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Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

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Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#91

Post by comstock »

brucephillips wrote: post #71
comstock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not really talking about providing a basic income. What I’m saying is the barrier to having “personal autonomy” in a society where providing the essentials of life has to a high degree already been automated, is too high.

How would we provide the essentials of life other than through basic income or a similar welfare program?

Work for a year then take two years off? Or retire earlier? Again, I didn’t say that people wouldn’t work at all. I said that the barrier to obtaining a personal autonomy is too high in a society where providing the essentials of life has been largely automated.

We keep people working by making it had to survive otherwise (high rents that don’t represent the maintainence/construction costs etc).

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#92

Post by sumedh »

borplk wrote: post #90
sumedh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not multi-billion unicorns like FB and Google. FB and Google were not multi-billion unicorns when they started. In your previous comment you said it was not entirely worthless but now you are saying such comments are worthless. Atleast make up your mind.

The part that I said wasn't entirely worthless was about those problem statements that are very specific and niche (I was contrasting that to the worthless ones). Basic example, "People want more tasty Pizza", "People want better wine" is trivial and worthless. A much more narrow, specific, and niche example could be valuable. Something like: "In $area there are lots of migrants living from $country and they love thi…

haha not sure if you are trying to be funny or you just dont get it.

Build something better is a figure of speech looks like you have taken that literally. If you search for the freshdesk story you will understand there were specific pain points discussed.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#93

Post by zpatel »

eli wrote: post #59
lubujackson wrote: post #37

I have issue with the "Blue/Red Ocean" concept. Google is supposedly a Blue Ocean idea. Really? Sure, their approach was novel but the search market was already saturated by Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, etc. You could say the same about Facebook with the competition of Friendster and MySpace. In both cases they took a new angle that let them expand well beyond the existing market, but the market did exist and was alread…

Nobody else was doing AdWords

overture?

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#94

Post by dang »

scoot wrote: post #51
lettergram wrote: post #10

It's interesting that of the many friends I have who started companies (10 - 12), only two of them didn't receive funding. Both businesses built from scratch and now have a revenue somewhere in the neighborhood of $1m a year after two years. That's honestly pretty good IMO. The other eight or so friends who started companies accepted some form of money. Of those, only two are still in existance. The survival rate of…

With respect, if they were truly your friends, you would know their number. The fact that you don't makes me deeply suspicious of the veracity of the rest of your claim.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#95

Post by imtringued »

enraged_camel wrote: post #27
bronlund wrote: post #12

Finding a good idea is the easy part.

I used to think so as well, but over the years, I've realized that execution is the easy part, at least for me. Finding good ideas, as in ideas that can lead to profitable businesses, is difficult because it requires deep domain expertise.

If execution is so easy for you I have a lot of ideas for you.

Build me a real working space shuttle for $10.

>Finding good ideas, as in ideas that can lead to profitable businesses, is difficult because it requires deep domain expertise.

A good idea is not just the idea itself, it also considers feasability of execution. Saying execution is less important than an idea that you can execute well is a tautology.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#96

Post by pwaai »

amorphid wrote: post #75
adventured wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days you can just get a loan from a bank if you have a high enough MRR to cover the interest rate Heavily depends on the business. Banks absolutely hate to lend to businesses with few or no assets. It's not enough to just be able to cover the payments because of your MRR. The bank wants something to seize if you implode. For the bank it's a simple calculation: how do we get our money back, if your business tu…

> Banks absolutely hate to lend to businesses with few or no assets Pretty much! My tech startup couldn't raise funding, morphed into a consulting business, and couldn't borrow money. We had to grow entirely out of cash flow, which was both liberating and terrifying. The only credit available to us was personal credit cards. We might have been able to get approved for a small line of credit, but it wouldn't have been…

Did you try lendingclub?

Up to what percentage of your net profits were they willing to lend to you? What was the interest rate?

So a SaaS business that generates 1m ARR can't get any loan because there's no collateral asset that can be seized?

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#97

Post by scoot »

dang wrote: post #94
scoot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, if they were truly your friends, you would know their number. The fact that you don't makes me deeply suspicious of the veracity of the rest of your claim.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

When the top comment is (at least partially) made-up anecdata, it deserves calling out, even if the tone could use some work. Perhaps next time I'll quote pg.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#98

Post by dang »

scoot wrote: post #97
dang wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

When the top comment is (at least partially) made-up anecdata, it deserves calling out, even if the tone could use some work. Perhaps next time I'll quote pg.

It isn't a question of 'tone', but of content. If you take out the uncivil and/or empty content and replace it with substance, then you'll be raising the signal/noise ratio instead of lowering it. That's what we're hoping to see.

"Calling out"—sort of a dubious phrase from internet shaming culture to begin with—doesn't really enter into it. Signal/noise ratio does.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#99

Post by amorphid »

pwaai wrote: post #96
amorphid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banks absolutely hate to lend to businesses with few or no assets Pretty much! My tech startup couldn't raise funding, morphed into a consulting business, and couldn't borrow money. We had to grow entirely out of cash flow, which was both liberating and terrifying. The only credit available to us was personal credit cards. We might have been able to get approved for a small line of credit, but it wouldn't have been…

Did you try lendingclub? Up to what percentage of your net profits were they willing to lend to you? What was the interest rate? So a SaaS business that generates 1m ARR can't get any loan because there's no collateral asset that can be seized?

My personal credit was not optimal, I had no personal assets to speak of, and the business was too new/unstable to pitch a good "lend moneyz pleez!" story. Traditional lending channels were not available to me. I'm sure someone somewhere would have floated a loan, but I eventually chose to just work harder. Eventually trying to raise money seemed like more work than earning it.
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