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Startup Ideas

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas

#261

Post by yesbabyyes »

ductionist wrote: post #252
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.

Pardon my asking, but this piqued my interest. Assuming that you get paid 90%, why do you care whether your client also pays interest - presumably to the collector?

Re: Startup Ideas

#263

Post by lytol »

jakobegger wrote: post #231
lytol wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a senior engineer at a startup that evolved into this space – basically, we started as a browser for kids and slowly started adding more "social" features. I thought I'd add a few notes in case you (or someone else) goes down this road: - Monetization is hard. As much as parents vocally _desire_ a safe space for their kids online, it doesn't translate to their wallet. If you end up going for more indirect reven…

If your product depends on parent supervision, it's not going to work. As a parent, the last thing I want to do is spend more time looking after my kids! If you work on a kid product, make sure that kids can use it on their own, without supervision.

It's not so much parent supervision but just parent buy-in. If you're a game, no problem, you just need to appeal to the kid. If you're trying to be a safe portal to the wider internet, you probably need parents onboard.

Re: Startup Ideas

#264

Post by ahussain »

ductionist wrote: post #252
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.

I'm curious why you think AR would be a good way to solve this problem. I feel like I'm missing a few links in the chain.

Re: Startup Ideas

#265

Post by Uhhrrr »

pjc50 wrote: post #39

> Renewable Energy from Engineered Microbes This has been one of those things that's 5 years away for decades. Great if you can make it happen. > Social Network for Children Club Penguin was quite successful for a while.

Club Penguin was indeed successful, until Disney bought it and killed it.

I suppose you could say that means it has a proven business model.

Re: Startup Ideas

#266

Post by chiefalchemist »

was_boring wrote: post #219
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…

> “More data” is not inherently good. Without a framework of information for interpretation of that data, it will do far more harm than good. I'm glad people are saying this. I'm in a constant fight at work with people who want "more data." What ends up happening most of the time is it's ignored or people do not interpret it correctly because they don't have the ability or context to do it (doing stats wrong for inst…

Yup. More data is not the same as better information.

Put another way, at the extreme, you can have more and more data but unless you have the right data and are able to interpret it correctly, more data will only blind and confuse.

Re: Startup Ideas

#268

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

archagon wrote: post #160
Finbarr wrote: post #65

There are hundreds of startup ideas in the Yellow Pages trending section: https://www.yellowpages.com/san-francisco-ca/trends/1

> Throne Chair Rental YC, here I come!

>Lamp Lampshade Repair

Our team at LampLampshadeRepair.io will see you there!

Re: Startup Ideas

#269

Post by username223 »

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…

> 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.

Unfortunately the rule doesn't apply in this case. Your "smart" toilet is not trying to diagnose problems. It is trying to infer which ads you will click on the most, to make money for a surveillance company. A toilet that has a handful of true positives, a huge number of false ones, and doesn't kill too many people is pure win: surveillance and pharma both make money, and it's very hard for a consumer to tell if he never had X disease, or if buying the medicine prevented his X disease.

Re: Startup Ideas

#270

Post by davidivadavid »

Wouldn't it be helpful if those were reformulated in terms of the real "problem" being solved, or at least the benificial outcome that they're aiming for?

As a marketer who's always been interested in tech startups and that has dealt with many engineers, those ideas scream "engineering." The problem is finding startup ideas from an engineering point of view has in my experience been the best way to find a solution in search of a problem.

"AI for Communicating with Dogs": sounds like a "hop on the AI bandwagon idea". I don't believe the idea in itself is silly at all (getting people to empathise with animals is probably a net good), but presenting it that way is a guaranteed way of not being taken seriously, and, more importantly, a guaranteed way of limiting your options when trying to solve the actual problem. Why does it HAVE TO be done with AI?

"Smart Bathroom": Why? Why not start from the desired outcome? We're going to collect more data to do what?

Etc. etc. Most of those ideas (there are a few exceptions) are driven by a product/widget-centric vision that doesn't seem to have any deeper justification.

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