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Startup Ideas

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas

#221

Post by arkades »

wonderous wrote: post #214
arkades wrote: post #205

Re Smart Bathroom: Every time I hear about all-knowing toilets, I continue to feel it’s putting the cart way ahead of the horse. There’s a rule in medicine: don’t order a test whose outcome doesn’t change your decision. That’s not about cost-savings, it’s about avoiding false positives that make no sense in clinical context but raise flags that must be chased down. This sort of thing is literally promising to just co…

Generally speaking the topic falls into the desire to have real-time/always-on data feeds that magically produce value just because they’re always producing data. That said, beyond asking the obvious, why do you need the data real-time and how much value does this produce, I do not know a better filter or means to guide a startup covering this ground.

There is no easy guide. Speak to the people doing the work, and target your innovation to the existing revenue streams (that is, if your product benefits an insurer, why are you pitching it to the patients?).

As someone in the industry I do of course have a wishlist, but, you know.

As to clean: a self cleaning toilet and a roomba living in the corner is a huge step away from treating your toilet as an always-on medical lab.

Re: Startup Ideas

#222

Post by pascalxus »

wonderous wrote: post #212
pascalxus wrote: post #209

Getting good ideas/big problems is VERY important, so I applaud that. But, the more important question we should be asking is, are these problems of customers who "have their hair on fire?". If not, then it'll probably go nowhere. How much are customers willing to spend to have these problems solved? This reminds of that Website that answered just that question. I just can't remember what it was. does anyone else rem…

Are you talking about this website: https://nugget.one

no, there was another one, where people post problems along with a dollar amount that they would pay for to have the problem solved.

Re: Startup Ideas

#223

Post by thephyber »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #72
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're trying to find better ways to get prospective startup founders in contact with problems that really ought to be solved." Ought is a loaded term there in my opinion because it depends on who you ask and what your goals are. A VC and a philanthropist are going to have wildly different answers. 80000 hours [1] has the goal of identifying the most pressing problems in the world [2] and then connecting people with j…

> Ought is a loaded term there in my opinion because it depends on who you ask and what your goals are. A VC and a philanthropist are going to have wildly different answers. Justin Kan's idea for buyer's remorse insurance on fine art really drives home that you're on point. It should speak volumes that YC is publishing the idea that "fine art purchasing sure is a difficult problem" with a straight face. Let’s put hal…

I noticed that, but instead of jumping straight to "why should I make a service for rich fools?" I thought to myself "what other similar use-cases are there?"

If you buy an engagement ring and the proposal gets rejected, you get stuck with a depreciating asset which is hard to sell for anything, let alone for what you buy.

Still too high-net-worth for you? Insurance for used-car problems that you don't have to buy from the used car dealer that sells you the car. There's an inherent conflict of interest in a dealer selling you a car and then selling you the hedge against problems with that car.

I watched a Charlie Rose interview this week with a famous comic writer who was proud to work in comics, as opposed to painting. His logic was that average people feel dumb and that they are "missing something" if they look at a painting and "don't get it". When you look at a comic and you "don't get it", you are more likely to think the comic is trash and that there is nothing "to get". Similarly, I think the pretentiousness of art gallery sales people is a pressure tactic to get you to buy something you don't really value. I don't think insurance-after-the-fact solves the incentive mismatch for fine art.

Re: Startup Ideas

#224

Post by rficcaglia »

brianbreslin wrote: post #158
iforiq wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one? Paid labs? This is a big problem we've faced too, currently our bookkeeper does it for us, which can get expensive as they charge by the hour.

Tesorio

I looked at them [0] but I don't see anything to do with "get me paid faster" (aka collections or factoring) but they seem to have a "demo wall" to get any meaningful info.

I assume what they do is show you data you already have but maybe don't appreciate fully, e.g. if BigCo pays you on average 30 days late you can see that before you embark on some new project. Cool, but not necessarily getting me paid faster. Helping me avoid risk perhaps.

Maybe I missed it but if you know more, maybe you can give some examples of how they solve this? Genuinely interested since I too have this problem on occasion.

