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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

#321

Post by corentin »

busyant wrote: post #262
pixcavator wrote: post #58

Regarding #27, is there anyone who is working on image processing for digital cameras?

Apple (or someone like them) needs to make a digital camera with iPod simplicity. I bought my parents a digital camera a few years ago and it might as well have a plutonium core the way my parents deal with it. Primarily they hand it to me on social occasions and say, "take some pictures...I don't know how to use this thing" Just a simple camera with these features and nothing more: 1. on/off button 2. zoom in /out 3…

> hardware scares me

What you describe is something like 90% (if not more) design and software (including embedded software). The hardware part mostly consists in integrating a few existing high-level components, most of them dealing with digital signals,

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#323

Post by jcl »

anewaccountname wrote: post #128
fendale wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have often searched google looking for recent articles, but the most highly ranked are always first which are often really old and outdated ... maybe there is something in the advanced search to tweak the ordering, I am not sure ...

www.google.com: Advanced search: Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more: Date

The fact that a user couldn't figure that out indicates a potential improvement: detecting whether a given search is time-sensitive and automatically choosing the correct search ordering.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#324

Post by dmoney »

andrewparker wrote: post #293
TweedHeads wrote: post #45

How about fixing the domain fuckfest we have today? Most of these ideas will end up with stupid names like lulzdatr.com or bizzwarezz.com

Google already fixed this. No one directly navigates to domains anymore. The SERP is a popularity-ranked page of everything that should be at the domain for the keywords you searched on.

I do. Sure, I use google and bookmarks a lot of the time, but sometimes the shortest mental route to a site is its domain name. Ironically, GMail is one of these.

An interesting thought experiment would be what would happen if you removed all domain names. You own a random series of letters that you keep even if your IP address changes, but the sequence is totally non-mnemonic. Google and del.icio.us would be very important. But how would we get there?

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#325

Post by run4yourlives »

foompy_katt wrote: post #298
anamax wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that "less than listed retail" is a bargain is false. There are lots of things where a huge fraction of the customers already pay less than retail. There are even some where the vast majority do. (Hotels may be one of them - I've never paid anywhere near the rates posted in the rooms.) "Listed retail price" is a fiction - it is manipulated to maximize revenue and need not have anything to do with typical pri…

"Assuming that "less than listed retail" is a bargain is false. " By "less than listed retail" I mean a price less than whatever they would have otherwise paid at checkout (after coupons, package deals, whatever). I was thinking of "the price listed at the store counter", but "listed retail" is not the best phrase for that. My apologies for the confusion. I'm well aware that the "listed price" isn't always the typica…

NOTE: Why the hell is this comment at -1? This isn't reddit people.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#326

Post by run4yourlives »

mixmax wrote: post #85
tx wrote: post #30

Weird. The problem we're tackling at Pikluk is exactly what #2 is about, yet we weren't even invited for an interview in 07 cycle. Something tells me we should have polished our application more.

My startup adresses several of the points in the article, and I didn't get invited to an interview either. Maybe it's the single founder issue? Or maybe my ideas just suck ;-)

Or maybe the problem is that it address "several of the points in the article".

Even one of those is a massive undertaking. Perhaps your start up idea requires more focus?

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#327

Post by robfitz »

danohuiginn wrote: post #283
robfitz wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there were a couple working builds of this at georgia tech while i was there. they had one that was, in fact, a marionette. and one of the other fuzzwich guys (devin) built a similar thing using computer vision and hand puppets. both were hooked up to control characters in the unreal engine (primarily for machinima, but you could sorta play the game with it too). it's fun, fast, and kids adore it. so yea, definitely…

Fascinating, thanks. Here's a link I tracked down, in case anyone else is interested: http://synlab.gatech.edu/data/papers/mazalek_ace2007_tui3d.p...

cool, glad you found something. for the sake of completion, here are some details & videos on the puppet show i mentioned: http://hailpixel.com/puppetshow/

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#328

Post by run4yourlives »

foompy_katt wrote: post #168

This is going to have to be a multipart comment, I wrote so much: 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. My idea for this is included in a more robust solution for #17. 17. New payment methods. Here's the $100 billion dollar idea (if it could be pulled together). Make a new credit card (or work with an existing company). Consumers would sign agreements to exclusively use that card (more financial i…

There's a good idea under all that fluff that got in the way when you tried to reconcile it with trying to make the world a better place.

Here's a thought: (I hate saying this btw, but you need to for your idea to work) To hell with the consumer.

The consumer wins when they sign up for the exclusive card and get 0% interest or points or some other crap "benefit". Even better, make the offer available only to those with $5000+ spending a month or whatever, and make the card yellow or green or some other stupid colour and market it as "exclusive".

Then, you take all that data from high spenders (big time consumers) and sell it back to retailers in some way by exploiting the same gimmicks - exclusive, premium retailer offers. Give them a way to track purchases to advertising campaigns, etc. Hell, you can probably remove 99% of the anonymity and give retailers access to individual consumers.

The biggest problems I see is trying to find 1 card company out of 4ish that will go for this, and to hope by chance that they aren't already doing something like this.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#329

Post by jod »

Forgive my density, and it's true I haven't had this problem in ages, but what in the world is the "chicken and egg problem" that dating sites presumably have? Would you please clarify a little?

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund

#330

Post by run4yourlives »

aston wrote: post #59
antidaily wrote: post #9

Motivation re:dating site - the very simple (and quite ugly) dating site, Plenty of Fish, earns $10M a year.

If anything, that's demotivation, at least for real hackers. Plenty of Fish is popular because of marketing/SEO techniques and throwing successively larger iron at traffic, not because Markus Frind was a technical genius with a clever idea. Very different path to profitability than most of us want to take, I think.

Speak for yourself.

If you want to be a technical genius get a grant and grow a beard. I want to use the skills I have to support my family and enjoy life at the same time.

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