How to make money, or rather, how to survive and support a family.
Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
11–20 of 74 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#12I have all this data that I collect and it's very difficult to make sense of it or to break it down into a form that tells me what steps I should be taking next to improve my bottom line.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#13Thought from last night - we need a HN "problem registry".
Not that new software ideas are hard to come by, but it'd be interesting to build up a list of specific pain points with eg) email.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#14I want a personal assistant for 5-10 hours a week. Not a virtual one because most of the things I want done are in meat space. Stuff like filling out forms, doing my laundry, waiting in line for me at the DMV, and dropping off my netflix returns in the mail. It sounds petty, but I really hate running errands and filling out forms. I'm considering hiring someone off craigslist.
Related, there are various indian companies that offer the virtual equivalent, but I've never signed up because of:
a) worries about cultural fit
b) they all seem to make the signup process that little bit too painful
c) there's always a slightly offline feel about the process, I want something more web 2.0, on the level of raising a bugzilla ticket for someone to book me a holiday.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#15I want a personal assistant for 5-10 hours a week. Not a virtual one because most of the things I want done are in meat space. Stuff like filling out forms, doing my laundry, waiting in line for me at the DMV, and dropping off my netflix returns in the mail. It sounds petty, but I really hate running errands and filling out forms. I'm considering hiring someone off craigslist.
I think most people would like this, if they trusted the person. This is the kind of role a equerry/butler fulfilled in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the 20th century, you could expect a secretary to do this kind of thing (maybe not laundry!), even if it was not strictly company related. I think this made sense for businesses since secretaries were cheaper than you, and some things you have to do on work time - e.g. banking, government interaction, mail.
Now, personal secretaries are all but gone and personal assistants are only really available at board level. So although companies are paying less for payroll, they are losing out since I know phone the bank at work, on work time. I also hate forms and errands, so the company is further disadvantaged by the ego-depletion doing such things causes.
(N.B. I have nothing to back this stuff up, just seems like the way things used to be vs now)
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#16I would pay to outsource the risk of being a PayPal merchant. I want to be able to serve my users with the option of paying with PayPal, but PayPal for merchants is totally unreliable. Especially in the virtual good/currency industry they seem to have the tendency to lock your account for no reasons at all, and you can be without money for over 180 days.
An obvious alternative is to pay to be with another payment service provider who sucks less.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#17I have all this data that I collect and it's very difficult to make sense of it or to break it down into a form that tells me what steps I should be taking next to improve my bottom line.
We have similar problems. For example, I'm fairly certain some sort of bayesian model could tell me valuable things about my data. Someone who could run with that provide me an automated way to extract probabilities of desirable outcomes from my data would get money very quickly.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#18I would need a decent 2D CAD for linux. 3D even sweeter. problem is that dudes who usually code and dudes who usually draw with CAD are two totally different breeds. And that's why we don't allready have a good CAD for linux.
I would be possibly willing to pay 200eur for a copy(but I want to see a proper demo first), and I don't think I'm alone.
And I don't need anything fancy like Autodesk's "AutoCAD revit architechture visual suite", just basic "draw lines and circles" kind of functionality.
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#19I want a personal assistant for 5-10 hours a week. Not a virtual one because most of the things I want done are in meat space. Stuff like filling out forms, doing my laundry, waiting in line for me at the DMV, and dropping off my netflix returns in the mail. It sounds petty, but I really hate running errands and filling out forms. I'm considering hiring someone off craigslist.
I've often wanted the same. The main problem seems to be that it is probably hard to make a living as a personal assistant at the prices you and I are willing to pay.
There is also the trust issue: would you really trust a stranger enough to do sensitive things?
Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?
#20Teeth.