Government. Often plagued by bad or outdated software rather than the lack of it
Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
21–30 of 176 posts
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#22If you know aviation, literally anything that will decrease fuel usage. Also maintenance & repair operations (a whole lot of dirty fingerprints going on there).
What do you mean "dirty fingerprints"? Like, literally?
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#23At the risk of sounding less than helpful or pessimistic, the first thing that jumped out at me when reading your post is that you are going about this backwards.
I'm not saying you can't or wont' succeed. I have no idea.
But it seems like the first thing that happened is that you decided you wanted to start a business. Usually it's the reverse - you get inspired by discovering a problem and realize you have the skillset and motivation to solve it and then you come to the realization that you need to start a business to do that. For founders/entrepreneurs with experience having done that previously, this is likely a scenario with a much higher probability of success.
But I imagine the success rate of people who say "I want to start my own business" and then look for a business to start have much lower success rates.
I'm not trying to rain no your parade at all. Just wanted to give you something to think about before you spend a fortune in time and/or money starting something. I could easily be wrong, though. Just food for thought.
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#24The non-profit/social sector - and we need it here. Why hire software developers when you can afford 8-10 part-time staff for the same price. Sincerely, a non-profit Technology Director.
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#25At the risk of sounding less than helpful or pessimistic, the first thing that jumped out at me when reading your post is that you are going about this backwards. I'm not saying you can't or wont' succeed. I have no idea. But it seems like the first thing that happened is that you decided you wanted to start a business. Usually it's the reverse - you get inspired by discovering a problem and realize you have the skil…
It sounds like you are describing the Silicon Valley ideal, but things like "finding a good business to start" are very much a traditional approach, and I am confident they will teach you about how to do market research to this end in business schools.
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#26At the risk of sounding less than helpful or pessimistic, the first thing that jumped out at me when reading your post is that you are going about this backwards. I'm not saying you can't or wont' succeed. I have no idea. But it seems like the first thing that happened is that you decided you wanted to start a business. Usually it's the reverse - you get inspired by discovering a problem and realize you have the skil…
I completely agree. The "natural" business is a much better recipe. I consider it a strike against me and will have to make up for it in other areas.
I'm still going forward, because I think starting a business still has a better expected outcome for me than working at a job.
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#27Government. Often plagued by bad or outdated software rather than the lack of it
That's true, but it's too hard to sell to the government for a small startup.
The RFP process is so long and brutal, and most of the time you need to have a man on the inside and basically go through that process as a formality because you are already guaranteed the contract.
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#28The non-profit/social sector - and we need it here. Why hire software developers when you can afford 8-10 part-time staff for the same price. Sincerely, a non-profit Technology Director.
Could you please provide some examples of tasks that can be improved with software in non-profit/social sector?
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#29Lawyers and justice
My ex-wife worked for a legal software firm. One thing to note is they were threatened with lawsuits ALL THE TIME, because, after all, their customers were lawyers. So any bug or whatever else would end up with some nasty email from some customer exclaiming, "We're going to sue!" In reality, not many (if any) actually carried through with it, but if that sort of threat makes you queasy, better be (or have) a really good lawyer yourself if you go this route, and not just as a domain expert for the software itself.
Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?
#30There is a non-trivial amount of work being done at university research labs that has yet to feel the effects of the machine learning revolution because PIs aren’t investing (or cannot afford) programmers, and scientific equipment is manufactured by a small handful of companies who have little incentive to innovate. Please note that n=2, but both myself and a friend of met have met people working in life science labs…
Yeah, these are the problems with cs phd's, they are in huge demand to actually do interdisciplinary work outside of their field and usually don't get enough recognition for the value they put in the actual research.