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Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

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Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#31

Post by froo »

thomaspaine wrote: post #7

I 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 had one when I lived in Melbourne recently. Its a company called "The Lifestylers Group"

http://www.thelifestylersgroup.com.au/

So, they already exist, you just have to find them. They call themselves a "Personal Concierge Service" so perhaps you could do a search for that in your local area.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find something similar when I moved back to Perth.

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#32

Post by nudge »

Right question, wrong place.

Ask teachers, dentists, gardeners, councillors, vets (both the animal-doctor and the ex-military kind), fish owners, fish eaters, mechanics, little old ladies who don't know whether to trust their mechanic, landlords, concierges...

You're more likely to get responses you would never even have considered.

Look at it this way. It is often said that the best teams / startups are formed of people with different backgrounds, different thinking styles, different worldviews. So you're not going to add much to yourself by asking people (broadly speaking) similar to yourself. Find people totally unlike you. Think of a business you've never even encountered. Does it suck to own a fast food franchise and be totally at the mercy of the brand? Who knows? Maybe it does. Maybe you can help a little. Is it tough to be a guitar teacher nowadays when I can sort-of learn from youtube? I bet it does. Can you help them stand out?

Ask your friends about their friends. Who do they know who is in a weird business or industry you're unlikely to know anything about? Maybe they do something hardly anyone knows anything about? I met someone who told me about a friend of theirs who works as a food arranger. For photographing food for cookbooks. She's not the photographer. Or the cook. She's just really good at arranging the food. I had no idea that even existed as a job.

So step outside HN and the other places you might frequent online. You might just be able to fix a problem no-one capable of fixing has ever even heard of.

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#33

Post by keefe »

tomh- wrote: post #30

I would like a linux distro which runs photoshop, as good as windows with equal performance, out of the box

I don't think this will happen, because of : 1) create user X 2) sux X 3) Install PhotoShop Trial 4) In 30 days, GoTo 1

Yes, I learned programming with GoTo. I am old.

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#35

Post by keefe »

roel_v wrote: post #2

How ebooks that are distributed in pdf are so hard to read on small screens, and the lack of properly working pdf->reflowable format (epub) tools. This is a hard problem and I'd pay for a 80% solution. It would have to recognize and properly fix/insert chapter titles, initial caps, tables of content, other leader/footer material, ... It would have to properly insert images in a sensible spot yet remove background ima…

This task is on my TODO list. Why does http://calibre-ebook.com/ fail?

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#36

Post by mstevens »

nudge wrote: post #32

Right question, wrong place. Ask teachers, dentists, gardeners, councillors, vets (both the animal-doctor and the ex-military kind), fish owners, fish eaters, mechanics, little old ladies who don't know whether to trust their mechanic, landlords, concierges... You're more likely to get responses you would never even have considered. Look at it this way. It is often said that the best teams / startups are formed of pe…

I half-agree.

Clearly the people you describe often have problems for which they would appreciate solutions for which they would be willing to exchange money.

On the other hand, news.yc users ALSO tend to have both money and problems, and the best tools are generally ones where the creator had the problems themselves.

I guess my point is we could possibly have an interesting conversation about which market is most profitable, but you can't deny the people here are a market you might want to target.

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#37

Post by jacquesm »

nosse wrote: post #18

I 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 architech…

Have you looked at varicad ?

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#38

Post by mstevens »

Another problem I'd be very tempted to pay money to solve right now:

I'm taking lessons in French. It's pretty cool. I'd like to find ways to improve my French at home. I'd love a site that would make it easy to find someone to video chat with eg skype with some (possibly minimal) teaching skills so I could practice conversation.

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#39

Post by froo »

nosse wrote: post #18

I 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 architech…

You can do CAD in blender.

http://www.blender3darchitect.com/2009/07/blender-3d-as-a-ca...

Re: Ask HN: What problem is REALLY bugging you?

#40

Post by keefe »

nudge wrote: post #32

Right question, wrong place. Ask teachers, dentists, gardeners, councillors, vets (both the animal-doctor and the ex-military kind), fish owners, fish eaters, mechanics, little old ladies who don't know whether to trust their mechanic, landlords, concierges... You're more likely to get responses you would never even have considered. Look at it this way. It is often said that the best teams / startups are formed of pe…

I was going to respond to your post anyway, but given that my mom was a food arranger [at least it was a common task at her marketing firm] for some years now I really had to throw that in there...

Definitely right question, wrong place. It's kind of like asking your competition, this belongs in a bizdev forum. I think hacker news is going to be the last place I announce my site or hint at the idea. I mean there's only a few thousand devs that are really competent enough to be trouble and I really want to avoid them seeing my ideas before the bakers, photogs and food arrangers.

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