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Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

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Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#51

Post by thisisit »

hayksaakian wrote: post #15

Is there any industry or history where you can draw from personal experience? What inefficiencies have you noticed? What problems have you noticed from the consumer end of your relationships with businesses? Could you make something obsolete with automation, or make something else more efficient and profitable? You don't need to be the first one to come up with an idea for a startup. Most startups fail, even if they…

> - Crypto currency: This is becoming more and more mainstream. If you can come up with some way for the average person to benefit from and want to use crypto, there's great opportunity available for you.

This might be both good and bad as the steam runs out of the current climb.

That said, I have been wanting to build something which might solve the volatility issue in cryptocurrency but see multiple problems. For one, I have zero programming knowledge and I have been trying to learn but it is going no where very fast. Second, the cryptocurrency crowd is difficult to please. This service, at least for starters, might cost a lot of money which might not go down well.

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#52

Post by borplk »

narrator wrote: post #8

You could consult and see what problems businesses are having that you work with.

This is a popular suggestion but I don't think as well as people make it sound.

Lots of problems don't have solutions that would be viable for a new startup (especially not for lean bootstrapped ones).

The problems tend to be either so very specific where the solution would be "just use Excel" or "you need a custom made software", or somewhere in between there.

Or so common and obvious and popular where the solution is already hyper saturated with million dollar and billion dollar companies.

For example very few businesses have customer service support software needs that are not already satisfied by the huge array of existing solutions.

Even if they do, that knowledge is not suddenly going to give you any advantages. You end up at the position of building a feature of a much bigger software ("We like Zendesk but it's missing ____ feature").

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#53

Post by internetxplorer »

dbbk wrote: post #39
internetxplorer wrote: post #7

A few Ideas I want someone to work on: - Code/Product Documentation SaaS tool for early stage tech companies (very few good products, one is ReadMe.io) - An ad network for progressive web apps (PWA have good future and as of now there is no exclusive ad network for them) - CRM kind of SaaS app for startup founders (where founders can manage all their relationship, communication and contacts like investors, journalist…

What is ReadMe.io missing that you'd like to see?

It looks like a well built product. Its just there should be more products and alternatives in every niche.

I'd personally like to see a simpler version that offers a free plan too which students can use. Just like how many B2B and developer targeted SaaS apps offer a free plan that has some limitations but help people to get started.

Students globally are not documenting their code, projects and startups because there is no simple and more importantly free/cheap alternative that they are aware of.

Readme.io is pricey and is simply beyond the reach of students and developers of developing/underdeveloped countries.

Their is no Readme.io like SaaS app for small and budget-sensitive projects as far as I know.

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#54

Post by ThomPete »

thisisit wrote: post #50

You know people say - never be afraid of discussing your ideas? I believe one of the reasons for that is everyone's vision is different. So, even if I gave you an idea, I might see things differently than you do. That said, here's my advice on finding a good idea - sell shovels during a gold rush. Now what it means find places where you can provide value by connecting two different parts of society. One of the ways y…

All of these businesses share one common theme.

They are all aggregators.

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#55

Post by ThomPete »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #49
Buttons840 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that went under are a source of good ideas too. Many of them failed because they accepted too much funding and thus lost the option of being a modest success, but for a small team of one or two people, you can possibly make the idea work and be profitable.

Why waste your time on failures when you have successes that already have customers waiting for you to get your money .

Because it might as well be a timing or a strategy issue.

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#56

Post by f_allwein »

brucephillips wrote: post #35
f_allwein wrote: post #32

One thing I would find really useful is a web tool that can scrape/ filter/ list events. E.g. in most cities, it is impossible to get a simple listing of all screenings of films in cinemas, let alone filter them by location/time/... or mash them up with tools tracking your own taste. Same for concerts, theatre, art exhibitions, ...

The hard thing about this is fragmentation. Building a web scraper for events means extracting information from a wide variety of non-standard websites. Even Eventbrite aggregates events manually, I think.

Yes, except you'd only have to do it once for each entity (e.g. chain of cinemas). Plus, this should not be rocket science, so maybe you can crowd source extractors...

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#57

Post by dcarmo »

I think that one business model that will never get old is information spread. Most (all?) of the problems we see in the world today could possibly be fixed if people were more knowledgeable. And I don't mean necessarily textbook knowledge, but common stuff as well.

For example, I live in a somewhat small city and it's not easy to know where can I go to have swimming classes. Google could help me with that, but usually these places aren't very tech-savvy (or they do have a certain presence, but they don't keep it updated).

Another great example: https://www.pointy.com/.

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#58

Post by mannykannot »

vemv wrote: post #40
brucephillips wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no blatant problems awaiting for a solution anymore (it's 2018!). This is unlikely to be true. It's at least as untrue as it was in any previous year. Good ideas are only blatantly obvious in hindsight.

I disagree. Airbnb, Uber, Amazon and many others are extremely basic ideas that some person or another would have come up with sooner or later. Basically it was a matter of being in the right place, right time, right knowledge (and execution, of course) Winners took it all.

Blatantly obvious ideas, and those that someone will come up with sooner or later, are distinct categories, more or less by definition.

There are plenty of problems, the shortage is in problems with obvious solutions that have not yet been implemented yet. One could argue that these opportunities are becoming more fleeting, as more people are being drawn into the search for them.

Re: Ask HN: It’s 2018, what to build now?

#59

Post by Shorn »

ThomPete wrote: post #54
thisisit wrote: post #50

You know people say - never be afraid of discussing your ideas? I believe one of the reasons for that is everyone's vision is different. So, even if I gave you an idea, I might see things differently than you do. That said, here's my advice on finding a good idea - sell shovels during a gold rush. Now what it means find places where you can provide value by connecting two different parts of society. One of the ways y…

All of these businesses share one common theme. They are all aggregators.

Recent non-aggregator examples for the "cloud" gold-rush: Docker and Hashicorp (Terraform especially).

I reckon there's plently of money left on the table for cloud-shovels (though the market is getting fuller by the second).

Though of course, as pointed out in a different comment - you'll need some experience with the problem-space in order to figure out what problem to tackle.

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