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Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#101

Post by saosebastiao »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #90
saosebastiao wrote: post #56

These questions pop up every now and then, and while I get the intent, you're not gonna get anything useful out of it. The idea that someone who knows how to code can disrupt an industry that they are not a part of is disingenuous, and the examples that you can find are exceptions, not the rule. It's also extremely naive and presumptuous...what makes you think people in the industry haven't already tried? People who…

The idea that someone who knows how to code can disrupt an industry that they are not a part of is disingenuous Uh, no. The idea is that you identify the problem, build the team to solve it, build something quick that can prove that you can solve it in a better way than others, iterate to the point that CAC < LTV, scale.

How can you solve a problem that you can't adequately analyze or characterize? How will you know if you aren't trying a failed solution if you don't know what has been tried? How will you know if your simplifications and assumptions are realistic if you haven't seen how they've played out in the past?

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#102

Post by polmuz »

reneherse wrote: post #95
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85

Rapid generation of high quality 3D models of existing objects. Process should be independent of object size eg. a coke can should use the same process as a car and process time should scale with object size. Think somewhere on the order of 10,000 models per day throughput. There's $BNs waiting for you. It's ridiculously hard.

What is the use case for the models themselves?

This combined with 3D printers would make fixing stuff much easier by printing the broken piece.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#103

Post by Chris2048 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85

Rapid generation of high quality 3D models of existing objects. Process should be independent of object size eg. a coke can should use the same process as a car and process time should scale with object size. Think somewhere on the order of 10,000 models per day throughput. There's $BNs waiting for you. It's ridiculously hard.

You mean better than those inferred from parallax/pictures?

And inside the object as well?

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#104

Post by scrollaway »

elisee wrote: post #89
scrollaway wrote: post #11

Content and patch distribution for video games: Data integrity, progressive downloads, file-level patching, compression, encryption, and platform/version branching. It's quite mind-boggling; nobody is really doing it on an industry-scale level. Every video game developer has their own way, all of which have their own problems. It is a very hard problem. Blizzard actually came up with a very good system, but it's not…

itch.io's new open source wharf & butler tools might be what you're looking for: https://itch.io/docs/wharf/ and https://itch.io/docs/butler/ Quoting Wharf's spec intro: Wharf is a protocol that enables incremental uploads and downloads to keep software up-to-date. It includes: A diffing and patching algorithm, based on rsync An open file format specification for patches and signature files, based on protobuf A refer…

Wow, that's really impressive. I'll investigate, thank you for the link.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#105

Post by ChuckMcM »

ggcdn wrote: post #37

As a structural engineer, I see a good opportunity to make reinforced concrete design software available in a SaaS format. The competition is outdated, clunky, requires local installation and messing about with licenses. Design firms are paying $1000-$3000/year per user/seat for what amounts to a pretty basic app. Unfortunately, there are very few people that understand both computer science and structural engineerin…

My brother in law would agree with this, he is building an open source project for collecting all of the analysis that civil and structural engineers have to do on every project into a single repository where people can share and augment the calculations. (think if it as github for civil and structural engineers)

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#107

Post by AndrewKemendo »

saosebastiao wrote: post #101
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that someone who knows how to code can disrupt an industry that they are not a part of is disingenuous Uh, no. The idea is that you identify the problem, build the team to solve it, build something quick that can prove that you can solve it in a better way than others, iterate to the point that CAC < LTV, scale.

How can you solve a problem that you can't adequately analyze or characterize? How will you know if you aren't trying a failed solution if you don't know what has been tried? How will you know if your simplifications and assumptions are realistic if you haven't seen how they've played out in the past?

See step 1 and 2.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#108

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Chris2048 wrote: post #103
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85

Rapid generation of high quality 3D models of existing objects. Process should be independent of object size eg. a coke can should use the same process as a car and process time should scale with object size. Think somewhere on the order of 10,000 models per day throughput. There's $BNs waiting for you. It's ridiculously hard.

You mean better than those inferred from parallax/pictures? And inside the object as well?

You mean better than those inferred from parallax/pictures?

I'm not sure what you're asking here. Are you asking if it should be better than what can be done with photogrammetry?

And inside the object as well?

Doing just the outside is a big enough market/problem.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#109

Post by wlesieutre »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #92
mabbo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect much engineering software is ripe for innovation. My wife is a Water Resources Engineer- a specialized form of Civil that focuses on "when it rains, where the hell is all this water going to go?". The software for that kind of modeling is apparently pretty basic, pretty expensive, buggy, etc.

Reminds me of the story that made the podcast rounds not too long ago, about the Mississippi River Basin Model. I thought it was shut down largely because much better software simulations were made available; are they still kinda crummy?

99% Invisible's America's Last Top Model. The Mississippi River Basin model was shut down because the computer models were cheaper and "good enough." They still use physical models today for other projects, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Fluid simulation is a very difficult problem to simulate, structures are a lot simpler.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/americas-last-top-mode...

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