Decentralized content-addressable network parallel to the internet.
Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
221–230 of 580 posts
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#222I have a list of ideas and need a team to build them :) You can reach me here: https://www.andybrewer.com/
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#223Email me at stestodrud@hvzoi.com (throwaway email address to avoid spam), and I'll throw a couple concepts at you that our group wants to support, but doesn't fully have time for because of an overabundance of opportunities.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#224You really can't come up with a single workable idea? I find that hard to comprehend. Maybe just invest in others for now, see where that takes you.
If you're really desperate to do it yourselves though, you need to get out of whatever bubble you're in and start finding opportunity in more frequently-overlooked spaces.
Here's an easy one. Seattle just started piloting dockless bike shares. The competitors are kinda unimpressive, and nobody has offered an electric-powered fleet yet. The minimum electric fleet size is only 10 IIRC. Seattle is super hilly, and electric bikes would be great, but they are harder to make and repair, and may be more likely to get stolen (at greater cost to replace as well). However, traffic is so freaking terrible here that that bikes can easily be the fastest means of transportation at certain times. There are lots of amazonians with disposable incomes who would prefer to avoid the bus to get home, but can't justify the inconvenience taking care of a bike and riding uphill.
Figure out something cool to do with that. You'll have GPS data for all movements that you can apply ML to estimate demand and determine the most valuable places to leave them around town. Incentivize riders to drop them off in valuable spots with ride credit. Maybe partner with Postmates or DoorDash to make it a low-expense delivery vehicle for couriers who don't own cars.
Seattle is just one of the first to allow this model. Other cities and college campuses (especially ones less dense than Seatle, that may not get much out of traditional bike shares) will follow soon. There is a ton of room to grow. And the sooner you start collecting that data and interpreting it, the bigger advantage you'll have due to being able to make ML-driven optimizations.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#225The problem is it's almost impossible to put together a functional team from people who don't know each other for years. I have a solid idea and need 3 guys with exactly the background you described, especially the SaaS+ML interest, but it doesn't matter because of this. The trust issues are usually covered by a patchwork of NDAs, equity splits that turn out to be arbitrary, vesting schedules that turn out to be unfair, and at the end of the day, someone gets screwed anyway. So I'd love to see that problem solved first - not sure that's also a business "idea" though :-) Good luck anyway.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#226Make art, not money.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#227Tough love: You've done too much reading on the subject already and will learn nothing from reading even more by indulging yourself in the comments here. And although good teams can find good ideas they have to "try and fail" at things, not just "consider and not try" things. I'm not sure how long you've been at this and which ideas you have considered and rejected and for what reasons, but if it has been longer than…
I think the problem as described is actually a team problem. You don't have a good team without a vision leader who is articulating the ideas and steering the company. Like a boat with no captain, labor and capital resources are important but ultimately useless without a captain who has a vague idea of the endpoint and a sense for the roadmap. Try to dig into your collective social networks and see if you know anyone…
This is the most obvious issue. They don't have a great team. At best, they have potential great team members. A great team implies applying talent and a vision to solving problems. They can't come up with a problem to try to tackle. Most people here on HN have 7 problems they'd love to work on but don't have the time or resources. I also think it is a big challenge to pick a problem you don't understand or have no background knowledge about.
I'd suggest picking an industry with known inefficiencies (health care, education, etc.) and have all three go work at three different companies in that space for a year. Then come back and I'm sure lack of ideas won't be the issue.
Remember, ideas are almost worthless and at best merely a head start. Execution is EVERYTHING.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#228I've been a subscriber of opps daily for a while. I've started to realize one of the problems isn't that the technology to solve these niche problems doesn't exist... but rather most people either aren't searching for solutions or they don't understand how to apply existing technology to solve them.
I think there's a huge business opportunity in marketing/modifying existing software for new applications.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#229So .. a bizdev guy who has never found any business problems and a PE guy who has never discovered any PE problems? Either you're overthinking it or just doomed: you don't have a team.
so harsh yet so true. off the top of my head i can think of a few PE problems that warrant a product. For instance, Facebook just released a Locations API for over a million locations. Which means you can find the number of checkins for stores like BestBuy and Target everyday. This can be a goldmine for financial analysts. Your team needs to stop screwing around.
Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea
#230I'm not sure if you realised yet or not but this post itself is an idea on it's own - "Help potential great team without ideas finding ideas".
Yah, I realized this too a while back when I was doing the "what problem do I have?" exercise... "well, clearly I have a problem finding an idea." :)
I had some ideas on how to go about this but I think the major blocker to scale is the "functional fixedness" bias. At least that is where I got stuck.