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Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

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Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#101

Post by Riguad87 »

dhruvkar wrote: post #85
Stranger43 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it kind of isn't because there is no clear way for your app to work with the app their employee's use for taxes or the desktop apps used by their supplier/customers. At the end of the day the 35 spreadsheets represent an workflow that your generic app will likely not automate, it's also not an empty market as every region have 5+ companies selling the magic silver bullet for mid-sized company book…

>> 35 spreadsheets represent an workflow that your generic app will likely not automate This is part of knowing the niche. The "app" doesn't need to be generic, or an app at all. Add-ons for existing industry software, integrations between industry software and generic inventory management app, etc. are all ways to provide immense value. >> not an empty market Yes, but they are often flooded with generic apps. "Inven…

In the "35 spreadsheets" scenario, I have found Quantrix to be the killer app. Very occasionally, Sharepoint and server side Excel is viable, but if you can import cleanly, Quantrix is almost there for claiming small proprietor mindshare. The beauty of anything that is easily understood as more robust logic, in a proprietors view, is the path that opens for you to work on the tricky bits they'd never let you touch otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#102

Post by Riguad87 »

dhruvkar wrote: post #65
frequentnapper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is having access to these niche fields and knowing enough to be able to create something useful.

agreed, a lot of it is niche knowledge that you could only gain by working in such a field or having close access to a company. Consulting within a niche is one way to do this.

In the eighties, my best friend's father was into organic farming in the following manner : he'd squish the slugs he happened to find while walking through his crops and that was his pest control over the top of great land husbandry in the tenth generation. My friend taught himself turbo pascal then vb and the farm tax deduction provided a 286 of my unfulfilled dreams. The son was shortly trading in commodity supplies and even derivatives and taking delivery of GPS equipped combines. But I doubt he could have been successful had he not grown up with his father's wisdom.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#103

Post by ijaffrey »

dmode wrote: post #77

I just went through extensive home remodeling. This is a big industry and there are a lot of opportunities to improve it by software. It was impossible for me to get a good visualization of what the end state of my home would look like. I needed to hire designers for that. It was difficult to know what various paint options would look like. And then there is the whole construction / contractor / material aspect of it…

Sorry to hear about your pain on the remodel! Been there. We're working on a company called Skipp (www.skipp.co) to address exactly the problems you mentioned. We're currently in beta and if you're up for it we'd love to get your feedback.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#104

Post by wpietri »

erisinger wrote: post #70
wpietri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a traditional approach? I've met a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, and I have heard of almost nobody starting from "I have started a business, now what should we do" being successful. Bezos arguably took that approach, but that story gets told so much precisely because it was unusual. More often it turns out like Webvan, where the lack of deep domain knowledge means making noob mistakes that kil…

In the US this is precisely the traditional approach. The country was built by immigrants who would arrive in an area -- San Francisco or New York for example -- decide that if they didn't want to work in a sweat shop they would have to start a business, then look around to see what their neighborhood needed, and build it. Laundromat, restaurant, feed store, etc. They didn't need to be intrigued by a problem or have…

One, I think starting another instance of a well-known kind of business is very different than creating a new product, especially when one has used that kind of business a lot. So even if what you say were true, I don't think it would be relevant to, "I've started a business, what kind of product should we make."

But two, I'd like to see some evidence that people really did entirely arbitrary things based on demand, without relation to other factors. If we look at a well-known example, the way Indian-Americans have dominated the motel industry, there's pretty clear evidence that wasn't just driven by looking around the neighborhood to see what was needed. E.g.: https://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/06/11/why-indian-am...

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#105

Post by wpietri »

edanm wrote: post #87
wpietri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a traditional approach? I've met a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, and I have heard of almost nobody starting from "I have started a business, now what should we do" being successful. Bezos arguably took that approach, but that story gets told so much precisely because it was unusual. More often it turns out like Webvan, where the lack of deep domain knowledge means making noob mistakes that kil…

You're making a mistake if you're thinking of Bezos as an example in the context of small business owners. Actually, you can probably just rule out Bezos and any of the other FAANG companies as crazy exceptions. Outside of tech, the standard entrepreneurship story is "I want to be my own boss; hmm, maybe I'll franchise a McDonald's". It's only in tech that we end up equating entrepreneurship with things like innovati…

Well, the whole theory of a franchise is that it reduces all risk because the product has already been figured out. And franchising didn't really become popular until after WWII, so I'd have a hard time calling it "traditional".

