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Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#201

Post by cturner »

aneesh wrote: post #135

Microsoft Office will eventually lose its throne, but I'm not sure I agree when you say that a startup can do better at making an online version of Office than Microsoft can. Microsoft has built-in advantages: they have an existing codebase for Office, they've been moving towards putting Office online with products like Sharepoint and Groove, and they have a lot of experience and knowledge in selling to enterprise cl…

A decent client-server model of office could definitely take it down. Sharepoint is ridiculously heavy for what's needed. It has too many features and doesn't present the key ones easily. Document production is conceptually simple in people's minds. Even I have found it awkward to adjust to appropriate use of sharepoint (and I still hate it).

Office users need something that places a genuinely excellent wordprocessing frontend as a frontend to a repository. Within this you'd have to facilitate good search, allow for data flexibility. Generally at the moment you need to be able to produce views of word processed documents as PDF, single-page HTML, multi-page HTML (oh - there's a style need I missed in my other comment), XML and IP-based API. The frontend needs to effortlessly handle massive documents without compromising the frontend and it needs to be possible to edit all of a document at once, or sectors of it. All this can be coordinated with a smart approach to use of the existing filesystem model.

The storage format needs to be textual to facilitate source-control and version diffing.

With the office space it's important to separate the things that users care about from what they don't. They care about the lovely frontend and a small subset of features. They don't really care if it backs on to a powerful custom engine. They care about features in the big-picture sense, but would not necessarily demand that they be offered in the frontend if they could be better achieved through another mechinism. Fortunately Microsoft have provided stunning tools for third party developers who want to extend Word and Excel and there are masses of good docs around on it.

Office can be done, but the people doing it need to look at the problem itself rather than trying to beat Microsoft at their own game by producing yet another crap monolithic arbitrary-format grinder. Think wiki but with a fantastic frontend (and by that I don't mean some horrid javascript GUI in a browser that is unresponsive and chooses to sometimes lose your data).

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#202

Post by jerry5 »

cturner wrote: post #89

I'm working for (somebody else's) startup at the moment and happy with my positioning there, but I've got thoughts coming from a number of these. > 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. I built songseed.com with the intention of creating a community for artists (perhaps with careers in other fields) who care about the music and aren't hypnotised by the Big Lie that artists get the sign and then ma…

> some sort of trading system that mixed FX with a whole bunch of wacky synthetics to allow you to easily take positions on things which are normally more complicated

Heh, what's this? I worked in FX at one point in time and found the whole thing very intriguing and inspiring. Maybe you can elaborate? There could be an overlap of interests.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#203

Post by Agathos »

ejpusa2 wrote: post #113

I can't believe you miss the biggest market in the world. Is everyone in your office under 30? It's HEALTH CARE, it dwarfs EVERY "INDUSTRY" in the USA right now. Even the defense industry pales in comparison. Hey, I have a zillion health care ideas! Google saved my life. :-)

The health care market in the US is severely dysfunctional and will either collapse or be dramatically reformed within the next decade. If your product is dysfunctional enough to make money in today's market it'll be up against the wall when the revolution comes. If your product is sensible then you may be stuck waiting 10 years until incentives are aligned to direct money toward sensible things.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#204

Post by jerry5 »

foompy_katt wrote: post #170

30. Startups for startups. I think Y Combinator doesn't take its model far enough. What I'd like to see could be called "Human Resource Investment"- investing in people, not startups per se. This would be structured as a debt and/or equity deal. You find a talented person, and invest in them using money, technology, education, and social resources. Then you charge a high interest rate (for the reliable people), or ma…

> "Human Resource Investment"

Oh yeah, humans just love to be called 'resources'.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#205

Post by foompy_katt »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #200
foompy_katt wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government would not have any role in producing or censoring media. Just paying for it, according to what is listened to the most, seen, read, etc. This would actually result in a flowering of original media; successful artists could get paid without having to rely on big businesses to distribute their work, and people would be free to remix music, re-edit video and text, etc. And in a sense there would be no "ce…

Um, to determine what is listened to the most, don't they need to track the listening habits of every American? Ignoring that, do you really want guys like Al Gore (want to censor Prince), Hillary Clinton (wants to censor GTA) or John McCain (wants to censor the Sopranos) having the ability to stop payments to artists they don't like?

You raise a valid point. Implementation counts for a lot, as it does in everything, I suggested the data be anonymized. So, the govt. knows how many people have downloaded something, but not who. If that is being abused or music is being censored, I'm obviously not in favor of that.

