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Startup Ideas

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas

#251

Post by arkades »

mynegation wrote: post #246
davemel37 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have them read Chapter 5 of this book. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... "Using experts in a variety of fields as test subjects, experimental psychologists have examined the relationship between the amount of information available to the experts, the accuracy of judgments they make based on this information, and the experts’ confidence in the accuracy of these judgments." "Key findings f…

Depends on the way of consuming that data. I agree it may be counter-productive to feed more data to humans, who are able to hold on only to 7-9 object in immediate memory at a time, and driven by subconscious reflexes hardwired into us by billions of evolution. AI is not going to "think" like humans. It is not going to be better or worse, just "different". And all experience so far show that the more data the better…

Cart, horse.

People are proposing smart whatever now, and handeaving its value proposition as -eventually- feeding into ML which will -eventually- have benefits to patients.

I don’t think there is disagreement that data + ML is useful, but the value for increasing data because of AI assistance isn’t meaningful in the absence of that AI. Hospitals and insurers have huge data sets available: build a halfway decent AI first, and then argue for the value-add of the data.

Re: Startup Ideas

#252

Post by ductionist »

ahussain wrote: post #233

I honestly cannot tell if some of these ideas are real or just parodies of silicon valley, "avocado toast" tech culture: - AI for Communicating with Dogs - Baby Bidet - AR Debt Collector - Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Are these really the most pressing problems start-ups could be solving right now? What about issues like cost of housing in cities, urban transport, infrastructure in the developing world, fixing 'fake new…

Can't speak to AI for dogs and buyer's remorse insurance, but the AR collector really spoke to me - I would hand over 5-10% of invoices to have someone else deal with getting my enterprise clients to pay on time (and getting them to pay interest when they don't). It might not provide much social benefit, but I wish it existed anyway.

Re: Startup Ideas

#253

Post by 33W »

sulam wrote: post #3

That moment when someone reveals a lot about what itches they're currently scratching... > Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Money back guarantee for art buyers: Buying fine art has a steep learning curve.

I've been intrigued by the idea of establishing a blockchain for the sale and transfer of art. It has the similar characteristics of currency: several parties who do not have trust, a finite number of items (at any point in time).

A challenge would be to devise how new items are added - are there a few nodes (trusted galleries) that can add new pieces.

This would prevent a work that is in a private collection somewhere from being "discovered" by a forger. Anyone would be able to query the ledger and see that a different collector currently owns the piece.

Re: Startup Ideas

#254

Post by mikevin »

thisrod wrote: post #244

> Make Technology Relatable and Accessible I've considered drawing up a directed acyclic graph of fault propagation in Linux. E.g., an incorrect WPA key causes WiFi to be misconfigured causes the physical network layer to be unavailable causes ... big tangled DAG ... causes the web to be inaccessible causes Facebook to fail. This might be stored as a bunch of files in /usr/consequences. Software packages would come w…

That's brilliant. I guess you'd need a Wikipedia-like user community to manage all the likely scenarios.

Re: Startup Ideas

#255

Post by 33W »

ccozan wrote: post #73
blang wrote: post #44

> Low-Friction Lending Library I've thought about this one on and off for many years. I still think it's a great idea, but whenever I get to the liability part (both damage to person using a lended drill or hey you broke my drill) I get discouraged and stop thinking about it.

You need to partner with an insurer and add a small amount on top of the price. However still not sure, since someone wanted to have the tool _now_ , if a such shop would be open 24/7, in contrast of a library.

For the 24/7 aspect, some version of an automat, perhaps with an amazon now or uber eats delivery model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

Re: Startup Ideas

#256

Post by dcposch »

Waterluvian wrote: post #239
ahussain wrote: post #233

I honestly cannot tell if some of these ideas are real or just parodies of silicon valley, "avocado toast" tech culture: - AI for Communicating with Dogs - Baby Bidet - AR Debt Collector - Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Are these really the most pressing problems start-ups could be solving right now? What about issues like cost of housing in cities, urban transport, infrastructure in the developing world, fixing 'fake new…

Those problems aren't sexy and can't get anyone rich quick.

Counterpoint: some of those are sexy problems. The design of cities is a really interesting and deep challenge.

For example, check out @nkoren's startup, Podaris: https://podaris.com/

--

Conversely, there's actually nothing "sexy" about a startup for buyer's remorse insurance for fine art. It's unimportant and extremely bourgeoisie. It's not even a particularly big market.

There are real problems to solve!

Pretty much all of us on HN are extremely lucky in a lot of different ways. Solve a problem for some of the seven billion people less lucky than you, and you can achieve a double win. You can (1) build a business with a ton of growth potential and (2) sleep well at night.

--

I'm disappointed with YC's startup ideas list. It is potent evidence that the YC community has become too insular--that rich people are spending too much time hanging out with other rich people.

Re: Startup Ideas

#257

Post by groby_b »

mynegation wrote: post #246
davemel37 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have them read Chapter 5 of this book. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... "Using experts in a variety of fields as test subjects, experimental psychologists have examined the relationship between the amount of information available to the experts, the accuracy of judgments they make based on this information, and the experts’ confidence in the accuracy of these judgments." "Key findings f…

Depends on the way of consuming that data. I agree it may be counter-productive to feed more data to humans, who are able to hold on only to 7-9 object in immediate memory at a time, and driven by subconscious reflexes hardwired into us by billions of evolution. AI is not going to "think" like humans. It is not going to be better or worse, just "different". And all experience so far show that the more data the better…

And yet, anybody who actually works in machine learning has repeatedly said "figure out what problem you're solving first, then determine what data you might need - don't just throw a classifier at a data garbage heap"

And the experience doesn't show more data is better, it shows that an excess of features leads to overfitting.

Re: Startup Ideas

#258

Post by traviswingo »

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…

This reminded me of the urinal in "Benchwarmers"

Re: Startup Ideas

#259

Post by HiroshiSan »

dcposch wrote: post #256
Waterluvian wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those problems aren't sexy and can't get anyone rich quick.

Counterpoint: some of those are sexy problems. The design of cities is a really interesting and deep challenge. For example, check out @nkoren's startup, Podaris: https://podaris.com/ -- Conversely, there's actually nothing "sexy" about a startup for buyer's remorse insurance for fine art. It's unimportant and extremely bourgeoisie. It's not even a particularly big market. There are real problems to solve! Pretty muc…

For a deep look on designing cities I recommend reading the book the power broker.

Aaron Swartz' review of the book:

"I cannot possibly say enough good things about this book. Go read it. Right now. Yes, I know it’s long, but trust me, you’ll wish it was longer. I think it may be simply the best nonfiction book."

Re: Startup Ideas

#260

Post by muzani »

ahussain wrote: post #233

I honestly cannot tell if some of these ideas are real or just parodies of silicon valley, "avocado toast" tech culture: - AI for Communicating with Dogs - Baby Bidet - AR Debt Collector - Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Are these really the most pressing problems start-ups could be solving right now? What about issues like cost of housing in cities, urban transport, infrastructure in the developing world, fixing 'fake new…

Soft debt collector is a huge pronlem though. I don't think AR is the best fix, but if someone can do it just slightly better, I'd be willing to throw a lot of money at it.

AI communicator for dogs is hilarious though. It follows the (Buzzword) for Dogs pattern everyone jokes about.

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