One problem from my past experience at architecture industry:
every country has it own rules & regulations for represent drawings of designs(documentation)(many small things like floor plans, sizes, fonts, frames, symbols descriptions all are different) as result CAD software developed in one country very hard to use in another without lot of weird tricks which works only for subset of original functionality.
I believe it may be solved be separating actual building model and view/render representation like AST and interpreter. But unfortunately is super hard to do just because that AST model should include lot of complex stuff.
Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
271–280 of 734 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#272Data management. 1) Cleaning the data as it comes in rather than in batches so we can use it sooner, invalid data is discarded, outlier detection, normalizing inputs etc.... 2) Warehousing of the data with proper indexes so you can perform some advanced queries on unstructured data 3) Some data is sent in bulk at the end of day, some of the data is streamed in fire hose style. How can we preprocess the fire hose data…
I've actually been working on something like this for a while now, and found your comment about proprietary data interesting. Would this mean that hosting this data in a third party server is out of the question for you? OK with NDA?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#273My wife is a corporate attorney. They pass drafts of contracts around by email using MS word with change tracking enabled. Some sort of attorney targeted simple revision tracking front end using git would be a mighty step forward.
I'm actually close to launching this kind of product. A bit more complex than Word + Git, but I hope it will be worth it. One question: is there a use case for live group-editing? Same way live code editors work. I have to admit that I'm not super familiar of the workflows in that industry, so I am mostly just designing features the way I would like them to work.
Do you mind sending me a message when you launch? Currently work with a bunch of engineers and technical editors and this is something we are looking to address.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately any assumptions built into an immigration business are likely to be upended soon. I'd wait at least a year before trying to solve this problem because the regulatory environment could break your resulting startup.
> I'd wait at least a year I'd say closer to four to be safe.
But then you'd have to wait four more. And then four more? Four more after that?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#275A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server versio…
I investigated doing a SaaS product in the legal space. One of the things I heard multiple times from lawyers is that they are more likely to buy a product if they can bill their clients directly. What you are talking about would not fall into that category. That doesn't mean you couldn't build a successful business, but I think it is important to understand that the market has different rules.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#276Immigration. Every time I change jobs as an H1-B employee, I've to fill in the same ridiculous data with every law firms weird interface. I wish the US Digital Services would focus on streamlining forms and having auto-import from all the data they already have about me (e.g. automatically translate I-94 records to how much time I actually spent in the US, infer my past I-797 records automatically, have a one time ed…
Airside solves for part of this.
http://airsidemobile.com
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#277One of the best places to look is where an emerging platform overlaps with existing specialty fields. For example, VR is currently an emerging platform, here's a few things that maybe someone is pursuing but there's no established solution for: - 3D Storyboarding for VR cinematic storytelling (mixed desktop/VR) - VR home tours for real estate - VR sports training for golf/tennis/baseball - Rehearsal/Staging VR for ev…
What about VR for surgery training?
That would better be served with AR, no?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
I blogged recently about some problems I have with JIRA: http://www.storytotell.org/constraints-and-semantics/ In a nutshell, I argue that the problem with most ticket systems is that they do not constrain the domain enough, so they wind up having similar problems to email (sifting through a chronologically-ordered pile of text rather than structured, semantically-ordered information). Your comments make me think the…
The simplest solution to the 'chronological pile-up problem' (nice name BTW) is a Wiki model, where replies are appended by default but the entire content can be edited if necessary. (C2 demonstrates this quite well.) For simple problems, conversations behave exactly the way they used to, but when it starts getting complex someone can go in and rearrange the conversation into a more logical form. This actually maps q…
I also have an idiosyncratic way of organizing this stuff, which is basically to use Emacs + mu4e to search my mail, and if I need to create order, write a new document from scratch. I have a coworker who does what you do, now that you mention it—he will take a series of email, dump it into Word and edit it until it is a useful document of some sort.
I still think there is something here though. Stack Overflow replaced message boards, which were basically HTML versions of mailing lists, and part of that was identifying the semantics of question, answer and comment and defining new operators and new expectations for them.
A wiki is a good approach but because it's totally free-form, the user gets stuck doing the work of keeping things hygienic.
JIRA allows you to edit all the properties of a ticket whenever, but it generates such a huge cloud of email notifications in the process, it kind of disincentivises you from using it. And nobody is in the habit of rereading the page to see what is different since last time.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#279Radio Industry. I know it's a slowly dying business, but that's because the giants are too slow to turn.
I want to be able to go to a website, ask for demographics that I am looking for and be able to purchase an advertisement and hire talent to record my commercial.
As it stands, you have to deal with salespeople.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
On 2, buyers can be let into the home by the seller's agent.