My argument for why nothing should be excluded or censored, is that it isn't presently censored, and since fans of every type of music and media pay taxes, it should all be covered. And I'm certainly not suggesting politicians have any influence over that; I'm suggesting putting that in the hands of judges or arbitrators.

But, the whole idea is really to figure out a rough idea of what the artist would have earned under the "old" (present) market. That might be doable simply by tracking radio play, pop culture references, BitTorrent shares, downloads, how many remixes get made, sales numbers from concerts, Youtube views, etc. That would not be very invasive at all.

By the way, government courts are already frequently called in to assess how much one company owes another for something, or the market value of a service, etc. So the government already does this- however good it already does it, is probably the baseline on how good it would be implemented without any unusual data.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#206

Post by adrianwaj »

Tichy wrote: post #166
adrianwaj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding music, I've laid out a formula here: "Using a solution of microformats, browser and OS media tracking, and direct-to-creator payments, a new Web model is quite possible." http://cleanzap.com/grabbing-music-from-the-net/ Basically, the creator applies metadata to their media, and lets it circulate (P2P, fansites, internet radio - anything) wherever it needs to go from the outset. A Creative Commons Attributi…

I don't want a nag screen on my MP3 player.

A monthly email with playback history would be better: and the option for a voluntary payment to be dispersed proportionally to whom you listened, with the option of being listed on artists' or creators' audience list.

To do that, one's web browser and media player would each have a plugin that updates the central website's playback repository. Maybe an OS level app that integrates with many possible playback apps without the user worrying about specific plugins. Spyware free of course.

See this: http://www.oddsock.org/tools/gen_fairtunes/

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#207

Post by incomethax »

cbrinker wrote: post #199

At the root of many issues I think is interface design. I'm not just talking about software, I'm talking about hardware. Computers really haven't changed how we interact with them for a good, what, 30 years? Is the mouse and keyboard really the best ways to interact with a computing system? Why don't we have integrated HUDs in our glasses, all of our new cars (granted some like BMW have them optionally on expensive m…

I've been thinking the same thing. Some of the ways I think we can change the way this happens is by integrating multi-touch and gesture technologies and having a "double screen clamshell" design. I've seen designs like that around the internet, but I think that would be the way to go as a gradual move towards more natural human-computer interfaces.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#208

Post by foompy_katt »

jerry5 wrote: post #204
foompy_katt wrote: post #170

30. Startups for startups. I think Y Combinator doesn't take its model far enough. What I'd like to see could be called "Human Resource Investment"- investing in people, not startups per se. This would be structured as a debt and/or equity deal. You find a talented person, and invest in them using money, technology, education, and social resources. Then you charge a high interest rate (for the reliable people), or ma…

> "Human Resource Investment" Oh yeah, humans just love to be called 'resources'.

Ok, objection noted. The name isn't important- you can call it "Pie Love" if you want.

In case you couldn't tell from the post, I was talking about investing in the talent people have. I'm not talking about slave labor, I'm talking about doing the kind of stuff Y Combinator does, and making it even more personal and supportive over the long haul. A real partnership, so that people are even more likely to succeed in the long run.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#209

Post by agentbleu »

jerry5 wrote: post #187
agentbleu wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so sick and tiered of hearing that capitalism is the best system we have, "theres nothing better", that I designed a new world order. It is better than capitalism by a very long way. It's a complicated idea, slightly difficult to grasp, but given any problem it will robustly yield the best result for the community. You can read it if your interested on the wayback. http://web.archive.org/web/20060613054329/http…

Sorry on the first 10 or so pages I saw just blah blah. Don't spam the forum here if you have nothing to offer.

it seems to me that you have really nothing to offer, considering you can only manage 10 pages and a one line comment. If you only want the design and not the reasons for it then you can start here, http://web.archive.org/web/20060615193321/creatocracy.com/pr...

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#210

Post by jerry5 »

foompy_katt wrote: post #170

30. Startups for startups. I think Y Combinator doesn't take its model far enough. What I'd like to see could be called "Human Resource Investment"- investing in people, not startups per se. This would be structured as a debt and/or equity deal. You find a talented person, and invest in them using money, technology, education, and social resources. Then you charge a high interest rate (for the reliable people), or ma…

This is pretty much what universities do, especially the more elitist kind. Alumni don't have a contractual obligation to pay x% of their income, but in practice they end up making donations to their alma mater for the rest of their life.

However I don't like this idea at all, it's what creates elitism and closed circles in the first place. Our society already is institutionalized to the hilt, I wished people again found their natural ability to create trust relationships, from scratch.

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