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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?

#721

Post by jackgolding »

tommynicholas wrote: post #233

BI 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…

I'm considering writing a web analytics for developers course/e-book. Out of the box GA is good and quite simple to implement but getting anything non-trivial out of it can be very cumbersome - if anyone is interested would love to hear your enthusiasm.

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

#723

Post by confiscate »

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…

Hey Biztos, why do you think this would be a big market? What would be some potential customers of such a turnkey tracking system? I imagine big players like DHL/FedEx would not be target customers due to their high traffic and already existing internal package tracking systems

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

#724

Post by confiscate »

starik36 wrote: post #344
jdavis703 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, something similar to AdWords. Which Google previously did do, but then cancelled it. http://betanews.com/2007/04/16/google-s-ad-moves-ruffle-feat... I want my pool cleaning guy to be able to go online and buy a radio commercial advertising his business. If he has to go through a salesperson and negotiate and all that, you've already lost him. I think there is a ton of money sitting on the table waiting to be cla…

Why do you think there is a ton of money for this? Currently buyers go through salespeople--it's not elegant but not it is working. How much more money would an automated system be able to extract, given that some buyers are comfortable with doing it in-person?

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

#725

Post by tommynicholas »

jackgolding wrote: post #721
tommynicholas wrote: post #233

BI 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…

I'm considering writing a web analytics for developers course/e-book. Out of the box GA is good and quite simple to implement but getting anything non-trivial out of it can be very cumbersome - if anyone is interested would love to hear your enthusiasm.

I'd read it!

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

#726

Post by biztos »

confiscate wrote: post #723
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…

Hey Biztos, why do you think this would be a big market? What would be some potential customers of such a turnkey tracking system? I imagine big players like DHL/FedEx would not be target customers due to their high traffic and already existing internal package tracking systems

Very late reply, but just in case you're still watching: I don't think DHL/FedEx would be obvious customers but they might be obvious acquirers if your tech really rocked.

AFAICT there are still a lot of small local and regional shippers who offer a better deal than FedEx/DHL -- I assume that's mostly on price but it could also be on expertise, proximity, nepotism, whatever -- and the deal has remained consistently better for many years despite FedEx, DHL, UPS, and other large players being in the market.

My guess is that the further away from the FedEx/DHL hubs you get, the less attractive their service and the higher their prices -- and it looks to me like more and more stuff is being sold online in these markets too, and that stuff has very low margins and needs to get shipped for "free" or at least cheap.

Furthermore, in Europe at least you have direct competitors to FedEx/DHL on the international level (at least within the EU). Players at that level have their own tracking systems, sure, but that means they have to have IT crews, software developers, etc. and I'm sure they'd much rather not.

For example I recently had a delivery from DPD:

https://www.dpd.com/de_privatkunden

It's probably a much smaller market but there are also specialty transporters for stuff like art and antiques. I'm sure they absolutely hate having to care about tracking systems when their value-adding expertise is so thoroughly elsewhere.

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

#727

Post by pdimitar »

fs111 wrote: post #491
starik36 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I had a consultation with my lawyer, she fired up WordPerfect. There is a blast from the past.

Many people here use emacs or vim...

That's subjective, so you should've kept your subjective opinion away from HN.

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

#728

Post by jakub_g »

r_edwards wrote: post #720
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.

https://mailparser.io/ ?

Haven't checked, but from description, looks like it's template-based and rule-based. What I have in mind is something that can be more autonomous, and still work if the sender's template has changed.

Thanks for the link, will try it!

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

#729

Post by bdangubic »

willholloway wrote: post #496
bdangubic wrote: post #138

Earlier 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…

As someone who grew up in a family of real estate investors, landlords and brokers and has 14 years experience as an adult with it, I have to say, and I'm not picking on you because what you are espousing is a widespread belief, but you are wrong. You are wrong about the amount of time she spent, and wrong about the industry being ripe for disruption. Spending 10 hours on four deals is not physically possible, or you…

Oh c'mon...

"Spending 10 hours on four deals is not physically possible, or you have the luckiest, worst realtor in the history of the broker business."

In lots of cases there simple isn't anything to do. I saw the house, did my own research on it, went to see it, did more research, did more research and then called my Realtor and said "Make an offer." Is that worth $43,000? Why would she make $43,000 for few hours of work? I bought two houses this way, my first and last call to my Realtor (personal friend of mine) was "Here's our offer on the house, send it in." One offer was immediately accepted, the other one went back and forth 3 times over two days.

The simple fact that charging based on percentage of the sale is theft, there is no other way to put it. There is one other "entity" that does this and this is Government with Sales Taxes (also theft :-) ). Can you tell me one good reason why Real Estate Agents do not simply charge by the hour?

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

#730

Post by dpaluy »

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.

Why they don't use Google Docs to track changes and collaborate?
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