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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?

#701
post #656
post #165

Contraception. Almost everybody needs it. The current solution of flooding the body with hormones works, but causes side effects. The pill for men won't make it. My prediction is that we'll have some other non-hormonal contraception within the next 20-30 years, probably invented by a startup that wants to disrupt this billion dollar market.

> The pill for men won't make it. From what I understand, "they" have already developed this, and trialed it. It worked great, but for many men it had certain undesirable side-effects, and for a very few the side-effects weren't good at all. But for most, it worked well. The interesting thing? Almost all of the side-effects that were experienced by the men in the study all sounded exactly like the side-effects women…

The difference was the the men in the study were experiencing those side effects at an order of magnitude higher than men do, plus there was huge increase in suicides.

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

#702
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.

While I agree that there are some underlying social and economic issues that contribute to obesity, that doesn't mean technology can't help. There are plenty of ways even simple apps can be used to improve people's awareness of what they're eating, help them make better choices, and provide incentives to eat better and get more exercise. To address a couple of the things you mentioned: Better education: It's true --…

> trying to address what we can is a better option than throwing up our hands and saying it's a social problem

I totally agree that we shouldn't throw our hands up. However, the consequence is not to do just some stuff just because you know web development, but to think on a larger scale.

It seems like a big trend of our time that no one wants to do politics. With politics I don't mean being a bureaucrat, but to express your opinions and trying to change something on a normative level. Effective Altruism, tackling injustice by consuming "fair" products, social entrepreneurship: All these things seem to be just for soothing our consciences.

What we miss is to actually change something. The current political situation is the product of this individual politicising.

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

#703
post #352

I always think there are huge opportunities for growth in intra-EU trade. It's a market with over 500M people and a $17 trillion GDP. While the EU has taken away a lot of trade barriers, language and unfamiliar regulations remain a huge barrier, but also a huge potential for growth. If a company in California has ample opportunities to sell in Florida (>2000 miles away), why then is it significantly more difficult fo…

It's amazing how much you pay for UK products in Germany, way way more than the cost of shipping. Of course that particular opportunity will be gone soon, but I'm sure there are other routes.

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

#704
post #352

I always think there are huge opportunities for growth in intra-EU trade. It's a market with over 500M people and a $17 trillion GDP. While the EU has taken away a lot of trade barriers, language and unfamiliar regulations remain a huge barrier, but also a huge potential for growth. If a company in California has ample opportunities to sell in Florida (>2000 miles away), why then is it significantly more difficult fo…

> If a company in California has ample opportunities to sell in Florida (>2000 miles away), why then is it significantly more difficult for a company in Greece to sell in Denmark, which is a much shorter distance.

The US has a federal "interstate commerce clause" which means that individual states cannot regulate trade with other states. The federal government has all the control, which would be like the European Union having control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause

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

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think Hari Seldon/psychohistory. Predicting mid to long-term trends and demographic shifts far enough ahead of time to make investments.

If the data is there, and if we insist that machines need to predict trends for us based on that data, then why do we need to hire analysts for this job?

Sometimes because they are intentionally gatekeeping, as in Half Past Human's conversational delta analysis reports.

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

#706

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…

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…

There is a lot more to diets than calories.

Like nutrition.

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

#707
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that is why he/she said they haven't seen someone do this well yet...

Absolutely. I've looked at the solutions so far by Ubuntu, MS and Android (Andromium app). None have floated my boat. I feel its like Palm vs. iPhone. Sure Palm was earlier to market with a reasonable solution, but someone needed to nail it.

How would this look to you?

I was thinking recently that I'd like a liberated Android, found CopperheadOS, but I'm still not sure I'd like to use it on the desktop.

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

#708
post #287

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…

- know how your congressman votes on each of the vote If anyone from Facebook is reading, this would be a great feature for the site. Imagine following your representatives and getting their votes automatically in your newsfeed.

> know how your congressman votes on each of the vote

Actually, the opposite may be a better way.

Our representatives votes should be secret for the same reason that the people votes is secret: prevents the voter from being intimidated and from selling his/her vote.

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

#710
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.

heshex says:>"I don't think that's a problem that is solvable with technology." Why not, for example, a drug that suppresses appetite? We have many already. Technology has an endless supply of solutions.

Yep, I think something like this is the correct response, though I would prefer to see vegetables that have super-desirable test profiles that trick the body into thinking its getting the high calorie foods it's evolved to crave rather than drugs that alter the humans to want to eat less in general.

Humans are driven by biology, and psychology is only a thin abstraction on top of that. The amount of self-discipline any single individual can deploy is very limited. If that discipline threshold gets used up on other things, it's not going to be available for food and diet.

Consider on top of this that most of us have been socialized and trained for decades to prefer unhealthy options, and the already-steep incline of resisting the body's physically preferred options becomes treacherous.

Most fat people aren't fat becomes they're snarfing down platters that are meant to feed six in every sitting. They're fat because the foods they eat provide low nutrition and high calories, and candy bars aren't the only food with such a profile. Most packaged foods that you can buy at a regular, non-niche grocer are that way, even the ones that are touted as healthy. Food companies do this because they know people like foods with more calories more than they like foods with fewer calories, and they want you to buy their foods more often.

Technology got us into this mess by creating an easily-accessible supply of hyper-caloric foods, an amount of plenty that our bodies, built for scarcity, are not at all equipped to handle. Technology should be employed to fix it. Whether it's human-side or food-side, something needs to be developed that can blackhole the excess calories with no noticeable impact on the eating experience, either in taste or chemical reward.

The other alternative is to revert to a food supply where artificial contrivances such as candy and foods injected with sugars and other unnatural taste-improving formulations are very rare. This is not possible while we live in a society of abundance. It will only be possible if there is famine, hardship, war, etc. So it's not a good option.

"Just try harder" is never going to be a real answer to this problem, and the stats clearly bear that out. People hate being fat. They spend billions of dollars every year desperately trying to find someone who can fix it for them. We should try to address that in a reasonable way.

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