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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?

#311

Post by faitswulff »

amenghra wrote: post #295
tmsam wrote: post #235

A 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…

A lawyer friend of mine told me his firm doesn't use software to check all the "hereafter referred to" are bound to their template and vice-versa. They instead have to print the document and go through it with a highlighter. The firm charges their clients on an hourly basis, so they don't really have an incentive to be more efficient.

I feel like charging on an hourly basis is a common pattern in many industries that opens the doors to competition from startups with different pricing structures...as long as the startup can do everything in a manner compliant with the existing industry.

Logojoy, for instance, is an example of a service that supplants human labor with a single "good-enough" deliverable at a low price, and does so in a fraction of the amount of time. I imagine this would be much more difficult in legal settings, but LegalZoom seems to be alive and kicking, so it must be possible.

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

#314

Post by komali2 »

tomcam wrote: post #255
komali2 wrote: post #145

Many doctor offices still have horrifying paper record systems, don't use e-invites, etc. Companies are fixing this but the market is still huge. I don't know why the few companies that are in the IoT space for oil and gas aren't scooping up literally billions in missed opportunities for sticking cell-enabled sensors on oil platforms, fields, etc. Then there's the next billion dollars waiting for whoever starts stick…

Wow! You've got range. What are EPC and PTO?

Apologies, I hate when people do that to me.

EPC means "engineering, procurement, and construction" company. So like, lyondell-basell or jacobs engineering or foster wheeler (now AMEC) or Mustang (not the car) or KBR.

PTO = Paid Time Off. Catchall for vacation time, sick time, holidays.

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

#315

Post by wehadfun »

mratzloff wrote: post #307
wehadfun wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If that's all most agents are doing, that's worth maybe 0.5%.

Its worth what agents are willing to do it for. If you cant find a real estate agent willing to help you sell your house for 0.5% then it is not worth it.

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

#316

Post by paulrosenzweig »

starik36 wrote: post #279

Radio 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.

I bought display ads in Nature (the journal) a while back. There's no way to purchase without talking to a salesperson. However, I expect they want to keep it this way.

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

#317

Post by paulrosenzweig »

jdavis703 wrote: post #285
starik36 wrote: post #279

Radio 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.

Isn't this what ad agencies are supposed to do? Or are you saying you want a digital-only ad agency, like Adwords, except for radio?

I think the poster meant Adwords or some similar self-serve solution.

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

#318

Post by mratzloff »

rmrm wrote: post #130

My 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.

You might take a look at MatterSphere.

http://thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/legal/large-l...

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

#319

Post by artursapek »

mixedbit wrote: post #161

Global CDN with a fixed monthly cost and a capped bandwidth. For example, pay 100$/month and get up to 1Gb/s, traffic above this limit is dropped. Providers today offer uncapped bandwidth, some, like Amazon, without any cost cap, some, like KeyCDN, allow to set a cost cap, but take the resources off-line when the limit is exceeded.

Why on earth would anyone want their CDN traffic to drop? Rise in traffic usually comes with a rise in revenue - it's a good problem to have.

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

#320

Post by jefftk »

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…

    The entire Real-Estate industry is ripe for disruption.
    Exactly why are we paying 6% to "agents"?
https://www.redfin.com/ is already doing this. They charge half the normal fee if you're selling and they give about half of their fee to you after purchase if you're buying.

(We bought our house with them.)

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