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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?
#82Figure out a way to reduce the not-in-San-Francisco penalty for startups. There are some very good reasons why startups flock to the bay area, including "lots of available talent" and "that's where the VCs are", but there are also problems with being in the bay area -- talent is considerably more expensive (due in part to the cost of housing) and visa issues (particularly under the current presidency) being the first…
>then you'll create a huge amount of value for companies around the world and it should be easy to transfer some of that value into your pockets.
Corollary: It's probably time for a much wider adoption of bitcoin in tech. To transfer that value from halfway around the world to personal pockets capitalism style, we need crypto to become a primitive member of apps, markets and tech deals, and no longer a big deal.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
See https://www.rainforestqa.com/ , a YC company. They do some of this.
Was definitely interested, clicked through a bunch and wanted to see pricing and sign up. Unfortunately it's a "contact us for more info" situation, which is really a non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for the recommendation though.
The opaque pricing is a sign that they've moved up the market to target enterprise. When a company reaches that stage, it's basically telling you, "if this turns you off, then you won't move the needle for us so we don't want to talk to you."
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#84Fix ads. I think there is a need for a product that allows websites to self-manage their ads, allowing them to handle display, tracking, payment, and client management internally. Imagine being able to get rid of all the third-party ad and tracking scripts on your website in favor of hosting and managing all of it on your own domain, displaying ads that are guaranteed to be relevant and attractive (since you chose th…
Wasn't this how independent websites use to work before ad networks such as Google ads took over the internet? Problem with managing your own ads is that it would be very hard to get quality relevant ads if you have a small website, not to forget the overhead involved in maintaining ad space without a dedicated ad server.
You could maybe do a combination? You feed the add network certain information, it feeds your backend ads - but then you serve the ads, etc etc.
Also, I can't help but be struck by the similarity of "mainframes -> PC -> cloud".
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#85The maritime industry specifically bunker fuel
Use blockchain
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#86While we seek out new areas that are ripe for disruption, I'm particularly excited about what MapD is doing using GPUs in analytics.
Disclaimer: I don't work for MapD.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#87Sleep. How can we make better use of that wasted time.
Sleep isn't "wasted" time. Without sleep, we'd be dysfunctional, and soon thereafter, dead.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#88Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone that has "repurposed cartographic tools" to analyze spatiotemporal datasets, what specifically do you feel is missing from current tools?
I spent many years repurposing cartographic tools myself. :-) Three big missing features off the top of my head: - Insufficiently correct and high precision computational geometry, which compounds with the iterative/recursive nature of many complex sensor analytics. Many people don't notice unless they ground truth their analytic process; I learned this the hard way. For many industries, 1% cumulative computational e…
Interesting! I'll ponder over these; thanks for the insight!
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#90Figure out a way to reduce the not-in-San-Francisco penalty for startups. There are some very good reasons why startups flock to the bay area, including "lots of available talent" and "that's where the VCs are", but there are also problems with being in the bay area -- talent is considerably more expensive (due in part to the cost of housing) and visa issues (particularly under the current presidency) being the first…
Part of the San Francisco premium seems to be the concentration of M&A dollars from local incumbents who constantly acquire more local talent. I'm an investor in half a dozen startups that would have already been acquired if they were in the Bay Area, but instead struggle to build viable standalone businesses since they are located elsewhere. Perhaps this is part of the reason YC focuses most of its time, money, and effort on local teams. Besides the concentration of resources for those fortunate few who become rocketships, the downside protection on the rest of the portfolio seems much better (in human, not just dollar terms).