Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup? • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by verbify » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

nihonde wrote: post #377

throw9322 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a family member who is a lawyer and who has a similar type of software setup. The biggest obstacle I notice in the legal industry is that many simply don't care. They actively dismiss software as being unimportant even though they rely on it every day. It's a very bizarre case of the legal industry hating the very industry that could help them. Note: perhaps my experiences aren't representative of the industry…

This is exactly correct. As a lawyer and a software developer, I long ago gave up on the idea of selling software to solve the problems of lawyers and/or law firms. Lawyers tend to be terrible customers of technology, if for no other reason than that they have established completely backward incentives that reward inefficiencies and information deficits. The only "legal tech" that can succeed (in my opinion) is the k…

So you don't agree that 'the person who represents themself has an idiot for a client'?

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

#382

Post by jklein11 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:57 AM UTC

jungrothmorton wrote: post #230

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…

Could you give some more detail on what the political/business challenges are?

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

#383

Post by athollywood » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

The oil and gas industry is ripe with potential start ups. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. A better system for automation and measurement. Current solutions aren't ideal when it comes to setting up new systems as well as updating and maintaining existing systems. We build several million dollar facilities a month and each one has automation and measurement equipment that has to be individually set up and programmed. Each technician does things a slightly different way, and the end result is a different set of automation and measurement logic at each facility.

2) Fiber optic DATS (distributed acoustic and temperature sensing) data handling and interpretation. This is a fairly new type of technology in which a fiber optic line is installed in the wellbore. The fiber optic line basically acts as a 15,000' strand of thermometers and microphones placed every 3'. The data from one installation is on the order of terabytes per hour. Oil and gas service companies that offer this service don't know how to handle this amount of data. The problem could probably be solved with S3 or something.

3) Drilling optimization. Create a software suite that utilizes ML/AI to help drilling engineers figure out the best way to drill a well is. It's a perfect ML/AI application. Lots and lots of training data available, easily defined input and output parameters, etc. Drilling engineering is full of hard, non-linear problems and humans are just really bad at it. The only way to be good at it is to drill lots and lots of wells and then listen to your gut.

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

#384

Post by tomascot » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

endisukaj wrote: post #216

jakub_g wrote: post #178

Email parsing and extracting data from it, (input data in multiple languages), that is not strictly depending on predefined templates but being able to adjust itself. Think parsing emails from multiple providers of certain kind of service and exposing common data model. Looks like perfect usage of machine learning.

Doesn't GMail do this already? It's not perfect but it extracts data such as plane tickets or hotel reservations and saves those to your calendar.

Gmail extracts data from emails with certain tags in it, microformats or one of those standars. I think OP is talking about something more flexible using nlp.

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

#385

Post by ransom1538 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:03 AM UTC

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…

I really hope the tech talent talent doesn't help lawyers sue people more effiently. What a waste. If you do, I truly hope lawyers are your customers.

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

#386

Post by ChristianGeek » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:05 AM UTC

vornth wrote: post #264

DavidPlumpton wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the slightest mistake and you are getting sued!

And getting sued by lawyers, at that.

Exactly this. I wouldn't code legal software for any amount of money.

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

#387

Post by waleedka » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:10 AM UTC

cake93 wrote: post #372

AR/VR visualization of 3D and 4D microscopy data (multicolor 3D video, as well as 3D point clouds over time) for biological research. Look for "lattice light sheet microscopy" or "superresolution microscopy" such as (3D)-STORM or STED. These techniques are adopted at a high pace. Groups spent $ 500,000 and often more on the hardware. They can produce terabytes of data within days, but we hardly have any tools to view…

I'm intrigued! How do you interact with these images right now? Do you display it on screen and rotate it with the mouse? Can you elaborate a bit more about how would a VR/AR solution add value here other than being a fancier solution?

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

#388

Post by digler999 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #385

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…

I really hope the tech talent talent doesn't help lawyers sue people more effiently. What a waste. If you do, I truly hope lawyers are your customers.

whats wrong with suing people ? if someone's actions damaged you, would you want recompense ?

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

#389

Post by nsm » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:13 AM UTC

odbol_ wrote: post #361

nsm wrote: post #179

Immigration. 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…

But they try to make it hard because they only want the most perseverant/rich immigrants to make it into the country.

Well, the perseverant ones are having their time spent on bureaucracy, and living in a constant state of foreboding, decreasing the economic value they can add to the country :)

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

#390

Post by nsoonhui » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:17 AM UTC

ggcdn wrote: post #132

fsloth wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tekla Structures has dedicated reinforcement concrete design features. The licence cost is probably closer to 10k per seat. You need computational geometry, computer graphics, and structural engineering expert level domain knowledge to implement anything. You need to create traditional 2D machine/construction design drawings from the 3D models. Then you need to sell it to corporations, whose work, most of all, must b…

In my original post, I was more leaning towards member design software, such as spColumn and S-Concrete. These are much more standalone, and don't have many of the issues you listed. No one I know is using the automated concrete design built into analysis programs like ETABS, Tekla, etc.

> I was more leaning towards member design software, such as spColumn and S-Concrete.

The utility of your software tools will be very limited if you are restricting yourself to only member design instead of total structure solutions like ETABS. Why should engineer pay you at all if they can use spreadsheet for free to do what you do with your SaaS?

> No one I know is using the automated concrete design built into analysis programs like ETABS, Tekla, etc.

Not too sure about this because I know quite a lot of people who are using these tools. Any reason why the people you know don't use ETABS or Tekla?