As specific organs reduce functioning, some seniors living at home need to revise their recipes to avoid complex collections of foods just as TIAs and other problems reduce their ability to deal with the challenges. To-go food does not work. For some families, hospital-style food may mimic the diet they are accustomed to, but for immigrants, traditional hospital food may be horrific. Older people tend to rely on a very limited set of dishes, so that custom tailoring recipes may be cost effective. There are dietitian-run food delivery services, but not ones that create meals from clients' recipes. Affluent market tends to live away from their parents. The pain point is my co-worker telling me, "Food is killing my dad, and there is nothing I can do about it unless I quit this job and move home, which would be disastrous for my spouse and kids. As far as I can tell, I have to know how to solve the problem and just sit here, 3,000 miles away, and watch him die." I think this market would pay a premium.
Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
561–570 of 734 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#562I do embedded Linux porting. The big job is writing drivers and building the device tree. This would be so much simpler if schematics could be annotated with scrapable clues about pin connections and device parameters (e.g. device tree fragments). Its all derivable from the schematic and chip specs, but that part could be automated almost completely.
It would put me out of a job, but better than shooting myself in the head next time I have to face 40 hours of slogging through data sheets.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#563A ticketing system that doesn't sux (I like RequestTracker, but it shows its age). Top players are ridiculously overpriced. My management style is like this: every task/request is numbered, placed in a queue and assigned to a professional. What I expect from my ticketing system: - every manager should be able to assign tasks to someone and set the order they must be executed. He needs know what his team is doing and…
we use Github issues + Zenhub for that (though Github has recently implemented a lot of Zenhub's features). Managers mainly use the 'boards' and 'milestones' views; devs use 'boards' and whatever else. Messages are included in emails and you can reply by email.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#564BI for developers. Developers run many organizations and teams now, but most Business Intelligence-ish tools are either built for business people (Tableau, Domo) or for marketing (all analytics products, specifically GA). I feel like there's a big opportunity for a tool/tools that are installed in apps as a package and then customized from there. Many teams build a version of this in house (Instacart open-sources the…
Not 100% what you are looking for, since you specify "installed in apps as a package", but we are using https://redash.io/ and love it. They are open source and very easy to run ad-hoc queries, save/schedule queries and alerts, and build dashboards.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#565I used to work in the keynote speaking industry as an agent.
This industry is horribly inefficient and intentionally so. It's mostly east-coast based - NY/DC but functions similarly to the LA entertainment industry.
The main problem is this:
You are a meeting planner (not your job title, you are actually a marketing person or executive assistant) and your boss just tasked you with find a speaker for your next company meeting.
What do you do? You can either:
1) Find a speaker yourself by searching Google and sifting through the mess of results
2) Call a speaker's bureau and get raked over the coals on price
3) ???
Ideally, there would be a marketplace for speakers. Where you would be able to search for talent that fit your criteria (available these dates, for this price, talks about these things, is well-regarded, etc.) and book them online.
Nothing like this exists.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#566Data 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 tried to evangelize THIS very problem with my previous company (a somewhat successful managed data infra service) for a year, it was AMAZINGLY difficult to make my executives even understand the problem and its magnitude.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#567Finance, specifically fixed income: Regulations will unbundle research from liquidity provision starting sometime in 2018 (moving regulatory target, but theme seems clear). Sellside will have lower incentive to pay large research groups; buyside will have to pay explicit fees for research advisory. There is a big opportunity in providing platforms, with macro and market data live, where researchers can interact with…
Are you suggesting an extension of CSA into fixed income, or a platform for selling/distributing research?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#568Not sure, but if it involves automating more jobs away, wank off.
I don't understand this idea that everyone needs jobs, all of the time. Ideas are not created so that jobs can be created, and workers on a societal level don't work so they have jobs. They work so the business operates and serves society. Why not develop ideas and businesses that provide value to all of society and provide benefits such as a basic income that compensate for the fewer workers needed?
we need good musicians and poets .. even if we do not need workers
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#569A 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…
If I didnt have to risk becoming a lawyer, I'd love to combine some legal education with my programming and machine learning skills.
I always thought there should be a one year masters of law program - no path to practicing, but gives you the frameworks and knowledge to be a good consumer of law
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opendoor is already doing agentless open houses with access codes (smart locks) and cameras throughout the house where people can visit whenever they want without calling ahead, not that difficult
That seems to me to be fraught with all manner of peril. Suppose a burglar poses as a buyer under an assumed identity, and then robs the house while wearing a mask. What is the recourse?
I'm not sure I understand what's stopping the burglar today? 50 year old Aunt May with the bad hip who has been selling houses for 25 years? I'd also expect the person to be checked out ahead of time similar to Airbnb or other services.