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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?

#541

Post by garrettdc »

slowmotiony wrote: post #314
Draiken wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anythin…

Can you expand on how the idea is wrong? Because it's not.

"Dangerously wrong" may be incorrect, but it tends to ignore things like thermic effects of food sources, intake vs. absorption, nutrient timing, and efficient gut microbes.

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

#542

Post by ccvannorman »

hexhex wrote: post #520
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…

I don't think that's a problem that is solvable with technology. It's a social problem. Less social inequality and better education, taxes on unhealthy food, less working hours. That would be necessary to tackle the problem. Obesity is just a symptom. I love the SV mindset: Let's not get to the reasons of something, let's just build an app and everything will be good.

My gears are turning.. an app that tells you the viability of solving a given problem using an app. It would be powered by AWS array on the back end using google's latest AI, TensorFlow, and it would also be community driven like Yelp. We'd make our profits by taking advantage of platform network advantage to connect cofounders, investors, and customers for the startups who use us and move forwards.

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

#543

Post by Jemmeh »

maroonblazer wrote: post #514
delecti wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've provided almost no information, but at 340 lbs it's possible your TDEE was more than 4000 calories/day, meaning it's possible you went on a reduced calorie diet with your bacon strategy. Without more information, your anecdote is useless, and even with more information it's still just an anecdote. Also, Paleo, like any similar structured diet, is just a trick to get you to ingest fewer calories. And I'm going…

Robert Lustig[0] and Gary Taubes[1] are excellent places to start to understand that obesity is not simply about 'calories in/calories out'. Lustig has a now-infamous talk that surveys the research.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lustig [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Taubes [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Relevant short video from the Documentary "FatHead" that talks a little bit about what Gary Taubes is talking about in his book. The effects of carb/sugar and the insulin response that causes fat storage. https://youtu.be/mNYlIcXynwE

It's free on Amazon Prime Video if anyone wants to watch it. I'm still only halfway through it though, so if he suddenly says we should just eat helium at the end I'm sorry. :P

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

#544

Post by kj01a »

DanBC wrote: post #516
kj01a wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either thermodynamics is wrong, or you are undisciplined. Which do you think is more likely?

Imagine we study you for a year. We put you in a box, we control your food intake; we strictly monitor the amount of exercise you get. The first six months you stay the weight you are now. We then introduce a single change: we put you on antipsychotic medication. Nothing else changes: you're eating the same type of food and in the same quantities. You will gain weight. Is that because thermodynamics is broken? No. Is…

The fact that your body can change the number of calories it burn disproves nothing. For example, the more weight you lose the fewer calories you burn, thus your calorie intake must lower to sustain the same deficit.

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

#545

Post by gerbilly »

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…

Good luck solving overeating with a smartphone.

For some people eating is even more addictive than Facebook or Candy Crush.

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

#546

Post by ikeboy »

I think retail can be improved, and even small improvements can have large impacts because of the sheer size of the market: US retail sales are in the $5 trillion range yearly, mostly in brick and mortar.

Specific problems:

1. Why is brick and mortar still so popular, and can any pain points with e-commerce be fixed?

2. E-commerce doesn't work well on cheap items where shipping cost is prohibitive. Different companies have tried to solve this in various ways, with Prime (losing money on cheaper sales in hopes they can reduce logistics cost and drive larger sales) or Jet (directly giving shipping savings for ordering multiple items at once). It will be difficult to compete with Prime, but there has to be an angle that works, Jet found one.

3. Simpler price comparison. I tried to build the feature I thought should exist at https://icanpriceit.com/ as a side project, but didn't spend the time to properly launch it. I hope some startup succeeds in that space, I've been watching https://wikibuy.com/ which is quite similar.

I think there's plenty of room to build the next Amazon or eBay. The fees they charge third party sellers have been going up over time, if a marketplace was willing to accept lower fees at first it could help early growth.

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

#547

Post by kj01a »

watwut wrote: post #510
kj01a wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either thermodynamics is wrong, or you are undisciplined. Which do you think is more likely?

How much calories your body extracts from food and subsequently stores is not a constant. The thermodynamics argument basically ignores how human body works, but hey, it is simple.

No one is saying calorie intake should be constant.

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

#548

Post by sotojuan »

xorcist wrote: post #215
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…

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…

The problem is that React best practices have changed in the past year alone. Buying a book from say, early 2016 would be useless now.

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

#549

Post by La1n »

watwut wrote: post #511
arkh wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This "calories in, calories out" idea is dangerously wrong. You don't see a lot of overweight people in famine prone areas. Calories out - calories in = your weight curve. That's the easy part for losing weight. Sport does not burn a lot of calories. So it is better to cut on the intake. Which is the hard part: food can be a comfort drug which is easily available. Worse when your entourage is full of overweight peo…

People in famine prone areas are considerably more sicker and live shorter (even when they don't die from famine) then western overweight people. Being overweight is healthier then living there. Also, famine makes you passive, tired and well, less bright. There is a reason why famine prone areas dont produce tech hubs and nobel prize winners.

This is mostly due to malnutrition and not calorie restriction as far as I know. Calorie restriction has many positive health effects. Even then, comparing overweight people to famine struck people is an unfair comparison, it's like comparing a morbidly obese person to someone who is just underweight.

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

#550

Post by andrepd »

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.

Isn't this just a café?
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