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Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#571

Post by fsloth »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #53
ggcdn wrote: post #37

As a structural engineer, I see a good opportunity to make reinforced concrete design software available in a SaaS format. The competition is outdated, clunky, requires local installation and messing about with licenses. Design firms are paying $1000-$3000/year per user/seat for what amounts to a pretty basic app. Unfortunately, there are very few people that understand both computer science and structural engineerin…

What is the total size of this market - how many users/seats are there out there for this?

A large not-going-name-it software package for modeling steel and concrete structures creates alone over 100M a year. It hardly dominates the market so depending on how the market is segmented a good estimate is probably any number between 1 and 10 times this.

Single seat licences are not the only revenue model. Once a product gains traction consulting, training and providing VIP helpdesk and bugfixing services factor in as well.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#572

Post by cs02rm0 »

briandear wrote: post #526
morgante wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The legal industry predominantly uses hourly billing and making up "equivalent hours" would be extremely unethical. It's part of why I encourage everyone I know (particularly developers) to switch from hourly to fixed-price billing. Any efficiencies you gain should belong to you, not the customer. (There's also the fact that I find a lot more people are willing to pay $10k for X than $250/hr for 40 hours.)

The problem with fixed price as a developer is that rarely are requirements exactly understood or detailed enough to actually be able to bid the job. "Export to PDF" ok.. no problem -- that then turns into: "can you add page numbers? Can you support A4 - and US letter sizes?" And you have scope creep-- one more little thing isn't reasonable to say no to, however it quickly becomes a death by a thousand paper cuts. Ok…

Definitely.

I did some fixed price work this summer for a project where I thought the scope was unusually well understood by both sides. About 3 months, 60k USD if done by a fixed deadline (yes - fixed scope, fixed price, fixed deadline!) and as far as I was concerned from the original spec I had it done within about 6 weeks.

Of course, I spent the rest of the project time politely asking the customer to sign it off and doing the odd freebie to try and keep them happy but mostly at home, not working and not wanting to take anything else on in case they turned round and said I'd screwed up somewhere massively.

Perhaps unrelated, but I still haven't been paid for all of it either. Still, if I do eventually get paid it all it will have worked out better than charging per hour.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#573

Post by rmrm »

danieltillett wrote: post #524
rmrm wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should note - yes, my wife sees no problem at all with this workflow. My understanding of the workflow is that they will send a clean copy as well as the redline to each other. Sometimes someone will in response further modify the wrong copy, and send back, which causes problems as it becomes unclear what was accepted and what was not and someone has to manually go through and check things. I hear that complaint co…

... and what is the consequence of this 'problem' to the billable hours?

At least some portion of attorneys, like my wife, work as in house counsel and therefore do actually have efficiency as a nominal goal.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#574

Post by ajepst »

timpark wrote: post #456
matthewbauer wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the software you are talking about: http://www.douglassassociates.com/ ? It looks like it's offered for free now. The thing with this kind of software, is it must be "good enough" for the task.

It looks like you have to pay "to have more than 250 entries [I don't know what's typical], to sign up for web page creation options, and to receive technical support". And here they ask for credit card details over http... http://www.douglassassociates.com/online_registration.htm

Typical is often larger than 250, and not having things like heat lists up online before the event would make people think you are not running things seriously, whether your event is over 250 or not. I hadn't looked at this web site, and haven't personally used the product. If this website is at all indicative of the user friendliness and modernity of the product itself, I can see why the event organizers complain.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#575

Post by woogiewonka »

Vehicle purchaseing. I despise having to negotiate a lower price when both parties know what the vehicle is actually worth, what incentives are available and that the salesperson is bullshiting the buyer. My soul dies a little every time I have to buy another car. I wish someone would put dealerships out of business somehow.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#576

Post by paraplegic »

tbrooks wrote: post #565

I used to work in the keynote speaking industry as an agent. This industry is horribly inefficient and intentionally so. It's mostly east-coast based - NY/DC but functions similarly to the LA entertainment industry. The main problem is this: You are a meeting planner (not your job title, you are actually a marketing person or executive assistant) and your boss just tasked you with find a speaker for your next company…

Careful, you might get 'Clintons'.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#577

Post by mathgeek »

ThomPete wrote: post #559
kapauldo wrote: post #556

This is the best thread I've ever read on HN. It's like going to a conference without the time and cost spend. How about a product that does this thread once a week. Half therapy half happy hour.

I started the original thread last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 and the discussion was so valuable and resulted in this essay https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-4... We been talking about doing it monthly. And I have been talking with a few people about creating a conference around it. No pitches, no ted-lets save the world speaks. Just problems and people who are looking…

> No pitches, no ted-lets save the world speaks. Just problems and people who are looking for problems to solve.

What ideas have you come up with to efficiently match up the problems with the solvers? Seems like pitches would still be involved somehow.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#578

Post by whysonot »

tbrooks wrote: post #565

I used to work in the keynote speaking industry as an agent. This industry is horribly inefficient and intentionally so. It's mostly east-coast based - NY/DC but functions similarly to the LA entertainment industry. The main problem is this: You are a meeting planner (not your job title, you are actually a marketing person or executive assistant) and your boss just tasked you with find a speaker for your next company…

tbrooks I'd love to learn more about this -- could I get in touch?

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#579

Post by mathgeek »

koz1000 wrote: post #326
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85

Rapid generation of high quality 3D models of existing objects. Process should be independent of object size eg. a coke can should use the same process as a car and process time should scale with object size. Think somewhere on the order of 10,000 models per day throughput. There's $BNs waiting for you. It's ridiculously hard.

My colleagues at Creaform have something that works pretty well. Their latest handheld scanner can generate a wire mesh on the fly with 0.030mm resolution. http://www.creaform3d.com/en 10K scans/day is way beyond their limits, and I'm not sure that's a very common use case. But I bet they could get there if they wanted.

I'm sure I speak for many of my fellow fans of physics when I say that technology capable 8.6 seconds per scanning a complex smaller object would have applications beyond just making 3D models.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#580

Post by doingmyting »

forgetsusername wrote: post #94
tomtheelder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but this is rude, discouraging, and flat out wrong. This sort of stuff happens all the time. I personally work for a company whose founders implanted them in an incredibly calcified industry despite no industry experience, and I can rattle off dozens of successful examples of this. In fact, this very attitude is the exact reason why there have been industries that are primed for "disruption." If only those…

> I'm sorry, but this is rude, discouraging, and flat out wrong. I'd rather people feel slighted than to have a bunch of kids fresh out of college trying to disrupt, say, the health insurance industry. This isn't about "fresh eyes". The problem with having no domain knowledge is that you can't identify many of the issues that needs solving within an industry. Every job I've ever had, I see issues that I can solve wit…

I'd argue the opposite. Too much domain knowledge leads to creation of the very same "solutions" that have existed with minor tweaks. See Henry Ford faster horse for reference.
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