181–190 of 580 posts
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…
Step 1: Pick your customers. Are they small business, enterprise or consumers? Are they in a specific vertical or are you addressing a cross-cutting concern?
Step 2: Start learning. Set up interviews and learn their business inside and out. Perhaps volunteer to be unpaid labor as a way to get an inside look at how their businesses run and where the inefficiencies are.
Step 3: Find the right inefficiency to address. It should be one that people are willing to spend to address, not just one where people should be willing to spend on. Also filter based on whether your team is best equipped to tackle the problem (i.e. don't try solving a really hard problem that, if you're successful, Google or Facebook could bang out in an afternoon with small modifications to an existing product.) Also look for products/services that give you a durable advantage, whether it's because you're the only one with the right data or because switching is particularly painful or a host of other reasons...much has been written on the subject, so read up for more examples.
Step 4: Go back and try to work up a demo of a product idea. It doesn't have to actually work (read do things that don't scale), it just has to show your vision.
Step 5: More interviews with potential customers. These aren't sales calls, they're a chance to gauge interest and get feedback on features and potential pricing.
You'll have a good idea whether you're ready to move forward or back to step 4, 3 or even 2 at that point, but if you hit on something, then your tech starts coding and your non-tech starts trying to find launch customers using the demo. At this point, you've probably read enough about the next steps to take.
Good luck!
The market for large robots for manufacturing is full of very capable machines, but small robots could re-use many cheap components from cell phones and other consumer electronics.
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Or, to mashup your own list: MLaaS!
I'm sure it must be out there already in some form, but you might want to give a shot at "uber for day laborers". It seems to me like there are opportunities on both the supply and demand side. On the supply side there its lots of room for improving gig hunting and payment assurance for laborers. Staffing agencies are of course in this space, but are pretty inefficient and catch only a small fraction of potential gig…
The few product ideas we came up with following the above process we dropped, often because we discovered that that space is ultra crowded or commooditized. GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons once said something like (paraphrased slightly) "never be scared to enter a crowded market. Just be better than everybody else". Something to think about. Beyond that, consider that your product is not the only dimension on which you c…
I think that trumps Parsons. That said, looking at ideas that "didn't work" can be a solid approach. That is, sometimes (for example) the idea was solid but the team failed. The market also changes and some ideas can be ahead of their time (and poorly executed).
My simple advice is to stop looking for ideas and to start looking for problems. Look for the pain, and to do that talk to people. The challenge will be that most people accommodate the pain in order to get something done, but they don't like it. A recent pain point I came across was that 501.c(3) organizations are good at organizing but often poor at "the Internet". That suggested that if you talked to a half dozen…
1. Don't sell to techies. i.e. ignore any ideas about software testing, cloud base load testing, etc.
2. Pick a solid business domain you know really well. There is no substitute for domain expertise. Sometimes things that look really simple are actually mindblowingly complex. And vice versa. But it sounds like you don't have that so...
3. Do something in HR Tech. Every single company on earth competes for talent, and the HR software industry is already worth many 10s of billions, and is not remotely built out. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of startups in this space already. Also, in HR software you're dealing with people, so there will never be any "one right approach" - you can always sell your crazy HR software product to at least a few wide eyed early adopters somewhere.
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…
My simple advice is to stop looking for ideas and to start looking for problems. Look for the pain, and to do that talk to people. The challenge will be that most people accommodate the pain in order to get something done, but they don't like it. A recent pain point I came across was that 501.c(3) organizations are good at organizing but often poor at "the Internet". That suggested that if you talked to a half dozen…
I concur, and add that HN could really help OP by complaining about random stuff here. Just complain about the first thing that comes to mind that's been bugging you, OP will really appreciate it!