Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by Dragonai »

ungzd wrote: post #715

Creative tools. Everyone is so obsessed with content consumption tools and making TV out of internet, with deprecating desktop in favor of handhelds where you tap ads and take selfies with dog faces. For graphics, everyone still use Adobe products which are not that bad but still few had changed in Photoshop and Illustrator from 1991. For music, DAWs are not that bad and there's no single monopolist like Adobe, but V…

A friend and I are actively working on innovating in the context of DAWs and music production, we're specifically trying to modernize the discovery and accessibility of plugins. Nice to see DAWs mentioned here - there's a lot that could be improved in the field and we're hoping to tackle several outstanding issues in the near future.

(If anyone's interested, hit the second link in my profile.)

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

#763

Post by Sniperfish »

gingerbread-man wrote: post #610
vegabook wrote: post #381

taking on the Bloomberg terminal. They've got over 300 000 subscribers each paying circa 2000 USD every month. That's 600 million dollars of revenue per month. They're running a labyrinthine functionality on a 1970s System/360-style interface (command line at top of screen). He hires an absolute army of "reps" who's sole job is to try to help subscribers to find functionality, through an interface that is best descri…

You'd probably need to invest substantially in antitrust litigation to get access to the raw data streams Bloomberg relies on.

I disagree, there are competitors for almost all the non-internally created datasets which implies the streams are available outside the Terminal.

IMO the network effect is the biggest thing to break and that would need to begin with the buy-side. If Pension Manager XYZ with $N trillion AUM uses Bloomberg then you can be damn sure so does anyone wanting to do business with them.

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

#764

Post by XFrequentist »

kj01a wrote: post #485
bcoughlan wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's wrong really. It's just that it's not particularly useful for weight loss. If I eat mainly sugar and starches I can easily wolf down 4000 calories a day. If I eat a low carb diet it's a struggle to eat 2000 calories a day, the feeling of hunger isn't the growl in my stomach but a kind of mild headache, and after a couple of days my cravings for sugar subsides. The idea that some foods are more "sat…

It's not helpful because some food are more calorie dense than others? How does that make sense?

That's not a fair summary of the comment.

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

#765

Post by monodeldiablo »

btown wrote: post #100
jandrewrogers wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An IoT database requires the intersection of three software capabilities in a single platform, which have varying degrees of accessibility (the technology exists in principle) and none are available in open source currently. - An exabyte-scale storage engine. Nothing too exotic here technically and a few companies have built them, but the design needs to address continuous data corruption, continuous hardware failure…

The first two challenges are quite familiar in the financial industry, and kx, with its kdb+ time-series database, is arguably the industry leader. Most people in the open source sector don't pay it much attention, since its proprietary nature and terse APL-inspired syntax [0] lend themselves towards "I'll make my career in this, become a wizard, get Wall Street money, and not be very incentivized to compete with mys…

kdb is awesome, but very tailored to one-dimensional (time-ordered) data. I've built a couple multi-dimensional array database engines in my time and -- trust me -- it's a really difficult problem to solve. That said, I have a design kicking around for one that meets most of the OP's demands, so if anybody wants to join me...

There's been an explosion in raster data in just the last 5 years. Cheap satellites, cheap drones, and cheap platforms have really turned the firehose to "high". And the resolution on scientific data -- climate and weather model output, astronomy data, particle physics data, seismic data, etc. -- just keeps going up.

This is an area of massive growth for which no existing solution is quite adequate. If I had the time and/or the cash, I'd be diving in head-first.

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

#766

Post by whitepoplar »

psion wrote: post #741
whitepoplar wrote: post #482

"Kickstarter" for cities. Housing is unaffordable in desirable cities, but nobody wants to move to less desirable cities, where housing is affordable. Take a city that is desperate for development, like Detroit, and figure out a way for a couple thousand people to "pledge" moving to a dense-ish urban area at a preferential rate.

I'm going to use your example of Detroit as my example here. One of the problems with getting people to move into less desirable cities like Detroit is that the less desirable areas are pretty nasty with poor resources, dirty streets and sidewalks, etc. Infrastructure is a joke in many of these neighborhoods, and the city government is still too obsessed with just particular areas for growth because that's where the…

That's the idea! :)

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

#767

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #292
dirtyaura wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norsepower provides modern sails: "a spinning cylinder that uses the Magnus effect to harness wind power to propel a ship." "When the wind conditions are favourable, Norsepower Rotor Sails allow the main engines to be throttled back, saving fuel and reducing emissions while providing the power needed to maintain speed and voyage time. Rotor sails can be used with new vessels or they can be retrofitted to existing shi…

I love that you posted an 'in the wild' solution. So many people saying this is not possible. And then someone has found a creative way to offer one alternate. Such a good example of dont listen to the nay-sayers if you want to mentally explore something. There are almost always solutions and I'm sure there are more for this one.

No one said it wasn't possible. Clearly, it's possible since ships were wind powered for millenia. The problem is that with very low fuel costs, it's not feasible because the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

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

#768

Post by Jemmeh »

arkh wrote: post #270
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…

> 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…

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

Not to say it's not a useful diet method. Just that there are a lot of factors that go into "calories out"-- what calories are being used for energy and what are stored as fat. How fast are you burning calories? Hormones are a big part of that. You can see this very clearly in hyper/hypo thyroid patients.

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

#769

Post by cromulent »

david927 wrote: post #760
TillE wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UK is not in the EU (and was never in Schengen), so you pay customs along as well as shipping.

The UK is in the EU, so you shouldn't be paying customs.

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

#770

Post by padseeker »

ninjakeyboard wrote: post #377

An economist and a normal person are walking down the street together. The normal person says “Hey, look, there’s a $20 bill on the sidewalk!” The economist replies by saying “That’s impossible- if it were really a $20 bill, it would have been picked up by now.”

This comment is fantastic. I laughed out loud. The ivory tower exists for conservatives and liberals. And the Chicago comment is on point.

I heard someone from U of Chicago School of Economics make the case that Payday lenders should not exist. If you go to U of C you'd know they do exist and they're about 1/4 of a mile off campus if you just left and looked around.

Post reply on HN