Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 734 posts

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

#221

Post by tomcam »

6stringmerc wrote: post #134

A monthly subscription service for a fee of $5 - $10 where every month I get a new kind of quirky instrument (shaker, wind, wood block and stick, whistle, triangle, or other noise maker) as a surprise by mail. The point of the service in the music industry is to inspire new sounds and the device can either be kept or given away to somebody without a lot of second thought. Getting stuck is a big problem. Also in music…

$5 doesn't even pay for shipping, sadly. Amazon still pays a average of $6 per order.

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

#222

Post by stretchwithme »

patmcguire wrote: post #128
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 The competition is outdated, clunky, requires local installation and messing about with licenses.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…

I have a friend who works in construction glass. (It's NYC, that's a big market). They ship millions of dollars of complex, custom molded glass every year. Everything's kept track of by emailing excel spreadsheets.

An app that you can import any spreadsheet into and that generates web/mobile apps to collect the same information would be cool.

And that pushes the data back into the same spreadsheet and a relational database with change history.

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

#223

Post by zilchers »

biztos wrote: post #213

This is not the industry I work in, but one of which I'm often a customer: A turnkey package tracking system for small-to-medium shippers. In much of the world the shipping (as in DHL, FedEx) markets are still very fragmented and do not look like they're going to consolidate all that much. (As to why, I have guesses but I don't know for sure. I'm looking at Central Europe right now but I expect this is true in many o…

I was just at slush, and I think one of the startup finalists was working on this problem, though honestly, it's a pretty foreign problem to me. The company is ShipWallet: http://www.shipwallet.com/

Article about the other companies (one was doing a handheld inkjet printer for skin, that was not a normal startup pitch): http://www.slush.org/news/winner-slush-100-announced/

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

#224

Post by munchbunny »

Bombthecat wrote: post #49
scrollaway wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "900 different data formats" problem is something that will go away as we move towards better tools which cover all the standard use cases. Gamedev is riddled with really smart people that reinvent the wheel all the time because they found a way to micro-optimize this or that. They get to do this because until recently, there was no "good enough" solution for a wide range of games (or the "solution" was p…

Unreal engine is quit good. But I'm a huge fan of irrlicht 3d.no idea why no one uses it? You could then devote so much more time on ideas...

I used to use irrlicht and Ogre. Both have the problem of only really doing graphics and to a certain extent input. In comparison, Unity and Unreal offer the whole package: graphics, asset pipeline, audio, networking, and physics.

Speaking from experience as I'm currently making the jump to Unity for my projects, the time savings of choosing one of the all-in-one engines instead of gluing together engines is really substantial.

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

#225

Post by VintageCool »

patmcguire wrote: post #128
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…

I have a friend who works in construction glass. (It's NYC, that's a big market). They ship millions of dollars of complex, custom molded glass every year. Everything's kept track of by emailing excel spreadsheets.

Smartsheet is a pretty good direct replacement for emailing excel spreadsheets.

https://www.smartsheet.com/product-tour

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

#228

Post by wehadfun »

bdangubic wrote: post #138
seancoleman wrote: post #41

In real estate, developing with MLS data. - There are over 900 regional MLS providers each with different schemas. - You use RETS, a complicated, non web standards interface for downloading data. - MLS data is plagued with errors and denormalized data making queries difficult.

The entire Real-Estate industry is ripe for disruption. Exactly why are we paying 6% to "agents"? What are "agents" actually doing? 10+ years ago the need for "Real Estate Agents" was there as information was not readily accessible. Things like "what kind of area is this property in", "what are schools like" "what are prospects for this area 5 years down the road" and so on. All this information (and MUCH more) is cu…

Wife's a real estate agent so I have some insight.

Agents mainly do two things:

1. If selling they can put your house into MLS.

2. For buyers they can let you into a house.

Being able to do these things requires NAR membership, a state license, and other fees and cost real estate agents thousands per year. Also driving meetings clients at houses takes gas and time. Also your 6% commisiion is paying for all the other people that the agent spent gas and time on who did not buy a house.

Would you be willing to advertise in the news paper that your house is for sale and leave the doors unlocked so that random people could check it out?

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

#229

Post by iamgopal »

Government should allow company to pay part of the salary as life long Income bond. Company will have tax credit for that. Government will pay them fixed monthly income depend upon value of bond. I.e. Deferred inflation. But this can solve minimum income idea very easily.

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

#230

Post by jungrothmorton »

seancoleman wrote: post #41

In real estate, developing with MLS data. - There are over 900 regional MLS providers each with different schemas. - You use RETS, a complicated, non web standards interface for downloading data. - MLS data is plagued with errors and denormalized data making queries difficult.

For anyone wondering, this is not a technical problem. It is a political/business problem.

It's a solved problem to make a system that stores information about home listings and transactions. Other countries have done it. Yeah, houses are annoying because of all the weird combinations. But the thing is just a CRUD app.

This system still exists because of organizations that are based on information asymmetry. A small group of experienced people could make a really, really nice platform for sharing real estate data in a month and it would never get anywhere.

Post reply on HN