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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?

#801

Post by edraferi »

Dragonai wrote: post #761
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.)

Random question since you're elbow deep in VST land... Have you seen any plugins taking advantage of GPUs? Seems like they should open up sonic complexity that you can't replicate on current hardware synths.

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

#802

Post by kingnothing »

gwbas1c wrote: post #757

A better DVR for cord cutters. The Tivo has a ridiculous monthly fee, and the Tablo is garbage. HDHomerun's DVR software is decent, but in its current form I don't see it as something I'd sell to my grandparents.

Plex. https://www.plex.tv/features/dvr/

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

#803

Post by edraferi »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #782

Biggest: largest, most ambitious, most lucrative, riskiest, highest impact? I have one that meets all of those criteria. Ditch legacy and redefine one language/OS to rule them all. Give app stores the middle finger. Throw the web browser away. Throw away antiquated build systems. Create a universal, minimal, extensible, and sensible layout and rendering engine. Create an imperative language as fast as c yet portable…

OK, so say you do that. What advantages do you think you could realize through this ground up rewrite?

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

#804

Post by alexose »

Not necessarily a killer app idea, but:

I think there's an opportunity to redefine the idea of an employee-owned company. A company with an employee stock pool of 100%-- not 10%-- with no opportunities for dilution, non-voting shares, takeovers, or other financial tricks. Early employees would get more stock, but it would curve gently according with the growth the of the company, so that later employees would also end up with a meaningful share.

The company's charter could be codified in plain English, in an easily accessible, version-controlled markdown file. The board would be made up of some combination of elected employees and outside advisers.

This company would be at a serious disadvantage to raise money. It would have to be able to survive on slow, steady growth rather than VC cash infusions. On the other hand, I suspect it would have a big hiring advantage. The trick would be to attract employees who highly value equity but don't want to become founders themselves.

I bet there's a business model out there that exploits both these facets.

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

#805

Post by giardini »

Bring certain folk remedies to market.

For example, there are some medical trials indicating, and many folkloric claims, that eating a small but increasing amount of poison ivy, oak or sumac leaf each day will fairly quickly make your body cease to respond badly to contact with those plants.

A 30-day packet of capsules, with successively increasing dosages of urushiol (the irritant in those plants), would likely build up the body's ability to tolerate urushiol. It would make it much easier and safer for the average person to remedy their condition, since, the suggestion that one gather one's own poison oak and preparing it for ingestion appears fraught with peril and leaves most poison ivy victims aghast. Were such a remedy provided in a safe encapsulated form, their fears would abate.

This would be of enormous benefit to homeowners, campers, farmers, gardeners, tree-trimmers, and in short, nearly everyone who goes out into the woods or gardens in the summer. Believe me, this would fly off the shelves once word got around.

Poison ivy sucks.

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

#806

Post by loader »

xchaotic wrote: post #800

Aaccurate 3-d scanning of 3d environments - houses, mines you name it. I think the tech is there in your pocket and with good software plus very accurate measurement of location, orientation + panorama/spehrical photo shoots, you could have very high quality recreations of real world areas - which in turn could be explored, modified and enjoyed in VR/AR/MR. For example simulating house refurbishment or furniture purc…

BBC's Italy's Invisible Cities used 3D scanning to showcase areas in three Italian cities (Naples, Venice, and Florence). Seeing things mapped in 3D made a world of a difference trying to understand those spaces. It was a great show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0881gfb

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

#807

Post by jaypaulynice »

giardini wrote: post #805

Bring certain folk remedies to market. For example, there are some medical trials indicating, and many folkloric claims, that eating a small but increasing amount of poison ivy, oak or sumac leaf each day will fairly quickly make your body cease to respond badly to contact with those plants. A 30-day packet of capsules, with successively increasing dosages of urushiol (the irritant in those plants), would likely buil…

Agree on this one 100%. I can't believe how many people depend on prescription drugs in America. I remember when I was a kid, my grandparents knew all kind of tea they could make when someone was sick. The problem is that the tea leaves are not readily available in America.

See this link: http://www.haitiobserver.com/blog/the-magic-of-haitian-remed...

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

#808

Post by Lordarminius »

reitanqild wrote: post #753
yummyfajitas wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland is actually the site of one of the biggest uses of personal firearms in international conflict. The Jews held off the Nazis for about 5 months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising Might have been nice if it happened all across Poland rather than just Warsaw.

Thanks for bringing up this. This is actually a really good example for why we don't want to ban weapons: Genocides are often perpetrated by the country the victims actually belong to. Examples: Germany under Nazism, former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, -I'm fairly sure the list goes on. I feel totally safe and I'm actually happy knowing that many of my neighbors have weapons. Especially here in Norway were I know there are st…

Genocide is an extreme condition and a poor reason to extend gun ownership.

There is a very long list of countries that are doing better than fine and severely restricting gun ownership. Long before it becomes the case that you need guns to defend your space, you may want to take a long hard look at the politics of your community / country.

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

#809

Post by aoner »

fizerkhan wrote: post #75
bikamonki wrote: post #43

Here's my wishlist, not sure if there is a market for it: - Twitter w/out fake accounts. - a marketplace that uses Facebook as a vehicle for engagement/promotion but which operates independently. - Secure SMS for 2FA tokens - Android w/out Play Services - Schema-based email - Stripe for the rest of the World

For me, I desperately need "Stripe for the rest of the World".

What about https://www.mollie.com/en/ ?

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

#810

Post by dharma1 »

dceddia wrote: post #742
dharma1 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with mostly remote Devs for the past 5 years as a designer I have some thoughts on this. 1) bandwidth in many parts of the world is still not nearly good enough for high quality video 2) need good inexpensive remote whiteboarding tech. The MS surface TV looks good but too expensive to fit in everyone's remote office 3) initiating remote video should (either for screen sharing or video chat) be immediate…

Remote whiteboarding is definitely a pain. There are a ton of online whiteboard apps, but it's hard to find a good one (know of any?). Then there's the problem that drawing with a mouse is difficult. It's hard to quickly express ideas as boxes-and-lines without something like a drawing tablet. Wacom makes some low-end ones that are pretty affordable though (like this one[0] for ~$80). Maybe that'd be a good solution,…

Figma is pretty good although for all types of design. It has real-time collaboration and perf is pretty good.

Whiteboarding specifically - don't know of any good ones. It should ideally be a collaborative multi user real time web app (websockets?), support drawing on top of uploaded images, have very large canvases you can zoom/pan, and run together with hangouts/Skype or have VoIP built in. Want to collab on building one? :)

I've used many Wacom tablets - even the cheap ones are good and pretty intuitive - no real learning curve after setup.

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