[0] https://www.tesorio.com/

Re: Startup Ideas

#225

Post by [deleted] »

rficcaglia wrote: post #157
chromaton wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "use blockchain" people are missing it. This is for dealing with companies that handle purchases through the very traditional Quote -> Purchase Order -> Delivery -> Invoice -> Payment system.

EDIT: re-read the parent and I think I grok now. So why can't the "traditional" quote to cash be embodied on ethereum?

[deleted]

Re: Startup Ideas

#226

Post by rficcaglia »

iforiq wrote: post #125
brianbreslin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know at least one company offering this in a modern package.

Which one? Paid labs? This is a big problem we've faced too, currently our bookkeeper does it for us, which can get expensive as they charge by the hour.

Thanks! paidlabs looks useful if not a magical silver bullet...will definitely check them out.

Re: Startup Ideas

#228

Post by j_m_b »

I've had this idea to find a way to connect landscapers and homeowners to people seeking to buy yard waste for use in various composts and mulches. What gave me this idea was that I had a tree cut down and chipped in my neighborhood. By simply asking, the guys gave me a huge pile of wood mulch! I gave them $50 as a tip. Had I gone through a mulching company, I would have paid closer to $300. I feel like there are lots of opportunities like this that exist.

Drawbacks: Very seasonal in temperate climates. Getting initial providers. Fluctuations in supply/demand. Some communities process yard waste for free.

Re: Startup Ideas

#229

Post by arkades »

mynegation wrote: post #217
arkades wrote: post #205

Re Smart Bathroom: Every time I hear about all-knowing toilets, I continue to feel it’s putting the cart way ahead of the horse. There’s a rule in medicine: don’t order a test whose outcome doesn’t change your decision. That’s not about cost-savings, it’s about avoiding false positives that make no sense in clinical context but raise flags that must be chased down. This sort of thing is literally promising to just co…

There is (pretty horrible) joke: "If violence does not solve the problem, you are not using enough of it". It may be the case with data. Put another way, we may be in the uncanny valley of data. There is definitely an issue of under-diagnosis for many diseases. More data may not help initially but once we are over the critical mass in the amount of data and sophistication of ML algorithms trained on it, it will get o…

We have a much bigger problem with overdiagnosis than underdiagnosis, and the latter is not likely to be solved with this sort of scattershot data collection. The former is very likely to be inflamed.

The difference is that you actually hear about the Diagnosis X That Was Missed, but you never hear about That Simple Blood Test That Should Never Have Been Drawn but that Showed Positive for a Marker Common In Disease But Also Found in the General Population so They Needed a Biopsy to Rule Out, and Spent Hundreds or Thousands if Dollars and Lost Several Days of Work For Nothing At All. The latter is much, much, more common.

The “miss” is usually due to missing something in the modern deluge of data coupled to inadequate appointment time/resources, not lack of data availability.

For a real life example: heard about a patient die the other day. Reviewing his records with a student afterwards I saw his potassium had been climbing in his last two panels (though it hadn’t yet gotten high enough to be a red flag), and he didn’t get the blood gas that should have been done as per protocol. Thing is, the data was there, the rules were there, but someone with enough time to meaningfully review it was not. Would more piles of detritus data to sift through made that more likely, or less?

I also remain an ML skeptic for the time being. ML analysis of patient data is a big sophisticated version of retrospective analysis, which for purely statistical reasons is highly, highly unreliable.

Re: Startup Ideas

#230

Post by pbreit »

frankdenbow wrote: post #8

> Accounts Receivables as a Service https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/kinder-gentler-debt-collec... > Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising ADstruc, ADquick > Modern Firefighting Really intrigued by this one. I would go further and say disaster relief in general, as living in Puerto Rico showed me how ill-equipped we are to deal with finding the status of people with no communications, and getting aid to the ri…

re: Accounts receivable - TrueAccord is debt collection which is somewhat different from accounts receivable. More in the AR universe is YayPay: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/13/yaypay-raises-53-million-f...
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