Don't think flavor matters as much as yield -- at least not from the farmer's perspective. Plenty of flavorless vegetables and fruit everywhere, because they're mostly sold by weight, not by flavor or other qualities.
Requests for Startups Refreshed
11–20 of 132 posts
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#12Farming is an interesting one, particularly with regards to the quoted statistic of 40%. From a technological perspective this has already been largely solved. Developed countries typically have 1-3% of the population working in agriculture. This is only possible because of large scale efficiencies, that allow 1-3% of the population to feed the rest. So am genuinely curious: what are you envisaging? How to market thi…
> By 2050, we will need to feed more than 10 billion people, requiring a 70% increase in global food production.
> We see the potential for Precision Farming to lift crop yields 70% by 2050 and create a $240 billion market for farm tech
Goldman Sachs, July 16 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/0kbn7fmqcopmh2n/GSR_071416_172225....)
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#13Knight Foundation's single focus is media and journalism. For example, MapBox came out of a $200k grant they provided. I'm sure there are a lot of developers and start-ups they have or are currently are funding who can use more support. You might want to talk to them about what people are doing in the field.
Agreed, when I lived in Miami (last year) knight was funding so many awesome ventures. I wouldn't say they have many developers but they are very receptive to having people come in to pitch an idea and they also host many events to come in and request funding.
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#14It would be interesting to see an analysis of the impact of the Request for Startups in YC applications (and the results / progress seen so far).
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#15I think funding mass media is less interesting than finding a way to have sustainable investigative journalism, both at the local and national levels. Investigative journalism, especially at the local level, has been hit hard by local newspapers getting shut down and the media forced to either pull out of unprofitable areas or focus on money-making ventures. Most media outlets are not the New York Times or Washington…
I agree 100%. I actually have worried about this problem for a long time and I have come up with quite a lot of clever ideas (well I think they are clever) to solve this problem. Pity I don't have any time :(
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#16I've constantly racked my brain on the Underserved Communities and Social Services: my dad is a Vietnam vet and my mom (while we were growing up) fit that single mother middle-class type...how does technology help them? Part of the problem is they aren't tech savvy the way the HN community is - so what works for our community doesn't exactly work for theirs, or that they even use technology to the extent that we do (…
The first step is to articulate specific problems.
The link does a little bit, but people with minimal savings don't actually care that they are unbanked; paying Walmart $3 to cash a check isn't that terrible a deal (Even if it isn't a great deal).
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#17We've talked about "following the news" far longer than following anyone on twitter, but when I read an article that's clearly part of an ongoing story, there's no way for the author to send me updates. There needs to be a feedback loop between newsrooms and readers that's more substantive than click counts and more scalable than letters to the editor. Combine this with a newsroom that takes itself seriously as the first draft of history and 1) cites its sources better 2) compete's with wikipedia for those controversial topics that break wikipedias editor model.
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#18On the mass media side of things, I am listening to the Audible version of "Algorthms to live by" (excellent)
In it he comments on the explore/exploit trade off, when to stop exploring an area / industry / string of lovers and when to settle down.
He suggests that the vast increase in derivative works in Hollywood cinema suggests a switch from explore to exploit - and may indicate the industry recognises it's time is limited.
With absolutely no data points, I would like to conjecture "mass media" is similarly placed. In a world where a chatty guy with a Xbox gets ratings of 10billion views on YouTube, mass as in centralised broadcasting is dead.
Mass as in watched by many is probably going to get a lot more massive (another 3 billion viewers to be born soon)
So I don't think fixing mass media as in somehow improving the ownership incentives at NBC or BBC matter. What matters is giving small organisations and individuals tools to speak easily- we will discover them and they will become massive if we want them to.
So focus on editing tools, creativity tools and weirdly, better search and ranking algorithms
Big media is beyond saving
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#19I think funding mass media is less interesting than finding a way to have sustainable investigative journalism, both at the local and national levels. Investigative journalism, especially at the local level, has been hit hard by local newspapers getting shut down and the media forced to either pull out of unprofitable areas or focus on money-making ventures. Most media outlets are not the New York Times or Washington…
I agree 100%. I actually have worried about this problem for a long time and I have come up with quite a lot of clever ideas (well I think they are clever) to solve this problem. Pity I don't have any time :(
Pls do share.
Re: Requests for Startups Refreshed
#20We've talked about "following the news" far longer than following anyone on twitter, but when I read an article that's clearly part of an ongoing story, there's no way for the author to send me updates. There needs to be a feedback loop between newsrooms and readers that's more substantive than click counts and more scalable than letters to the editor. Combine this with a newsroom that takes itself seriously as the f…
This is similar to "editors picks". I think this is one tool that is not out there yet - a means for journalists / editors to say "this is worthy of interest" in a maintainable, curated manner of link pages (aka HN) and in producing their own work.
I suspect this will look a lot like modelling software - as in this is how much trade is going between these countries in a nice graphic, but the raw data can be modelled / interpreted to show the editors world view.