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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?

#671

Post by Gargoyle »

aaronchall wrote: post #425
paulojreis wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"1. Calories in, calories out is the golden rule." Yes, but I'd argue it's not a very helpful rule. As it has been said before, it's pretty much like saying that the golden rule to get rich is "money in vs. money out". Correct, but not very helpful.

How is it unhelpful to be told what you need to do? Are you saying you need more specifics? If you want to improve your financial position, either earn more money (get a side job, take a higher paying job with more responsibility), or spend less money (buy beans and rice in bulk, prepare your own meals, sell your luxury car to get rid of the payments and drive a paid-for beater, take public transit and read a book on…

If you want the font on your webpage to be larger, change the pattern of magnetic data stored on your hard drive.

This is what you need to do. Do you need more specifics?

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

#672

Post by pdq »

pgroves wrote: post #608

Health Insurance / Hospital. I'm old enough that I now go to the doctor more frequently than I used to and it's a mess. A health insurance company that could reliably allow a user to change their address on a website would be competitive. Having all of your medical procedures and orders accessible through a simple CRUD app would be a threat to a lot of multi-billion dollar companies. It's still all done through phone…

What will improve the medical industry in the US dramatically is transparent pricing.

When both consumers and providers have no idea how much the product or service they are using actually costs, there is no way to control costs (ie competition, delaying the service, using an alternative product/service, etc). Thus our prices have spiraled out of control.

For example, delivering a baby is an incredibly common procedure, known months in advance, but with opaque pricing paid by third parties, there is no incentive to price shop, nor is that straightforward for a consumer to do. The current average price of a routine delivery is over $8k [1].

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/30/costs-of-delivering-babies-va...

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

#673

Post by swamp40 »

sytelus wrote: post #207

Hackers rarely think of politics as playing field for startups, so in my mind this one of the biggest untapped opportunity right now. People from both sides are going nuts over Trump politics. That means tons of eyeballs and attention that would be available for the right startups for next 4 years. Things like BuzzFeed and DailyXYZ are going to make a massive killing in terms of ad revenue. At this stage still the re…

And a blockchain on information flow so you can easily backtrack fake news to its origin - with one "find origin" click.

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

#674

Post by coriny »

kj01a wrote: post #508
coriny wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC506782/

That paper is defining a calorie as the chemical make up of a particular macronutrient. Which is wrong. A calorie is a unit of measure of energy. Plus, if something violated a law of thermodynamics, that law would have changed. And it hasn't.

I probably should have added more comment, but the point is the "Calorie is a calorie" argument as applied to diet was pretty thoroughly debunked over decade ago. Calorie counting is a poor predictor of weight, while source of calories is a much stronger predictor. However, plenty of other people have commenting with more detailed explanations as to why, so I won't go on.

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

#675

Post by gcatalfamo »

burgalon wrote: post #166

Here are my thoughts 1) Free p2p money transfers / gateway to bitcoin or other crypto-currency so that it's more widely adopted 2) Better open bank accounts - allowing open transparent accounting for organizations and companies 3) Solve democracy - better analytical tools for mass discussion, arguments and decision making which will encourage use of facts and science, and discourage politics 4) Human-Machine interfac…

Hasn't Johnny Mnemonic taught you anything???

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

#676

Post by crazygringo »

scriptkiddy wrote: post #667
CuriouslyC wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not the OP, there is research demonstrating that the blood glucose and insulin response to various carbohydrate sources is highly specific to the individual. In the study I'm thinking of, some people were given cookies, others were given bananas (among other things). The responses weren't consistent at all. As for calories in/out being a simplification, while it is mostly true, the tricky bit is that calories o…

I agree with you to an extent. However, none of this changes the fact that consistent exercise increases the rate of metabolism significantly and generally leads to better mental and physical health. It also doesn't change the fact that eating at a caloric deficit will always lead to weight loss. A caloric deficit alone is not enough for one to reduce to a healthy weight as they may also be losing large amounts of mu…

But it's not that simple -- "eating at a caloric deficit" isn't a constant thing. You can eat less, but your metabolism might drop even further, so eating less calories can lead to weight gain, or a loss of muscle mass that is more than made up for by a gain in fat. And plenty of research shows that exercise is, for most people, counterproductive for weight loss because they wind up eating afterwards than the calories they burn. Yes, exercise leads to general better health, but that's a very different goal from losing weight.

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

#677

Post by switchbak »

kj01a wrote: post #502
wenc wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem is that calories in = calories out assumes a steady-state where there is no change in internal energy (dU/dt), which is not a good assumption.

The change in internal energy is negligible. The only exception is medical disorder. If you want to lose weight and you are not, eat less. If the amount you eat goes below say 1200 calories and you're still not losing weight, go to a doctor. It's that simple.

It's just not that simple, and that's the issue. And this kind of over-simplification can lead to a lot of victim blaming.

The role of sugar (especially fructose) and carbohydrate intake in obesity is very important, and there's far more to it than that.

I think it'd be a lot more challenging for someone to be obese with the same caloric amount of avocados than cheetos, for example.

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

#678

Post by mattnewton »

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 have never used them, but isn't this the model airpair is going after?

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

#679

Post by doingmyting »

ccvannorman wrote: post #542
hexhex wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This would be rubbish. Where is the VR/AR?

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

#680

Post by cdvonstinkpot »

Political Science & Democracy Management

AFAIK there's little to no innovation in this field aside from the occasional electronic voting machine, whose security may or may not be totally un-hackable.

In a day & age where the internet reaches every home, & there's a web browser in nearly everyone's pocket, it shouldn't be that difficult to effectively discern the will of the people. But we're still depending on manual polling, which as the recent US election has shown, is woefully inaccurate. Why are these still done on the phone? Why do people still have to physically go to a neighborhood voting location? Why are elected officials still allowed to make empty promises while campaigning with no follow-through once they're in office?

These are solvable problems which I'd imagine technology can indeed address.

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