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Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

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131–140 of 580 posts

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#134

Would it be possible for your team to start a small VC firm instead of a startup? Wouldn't that be a better fit for a team that has lots of capital, one technical partner, and one sales partner, but currently doesn't have an idea?

I was thinking this too.

I was going to say it might be worth looking for projects that have been validated by sales and then looking to grow them both with the team and capital.

Having something like a space with a couple ideas/ startups in it that have already been validated would lower your risk and expose you to more opportunities while growing the business. I assume.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#135
post #76

Ha, I think you have found a perfect problem to work on: finding ideas. Your company could provide consultancy services to other businesses, and as such you could collect problems, and sell them to other businesses! :)

There's already one of those: https://nugget.one/

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#136
Read everything at http://onemodel.org . Make a better user experience (UI and installer) and flesh out some of the features planned (especially "sharing"), then $ from hosting, selling binaries, bespoke features, consulting, or ~patreon etc. Send me some of it. :) I have detailed plans & priorities (not on the site) but have been slow getting it done lately.

[edited a couple of times...]

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#138
post #102
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of people who need jobs and need someone to tell them where to go and what to do. This could be a real winner. Call it "Slaves 2.0".

Your comment made me lol. But also made me think :) Indeed its not hard to imagine how "uber for day laborers" could increase worker exploitation. In particular the possibility of somehow skirting around worker's comp insurance by arguing that it only facilitates transactions is an obvious starting point. However, I think such a technology could also be used to mitigate exploitation. The one thing that I already ment…

It could mitigate, but VC money will not ROI itself.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#139
My idea is that you should combine ML with something that is highly reliant on human labor--especially where that reliance is starting to be the key bottleneck preventing new capacity from starting up. A good example of this would be slaughterhouses in the US; the pork processing business for example. Get some experienced workers from an existing facility to wear google glass type cameras, put sensors on the base and tip of their electric knives, and project a grid of red laser dots on the carcasses, and record the process of carving them up from start to finish many times with many different carcasses. Get enough labeled data that way and you could replace human workers in a dirty/dangerous/low-paid industry.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#140
post #107

Here's my idea. All I ask for is a free one if you use it. A drone fence. Hear me out. Problem: Fencing is FUCKING expensive. For many people who want to keep animals out (garden, animals pooping in the sandbox) buying a fence is really cost prohibitive. Plus they don't always work anyways. Solution: Self driving drones with IR cameras in specific locations. Place a camera or two in strategic locations, and have a dr…

This is kind of already being done by Sunflower Labs. https://sunflower-labs.com/
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