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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?

#61

Post by mason240 »

patrickk wrote: post #8
mason240 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military is terrible for this. You are constantly filling out forms that amount to a half page of your basic information, followed by a couple of text fields that form is actually for.

It might not work for the military specifically, but for browser based forms, Lastpass has a form fill feature: https://helpdesk.lastpass.com/fill-form-basics/ I'm sure it's possible to hack together an AHK script[1], combined with Pulover's macro creator[2] to automate virtually anything repetitive on a Windows PC, or use Selenium to automate browser actions[3]. Of course then you run the risk of having to fall into…

It's mostly paper.

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

#62

Post by ggcdn »

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 The competition is outdated, clunky, requires local installation and messing about with licenses.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?

Not sure.

In the US there are about 281,400 civil engineers [1]. I couldn't find more detailed information on structural engineers.

-Assume about 10% are practicing structural engineers who need to design concrete structures = 28140.

-Assume a company wants 1 license for every 2 engineers = 14070. (I base this off the fact that my company has 6 licenses for 12 engineers, but we may be higher than average)

-Assume we could get 10% market share = 1407 subscribers.

-Assume $1000/subscriber/year = $1,407,000 from the US market

Obviously this isn't a very rigourous analysis.

[1]: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/civil-en...

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

#63

Post by dvdhnt »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #47
dvdhnt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably bias because I've lived in two areas now where healthcare is one of a few, if not the, major industry in the area. They're always trying out new apps and services here. I am on board with what you're saying; an escape hatch for non- or semi-adopters. Obviously, printing is a way to go, so maybe on the mobile app, the ability to check each piece of information required then export/email to your preferred…

Hmm, Google Drive does a reasonable job of that. It indexes everything (including OCR for images + PDFs), has decent search, and has per-folder permissioning and sharing. It's actually a pretty good solution for ad-hoc "working together" with someone (a lawyer / architect / whatever) on a project, where you have lots of files you need to share and refer to during the project.

Totally didn't think of that, especially the OCR which is great, having used it before with the mobile app.

I wonder if you could stitch together a workflow as a reseller for Google Apps (no clue what their current name is)?

Either way, good suggestion.

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

#64

Post by contingencies »

Jtsummers wrote: post #54
contingencies wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suggestion amounts to "work around it". That's one perspective, but also consider the very real problems of irregular ends of the loaf (where cutting thinner would result in a piece too small along the other two dimensions to be useful), loaves with air pockets that need to be cut thicker to maintain structural integrity (and utility) of the resulting toast, and people who simply prefer thicker slices.

What you want, then, is more akin to a sandwich press rather than a toaster. Or perhaps a toaster oven. Mechanically, it's not impossible, but the design of a toaster (spring loaded release, heating elements on either side) can't be altered much without turning it into one of those two things (or a poor imitation of them).

Seems a tortured equation: perhaps a vertical sandwich press without the press! I was thinking it may be possible to change the spring to another form of vertical linear actuator (eg. stepper motor driven) and giving it more controlled movement, also smarter with proximity/LOS-style sensors. Perhaps the top cover could also expand and contract. The very fact there's a spring-loaded release shows this is old tech. The market can clearly tolerate a few dollars for a stepper motor, as there are 'smart' toasters selling for nearly ~$200USD and the bottom is ~undifferentiated. See http://www.brevillegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/B...

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

#65

Post by aith »

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…

Have you got an example/names of existing software? I'm interested to see what kind of features they have.

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

#66

Post by contingencies »

Jtsummers wrote: post #55
contingencies wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it's very space and energy inefficient.

In the US, most toaster ovens I've seen have about 2-3 times the footprint of the average toaster, with additional height. This is actually pretty reasonable as you can use the toaster oven instead of the oven or microwave oven for many tasks (it's a less specialised tool than a toaster).

Last I read, US homes are the second largest in the world, after Australia. In Asia, many people live in apartments and that space is unavailable / non-negotiable. In addition, microwaves are not nearly so widely used.

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

#67

Post by contingencies »

ericcumbee wrote: post #20
contingencies wrote: post #13

Normally I live in China, and rarely eat western breakfast. Recently I returned to Australia to spend some Christmas time with my extended family. A few mornings ago, I put some real bread I cut from a sourdough loaf in a toaster. Due to its irregular size, when it popped it didn't pop out completely, resulting in a sort of "toaster is too hot to insert fingers, toast is too hot to hold, toast is ready, find metallic…

They did its called the toaster oven.

For people scanning, this is a repeat of a previous comment answered elsewhere.

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

#68

Post by danielvinson »

scrollaway wrote: post #29
mcheshier wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Steam already solve this?

For themselves! It's also not a great system, lots of legacy. More to the point though, it's not a commercial system. Steam behaves as a distribution platform and licenses the publishing rather than the distribution. Which is not at all interesting for self-published games (be it indies who want to avoid steam, big publishers with their own systems etc).

Steam supports any game from any publisher, including self-published games. Steam is exactly what you get when you try to solve this problem, because none of the big companies want to be involved, since they see it as competition. Blizzard and EA are the only two big companies I know of that are not on Steam, and they both have direct competitors to it that are vendor-locked.

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

#69

Post by wslh »

chollida1 wrote: post #27

Data management. 1) Cleaning the data as it comes in rather than in batches so we can use it sooner, invalid data is discarded, outlier detection, normalizing inputs etc.... 2) Warehousing of the data with proper indexes so you can perform some advanced queries on unstructured data 3) Some data is sent in bulk at the end of day, some of the data is streamed in fire hose style. How can we preprocess the fire hose data…

In my limited experience this is science, art, and craft. I don't think there is a specific method to do this in an automated way.

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

#70

Post by gravity13 »

contingencies wrote: post #13

Normally I live in China, and rarely eat western breakfast. Recently I returned to Australia to spend some Christmas time with my extended family. A few mornings ago, I put some real bread I cut from a sourdough loaf in a toaster. Due to its irregular size, when it popped it didn't pop out completely, resulting in a sort of "toaster is too hot to insert fingers, toast is too hot to hold, toast is ready, find metallic…

I agree. Make Toasters Great Again.
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