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

#398

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

Another thing that would help solve this is more regular exercise, and this is indeed a solvable issue, but probably not by the private sector; the government could prioritize support for modes that are healthier (walking, biking, even transit since that usually involves walking too) than driving. The Netherlands would be a leading example here, their rates of walking and biking for transportation are very high.

Yes people can exercise as its own thing too, but realistically it's way easier to get most people consistently exercising if it's something they're doing as a part of their regular daily activities.

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

#399

Post by WA »

danieltillett wrote: post #267
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.

Lots of women benefit from the flood of hormones, but this is slightly off topic. The real reason is that it it is impossible to develop any new drug that will be given to healthy people. The legal and regulatory system basically makes it a losing proposition to make a new contraceptive - you could give sugar pills to everyone and someone will have a bad reaction and the lawyers will sue you into bankruptcy.

> Lots of women benefit from the flood of hormones, but this is slightly off topic

And many more suffer from side effects that they don't even attribute anymore to hormonal contraceptives after years of intake.

Do you think that daily medication for half of the population is acceptable? Because if so, you could also argue that lots of people might benefit from taking happy pills every day.

Taking medication for every little uncomfort might be more accepted in the US, but it doesn't mean that this is a healthy view of the body and the world.

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

#400

Post by klausjensen »

adventured wrote: post #380
emptyfile wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually shocking there's not a EU wide Amazon.

There is, it's Amazon. They're closing in on $20 billion in European sales, growing at double digits, with something like 50,000 employees. If you look at what they're doing in Europe, Amazon is getting more aggressive by the year in terms of expanding and investing there.

I use Amazon in Europa a LOT, but funny enough it is not ONE amazon in EU, it is many - and I have to search for products on all of them, because what is available in amazon.de might not be available in amazon.co.uk. And there are obviously language barriers - and having to do math to convert currencies etc. It is anything but smooth right now - unless you are in one of the countries, that have their own amazon.tld, of course.

I want amazon.eu, where I can filter by products, that can actually be shipped to my EU country - one stop shopping. I would probably stop buying online from local shops in my country entirely.

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