And just to be clear, I'm not thinking of Bezos as an example of small business owners. He's just the only person I've ever heard of who successfully said, "I'm starting a business. I wonder what it should sell?" As you say, I think he's an enormous outlier.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#106

Post by jermaustin1 »

pronouncedjerry wrote: post #97
jermaustin1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my very first consulting gigs were around access and excel automation with VBA. They paid well for being a 19-year-old kid still living with mom and dad. Now most of my consulting now is: - Bringing web-apps up to date (mainly by getting rid of a lot of jQuery that could just be JavaScript, or shockingly common could just be CSS) - Refactoring hard/impossible to understand 2000+ line methods (least favorite -…

I'm surprised businesses would pay for this. Usually they operate under the "if it ain't broke it, don't fix it" model. How do you position/market your services?

>How do you position/market your services?

I don't really market myself other than through networking. I try to keep up with everyone I've ever worked with. Especially if they manage tons of contractors without any real web development experience. The more of these "enterprise contractors" you have touching a project, the more value a person like me can add in cleaning everything back up.

> "if it ain't broke it, don't fix it"

This is true, and they only come to me when it is broke.

For instance - today I was fixing a bug for a client that has gone through ~20 contractors in the last 4 years. They had a view that was now displaying incorrectly. They were using a single table broken up by empty rows with no side borders to look like a space between tables, instead of using multiple tables with margin between them. Then they used jQuery to color the background of the odd rows. Doing a git blame showed dozens of hands on this view, and looking at the history, some very creative ways to color the background (all using jQuery).

Now that "table 1" had a new row added to it, there was a blue space (instead of white) between the two "tables".

It took me about 45 minutes to break the table apart properly, get the various attributes back in working order and remove the 10 lines of jQuery they were using to add various styles based on even/odd/first/last rows, and replace them with approximately the same number of lines of CSS, and another 30 minutes to replace the dozens of references to the same jQuery selector of the main table, with a single reference of the element returned from document.querySelector, another hour to fix the duplicate ID attributes scattered throughout the view which led to some JavaScript issues that then took another hour to resolve.

I do a lot of this. I'm hired to to quickly fix one problem, but while fixing it, I compile a list of dozens-hundreds of other ticking-time-bombs, and estimate about how long it would take to address them all. Easily turn a $500-1000 fix into $5-10k minimal extra work.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#107

Post by wpietri »

exolymph wrote: post #79
wpietri wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a traditional approach? I've met a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, and I have heard of almost nobody starting from "I have started a business, now what should we do" being successful. Bezos arguably took that approach, but that story gets told so much precisely because it was unusual. More often it turns out like Webvan, where the lack of deep domain knowledge means making noob mistakes that kil…

> I've met a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, and I have heard of almost nobody starting from "I have started a business, now what should we do" being successful. None of them told you that this is how they went about it, because it's a bad story.

Depends on how you tell it. Obviously, if this guy ends up succeeding, he can tell it as story of personal brilliance and talent.

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#109

Post by jasonlhy »

dhruvkar wrote: post #36

Construction is a big field, and there are many niche industries within it. I work in natural stone. There are several different types of companies just in this niche. Usually the flow of product is: quarries -> factories -> distributors (us) -> fabricators -> kitchen and bath shops -> end user There are maybe 5-7 major pieces of software for the first four stages. "Under-served" is an understatement. Similarly, ther…

Absolutely agree, construction is very big field. I work for software company targeting construction, the scale of data, operation is far beyond my expectations

Re: Ask HN: What industries are underserved by software?

#110

Post by avgDev »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #80
Ididntdothis wrote: post #11

When I was contractor I did a lot of niche apps for small businesses. I think it comes down to your ability to sell. I suck at it so not much success for me. But there is a ton of opportunity if you are willing to talk to people about their needs and then go out to sell. You won’t be the next unicorn but you can make decent money and it’s fun working with small business owners. Add: I often saved them countless hours…

Some of my very first consulting gigs were around access and excel automation with VBA. They paid well for being a 19-year-old kid still living with mom and dad. Now most of my consulting now is: - Bringing web-apps up to date (mainly by getting rid of a lot of jQuery that could just be JavaScript, or shockingly common could just be CSS) - Refactoring hard/impossible to understand 2000+ line methods (least favorite -…

This makes me feel not alone. I am rewriting an enterprise app. I had to work with outdated source code and decompiled production code. Many methods 1500+ lines, data access, printing and all validation. As a BONUS, the variable names are textbox1, textbox2 and field1.
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