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Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

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Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#41

Post by damnusername »

hoodoof wrote: post #40
damnusername wrote: post #6

I submitted this to slashdot a few weeks ago, but it got declined: "For some time now, I have been following the "startup scene" and frankly, I am left with a sense of dismay. How many of the startups actually do anything of any real value to mankind? It seems to me that the startup ideas just keep getting more ridiculous and stupid by the day and I think I would go as far as to call the whole thing deeply broken. I…

Where has this concept of "world changing is important, and a business must be of real value to mankind" come from in recent years? Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business? Since when did this become some sort of measure of the worth of a tech company? Sounds like misguided hippy shit to me. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't set out to…

Well, that's ok, we all see things differently. And I guess, I don't have a problem with that. If that is what you want to do, go for it. But I would rather not be called some pompous git, I really think that is as far from what I am as possibly can be. Ok, I can be an asshole sometimes, but I try not to be.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#42

Post by hoodoof »

damnusername wrote: post #41
hoodoof wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has this concept of "world changing is important, and a business must be of real value to mankind" come from in recent years? Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business? Since when did this become some sort of measure of the worth of a tech company? Sounds like misguided hippy shit to me. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't set out to…

Well, that's ok, we all see things differently. And I guess, I don't have a problem with that. If that is what you want to do, go for it. But I would rather not be called some pompous git, I really think that is as far from what I am as possibly can be. Ok, I can be an asshole sometimes, but I try not to be.

It's pompous to judge the startups you see against some measure of "importance to mankind". Sadly many startups seem to judge themselves against the same standard and seem to have some sense of guilt if they aren't creating clean water for millions in the desert.

Perhaps you should rejoice in the fucking incredible explosion of energy and creativity and effort that the entire world is putting into trying to find uses for the Internet.

Just relax with your hippy ideals. Have fun.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#43

Post by IgorPartola »

yen223 wrote: post #22
zeit_geist wrote: post #9

A super incomplete list: Databases: - PipelineDB - Snowflake (Computing) Internet of Things / Communications: - Helium Robotics: - Pneubotics - Kuka, namely the research department Autonomous Systems / "Self Driving Car" et al.: - Kiva - Anki Computer-Vision / VR based: - Jaunt - Oculus VR (especially the 'research' department) Agriculture: - Blueriver http://www.bluerivert.com (there are many more super-interesting…

Is Kuka really a 'startup'? They are very well established among the industrial robotics scene.

What a name!..

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#44

Post by volaski »

damnusername wrote: post #6

I submitted this to slashdot a few weeks ago, but it got declined: "For some time now, I have been following the "startup scene" and frankly, I am left with a sense of dismay. How many of the startups actually do anything of any real value to mankind? It seems to me that the startup ideas just keep getting more ridiculous and stupid by the day and I think I would go as far as to call the whole thing deeply broken. I…

This is because startups are not supposed to be working on these "seemingly big" problems. If a problem looks big and looks like it potentially has a huge market, every other large company in the field would be already working on this. As a startup, it is stupid to try to tackle something that obviously big. That's why most successful startups start out as something that doesn't look threatening. Of course, there are genuinely ridiculous ones like "uber for clowns", "kickstarter for baristas", "airbnb for prostitutes", etc. but I can guarantee if you look back in a decade, what actually changed the world will have been what you now consider ridiculous.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#45

Post by damnusername »

damnusername wrote: post #41
hoodoof wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has this concept of "world changing is important, and a business must be of real value to mankind" come from in recent years? Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business? Since when did this become some sort of measure of the worth of a tech company? Sounds like misguided hippy shit to me. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't set out to…

Well, that's ok, we all see things differently. And I guess, I don't have a problem with that. If that is what you want to do, go for it. But I would rather not be called some pompous git, I really think that is as far from what I am as possibly can be. Ok, I can be an asshole sometimes, but I try not to be.

Trying to find uses for the internet? Oh well. If you think it is pompous to "judge the startups you see against some measure of "importance to mankind"" I think there is a problem, and you are probably part of it. I don't want to argue. Just go make lots of money and find some use for the internet and all is well.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#46

Post by matt4077 »

hoodoof wrote: post #40
damnusername wrote: post #6

I submitted this to slashdot a few weeks ago, but it got declined: "For some time now, I have been following the "startup scene" and frankly, I am left with a sense of dismay. How many of the startups actually do anything of any real value to mankind? It seems to me that the startup ideas just keep getting more ridiculous and stupid by the day and I think I would go as far as to call the whole thing deeply broken. I…

Where has this concept of "world changing is important, and a business must be of real value to mankind" come from in recent years? Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business? Since when did this become some sort of measure of the worth of a tech company? Sounds like misguided hippy shit to me. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't set out to…

It's exactly because all these startups pretend to be "changing the world" that they become measured by these promises. And obviously most come up short.

But that doesn't need to be a bad thing. Paying lip service to "real" progress, especially when it concerns poverty/environment/democracy etc, may actually lead to actual progress down the road.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#47

Post by jacques_chester »

I work for Pivotal, which is working on a bunch of problems. We're a startup in that we were founded on investment capital (EMC and GE) and we're growing very fast.

Probably the biggest effort we're making is on Cloud Foundry, an opensource PaaS. Developing scalable production-grade systems for managing and running 12 factor apps is hard. Superficially it looks easy. Once you do anything at scale, it stops being easy, which is where we come in.

We also have teams working on Hadoop, GemFire, antirez is on Redis and Disque, the Spring team works for us and I've kinda lost track of the rest.

I work for Pivotal Labs, the agile development wing founded in 1989 from which the whole company takes its name.

We're hiring across all divisions. Email me: jchester@pivotal.io.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#48

Post by hoodoof »

matt4077 wrote: post #46
hoodoof wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has this concept of "world changing is important, and a business must be of real value to mankind" come from in recent years? Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business? Since when did this become some sort of measure of the worth of a tech company? Sounds like misguided hippy shit to me. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't set out to…

It's exactly because all these startups pretend to be "changing the world" that they become measured by these promises. And obviously most come up short. But that doesn't need to be a bad thing. Paying lip service to "real" progress, especially when it concerns poverty/environment/democracy etc, may actually lead to actual progress down the road.

Where has this need come from for startups to feel illegitimate unless they are changing the world, giving back to the community, bringing world peace blah blah

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#49

Post by hoodoof »

fh973 wrote: post #39

Quobyte. We're building a fault-tolerant scalable distributed storage system for POSIX files, block and object storage. Lots of challenges around distributed systems, architecture and concurrency. Development is in Berlin, Germany, and we're hiring. http://www.quobyte.com

What's the revenue plan for a business like that?
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