Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing quite like sitting next to someone to facilitate the rapid course-corrections that maximize the chances for early-stage startups to thrive. That said, places like New York are growing as hubs of talent where it's possible to assemble talented in-person teams. And niche investors who understand i.e. the advertising/media/fintech spaces can mitigate the lack of Silicon Valley VCs for companies focused t…
That's exactly the opportunity for startups: to create something that is quite like sitting next to someone.
Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#982Leased CGI sets / models / scenes. Building full fledged models / generations of popular cities and places and leasing them to film producers. Its cheaper for them to lease than it would be to hire full devs and designers to start from scratch..I know there is some 're-use' in place by these companies such as pixar and disney. Re-use is not what i am talking about though. I am talking about movies like transformers /…
Look into games. Imagine some GTA-like game set in actual Chicago, or minimally edited Chicago to remove all trademarks anyway.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#983Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
Can you elaborate more? As an Ableton and Push 2 user, I find plugins very easily accessible.
1) From interviewing a lot of producers and plugin developers, our findings show that there's a bit of a vicious cycle with pricing: most hobbyist producers aren't willing to shell out the money for plugins, so they opt to pirate them instead. The plugin developers lose out on a ton of sales, so they hike the prices up to make up for lost revenue. The hobbyist producers continue to see high prices and therefore continue to pirate plugins, and the cycle starts all over again. :)
2) Most paid plugins don't offer trial versions, and when they do, they're always crippled and DRMed in some form or another. When there's no trial, users don't want to make the leap of faith and buy the plugin, and when there is, the aforementioned crippling/DRM can be quite the hindrance.
We're shooting to make the user experience better on both of these fronts by offering a more modern marketplace - you still get a nice store to browse through and read about plugins, but one of EQIP's value adds is the ability to instantly demo the full version of any plugin on the spot right within your session (and our technology's secret sauce prevents anyone from getting their hands on either the plugin or the audio).
The next step in our gameplan is to offer bundled subscriptions for plugins; you might think of Splice's rent-to-own, which is a great offering, but the pricing model is on a per-plugin basis - we're looking at various tiers of affordable pricing for access to X number of plugins depending on the tier. This way, a producer can have unlimited access to several plugins they like for one low cost (and rent-to-own can easily be added to this, we're still working on the pricing for the time being).
I hope that was a helpful brief rundown! There's a lot more to it - if you'd like to chat, you're more than welcome to email me, my email's available at my personal website (also in my profile). :)
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#984A good native LaTeX editor, with quality on par with modern IDEs (deep understanding of syntax and semantics, intellisense, etc).
Have you seen overleaf.com?
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#985Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2. The vast majority of calories come from carbohydrates. Yes. Sugar is the enemy. It's ironic that so many substances are regulated or flat-out prohibited and not sugar or sodas. HFCS should be outlawed, and sodas regulated like alcohol (no sales to minors, bulk sales limited, etc.) Also, the obsession with fats and the whole industry of low-fat food needs to be dealt with, as, obviously, when the proportion of fa…
Sugar is not the enemy, sugars are just a highly efficient mechanism for providing easily assimilated biochemical energy. The problem is over-consumption of refined sugars. This is a problem because the results of sugar metabolism (particularly fructose) are highly reactive (which is why they are so easy to metabolize), and can mess up your biochemistry by reacting with proteins and other macromolecules. The phytoche…
Sure, that's what I meant.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#986Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think he may have been referring to rental inspections, of the quarterly kind. A pretty standard checklist. "Is there mess, is there mould, is there damage, are there pets and is that allowed?"
And then you let a drone fly through a flat every quarter? I think the odds of destroying something in the process are higher than the saved costs. On another note: Are quarterly rental inspections a thing in the US? Never heard of that, why should my landlord care if I tidy up my apartment?
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#987Here are a few, and I frequently have these conversations with VCs, albeit biased toward areas I work in: - Spatiotemporal analytics usually in the context of IoT. Most people currently repurpose cartographic tools for this purpose but the impedance match is poor and the tools are seriously lacking elementary functionality. There is no magic technology here, just exceptional UX/UI and an understanding of the problem…
> There are many VCs currently hunting for this product
Implies a difficult problem.
> algorithmic induction tech
Do you mean inference?
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#988Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disrupting that industry would be tough. Zillow came close, but the industry in general is so protective that anything perceived as a minor threat is blackballed. My bro-in-law RE agent bashes Zillow all the time. I think baby steps are essential. A good first step is a broker-licensed startup with self-serve/AI agents. Why do I need an agent to look at houses when I can just find a house myself? The listing side can…
Would the unique value proposition for the buyer to use this new service be that they would get a rebate on purchasing this house through this new service?
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#989Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How about a blockchain based decentralized ad bidding system. Ping me if interested there are plenty of ideas in this lucrative space.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#990Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How about a blockchain based decentralized ad bidding system. Ping me if interested there are plenty of ideas in this lucrative space.