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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?

#461

Post by whitepoplar »

whitepoplar wrote: post #457

Physical space for lounging, socializing, and working. I live in NYC and there's still a striking lack of space that facilitates people getting out of their apartments and doing "whatever." Starbucks popularized the concept of the "third space" (the first two being housing + workplace) and I think there's so much room to improve upon this.

Related: physical space that welcomes the elderly. Loneliness/depression is a huge problem for older people. I think it would really boost wellbeing for these people to participate in something and to see other faces.

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

#462

Post by sparkzilla »

johnlbevan2 wrote: post #428

Hundreds of restaurants in the same geographic area will be purchasing ingredients from a variety of different suppliers, based on their need. If they clubbed together with other local businesses to source common ingredients they could benefit from economies of scale; i.e. instead of 100 restaurants each buying 200 onions, there'd be a bulk order for 20,000 onions; meaning 1 lorry to deliver direct from the supplier(…

Don't do this. You will fail. Restaurant managers don't have enough time to get involved in this, many restaurants are in competition with each other, and the existing relationships they have with distributors are very strong. Also, read Peter Thiel's book "Zero to One" -- don't enter highly competitive markets that have low margins.

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

#463

Post by CuriouslyC »

bambax wrote: post #271
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…

> 2. The vast majority of calories come from carbohydrates. Yes. Sugar is the enemy. It's ironic that so many substances are regulated or flat-out prohibited and not sugar or sodas. HFCS should be outlawed, and sodas regulated like alcohol (no sales to minors, bulk sales limited, etc.) Also, the obsession with fats and the whole industry of low-fat food needs to be dealt with, as, obviously, when the proportion of fa…

Sugar is not the enemy, sugars are just a highly efficient mechanism for providing easily assimilated biochemical energy.

The problem is over-consumption of refined sugars. This is a problem because the results of sugar metabolism (particularly fructose) are highly reactive (which is why they are so easy to metabolize), and can mess up your biochemistry by reacting with proteins and other macromolecules. The phytochemicals in plant sugar sources seem to reduce the biochemical side reactions of sugar metabolism which is probably why the plants synthesize many of them in the first place.

Refined sugars tend to spike the concentration of sugar in your body, leading to more possibility for reactions. Secondly, without the phytochemical stabilizers, the incidence of side-reactions is greater.

The body is a complex system, we need to stop trying to analyze it as if it were linear and reducible.

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

#464

Post by metaphorm »

New web browser that is legacy tech compatible (i.e. HTML, JS, CSS) but also natively supports new options for scripting and styling. I feel like JS/CSS in particular are just not what we should settle for. We've grown accustom to working with them but I think there is a lot of possibility for better front-end technology in the future.

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

#465

Post by amelius »

danieka wrote: post #357
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…

I'm the co-founder of Fliffr. We're building a marketplace for services where you can charge by the minute. We have everything from experts in SEO, chefs, personal trainers, Esport professionals. We also have a couple of developers, for example you can contact me for advice on #go #javascript or #ionic. Our goal is to build a service to quickly get in contact with an expert and only paying for the advice you need. Us…

Does it support a web-interface? It's not clear from the website.

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

#467

Post by subpixel »

johnlbevan2 wrote: post #428

Hundreds of restaurants in the same geographic area will be purchasing ingredients from a variety of different suppliers, based on their need. If they clubbed together with other local businesses to source common ingredients they could benefit from economies of scale; i.e. instead of 100 restaurants each buying 200 onions, there'd be a bulk order for 20,000 onions; meaning 1 lorry to deliver direct from the supplier(…

I recently learned about Jetro which is essentially a Costco for small restaurants and a massive business in this space.

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

#468

Post by wastedhours »

ctrl_freak wrote: post #213
DiabloD3 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

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…

This is the hard thing about the "calories in/calories out" statement, it's accurate for a specific thing: the calories of energy in a burnable form available to your body/the direct burned calories as a combination of RMR and exertion.

The issue of course is that we use it in the context of different kinds of food and a simplistic assumption about how effective we are at converting a calorie in each into a burnable form.

2000 calories of energy from custard will be processed, stored and used differently than 2000 calories of energy from chicken.

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

#470

Post by momentmaker »

fizerkhan wrote: post #75
bikamonki wrote: post #43

Here's my wishlist, not sure if there is a market for it: - Twitter w/out fake accounts. - a marketplace that uses Facebook as a vehicle for engagement/promotion but which operates independently. - Secure SMS for 2FA tokens - Android w/out Play Services - Schema-based email - Stripe for the rest of the World

For me, I desperately need "Stripe for the rest of the World".

There is bitcoin.
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