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Startup Ideas

blog.ycombinator.com

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271–280 of 470 posts

Re: Startup Ideas

#271

Post by WmyEE0UsWAwC2i »

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…

Why would the data only be used for patology?

* Diet balancig? (Hey, eat more cucumbers)

* Calories? (IANAD)

* Also more serendipiteous opportunities we can't foresee now

Or:

(at the doctor's)

t = 0 - Doc - I would need a urine analysis

t = 60s - User - Here you are.

Cons:

* Huge privacy concerns (Hey, you are fired! btw, you also have cancer)

Re: Startup Ideas

#272

Post by 33W »

j_m_b wrote: post #228

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 lot…

I think I found this through HN a while back: https://getchipdrop.com/

Re: Startup Ideas

#273

Post by canes123456 »

arkades wrote: post #247
mynegation wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how this proves me wrong. What it does prove is that analysis of data should not be left (entirely) to humans, who are inherently flaky. Dark irony of this situation is that _more_ data from additional test had a chance of saving the patient. The way it should have worked: based on previous labeled examples, computer system should have noticed the uptrend in potassium and flag this client for blood gas, and…

It’s not the blood gas that would have saved him; just seeing the potassium trending up would have done it. Thing is, there was a context where that mattered. In others, it wouldn’t have. That’s why you need someone capable of interpretation to -look- at it. EMRs have done more to harm patients than help them, now that everyone constantly copy-pastes old patient hx before adding their notes (so nothing can be said to…

I agree with you and are suspicious of the power of increasing raw data in the near term. I think there are a few dumb things we can do that have a chance at being useful. The usefulness of something like this would have to be extremely narrowly focused. For example, it can look at only potassium trends. We would first need to just monitor people for long periods of time and see what happens. We might see certain combinations of simple markers that make additional tests worth the risk and minimize false alarms. After this research, would we turn on the alarms and start worrying people.

Re: Startup Ideas

#274

Post by geomark »

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…

It's bike-shedding, because the kind of problems you mentioned are really hard to solve so people work on something else instead.

Re: Startup Ideas

#275

Post by alphonsegaston »

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…

It's also literally an Onion article:

https://www.theonion.com/new-e-toilet-to-revolutionize-onlin...

Re: Startup Ideas

#276

Post by Hasz »

Want a good idea?

Go talk to people. Figure out what their pain points are -- chances are, there are other people like them, and if it's enough of a pain, they'll pay for it.

That being said, people are acutely aware of what pains them. They are not, in general, able to come up with what they want (in terms of a solution). That's your job.

So ask people what their pain points are; don't ask people what they want.

Re: Startup Ideas

#277

Post by chiefalchemist »

arkades wrote: post #229
mynegation wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 B…

I just finished (the book) Everybody Lies. It seems to me using the doppelganger approach (as mentioned in the book) would at least be helpful.

A couple months ago I spent a good number of hours over a couple week at local hospital waiting for a close friend's mum to recover from a stroke. I could be mistaken but the only "data analysis" I noticed was taking place in the heads of the doctors and nurses.

The same goes for the physical therapy facility. That is, no one - not even the insurance company - was using similar cases as a guide. Yes, at a high general level they were. But using real data didn't seem to be on their radar.

This void made family decision making stressful and difficult.

Re: Startup Ideas

#278

Post by flashman »

jabretti wrote: post #106
blizkreeg wrote: post #75

I've thought about the firefighting idea as well, especially after the recent Sonoma and Napa fire. Sprinkler systems for indoor fires are not that uncommon now. Why aren't there sprinkler/fire retardant systems for the perimeter/external part of a house? In a wildfire, I can't imagine a better way to fight the fire from spreading through a neighborhood than a system that auto-deploys when it senses smoke on the peri…

This is naive. A bushfire is huge, hot, and fast-moving, consuming entire trees in seconds. Your mains-pressure water sprinkler will not deter an onrushing wall of flame in the least... and worse, an automated system would take water away from where it's needed.

Here in Australia, external bushfire sprinkler systems are becoming more common. Their main purpose is to defend a house against flying embers, which are the most common way that homes ignite during a bushfire.

They are pressurised using a diesel generator, and each sprinkler head consumes 6 to 20 litres per minute (a typical installation will include 20-30 sprinkler heads) from an independent water supply (not mains - you can rely on that failing in a fire).

A bushfire front will typically pass within five to ten minutes, because as you pointed out, they are fast-moving. This limits the amount of radiant heat a sprinkler system has to cope with.

While fire suppression systems don't seem to me like a good startup model (more of a small-to-medium business), there are good software opportunities for automated and remote-triggered sprinkler activation (because people still evacuate hours earlier, and need a way to turn on the sprinkler system remotely).

Re: Startup Ideas

#280

Post by canes123456 »

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…

I don't like any of these ideas but dismissing only the most pressing problems is a silly way to judge ideas.

It is easy to pick apart ideas, look:

- cost of housing in cities: Convince home owners to vote against their own self interest. Not a great business idea - urban transport: Everyone else is trying to do this. Self driving cars might solve this - Infrastucture in the developing world: Hard for outsiders to actually know where the infrastucture should be. Also, who pays? - fixing 'fake news': The issue isn't fake news, it is filter bubbles. Just fix human nature. - new (non-ads) business models for the web: There are other business models but ads are a pretty great option for the rest of the planet. This a non problem that only for hacker news posters care about. This is one of the most pressing issues on the planet?

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