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Request for Startups

evaz.substack.com

11–20 of 41 posts

Re: Request for Startups

#11
I have trouble connecting the contents of this post to the title. The scopes of the problems are bigger than the scopes of individual startups.

Eg. the ad based monetization model problem calls for a better model _for the entire industry_. That's not a problem a startup can solve. That's a monetization model.

Similar for government problems. How could a startup solve that?

Re: Request for Startups

#12
post #7

On ads: the fundamental problem with them is that most people don't realize that they are paying for digital content and free social services anyway, albeit indirectly, since the ad spendings are included in the prices of consumer products. Even if you use an ad blocker you pay for the ads you don't see anyway. In fact the more we use free social platforms and digital content, the more we pay for it from our pockets.…

> most people don't realize that they are paying for digital content and free social services anyway, albeit indirectly, since the ad spendings are included in the prices of consumer products

That's a zero-sum argument that's a bit disingenuous. If you make widgets, and it costs you $5 to make a widget, you can sell 10 of them at $20/pop to the consumer for a total profit of 10 * (20-5) = $150. If you spend $100 on advertising, but that advertising helps you sell to 100 consumers, then you can sell them instead for $10/pop and make 100 * (10-5) - 100 = $400 profit, so you make more profit AND cut the price in half, so everyone wins.

The problem is that advertising is so unfocused that it has both littered the public space and been unable to prove, in many or most cases, that it actually succeeds in its goal of improving both profits and reducing prices.

Re: Request for Startups

#13

Is there a word for the feeling that comes up (in some) when reading such a list and having too many ideas so none of them will ever happen?

Honestly?

Laziness.

Pick an idea, dedicate a timeline, work on it during that timeline, and reassess.

Creative paralysis can be easily stopped by just implementing a concrete time frame to do something in. Not doing so is just lazy and frankly, I sense it's a masturbatory habit of a lot of brilliant people, capable of incredible engineering. It's more FUN to dream about what could be engineered than to do engineering of something.

Edit: perhaps it's not lazy if they don't realize they're doing it. I didn't account for that. Either way, timeline budgeting eliminates many categories of excuses.

Re: Request for Startups

#15
post #12
post #7

On ads: the fundamental problem with them is that most people don't realize that they are paying for digital content and free social services anyway, albeit indirectly, since the ad spendings are included in the prices of consumer products. Even if you use an ad blocker you pay for the ads you don't see anyway. In fact the more we use free social platforms and digital content, the more we pay for it from our pockets.…

> most people don't realize that they are paying for digital content and free social services anyway, albeit indirectly, since the ad spendings are included in the prices of consumer products That's a zero-sum argument that's a bit disingenuous. If you make widgets, and it costs you $5 to make a widget, you can sell 10 of them at $20/pop to the consumer for a total profit of 10 * (20-5) = $150. If you spend $100 on a…

I agree, the inefficiency of advertisement might be the main reason for the surplus we are paying (also let's not forget the platform - the middleman).

However:

> been unable to prove, in many or most cases, that it actually succeeds in its goal of improving both profits and reducing prices

Neither has it been able to prove the opposite. The long-term effects of brand awareness are difficult to measure. Anecdotally, I've seen cases when a very expensive billboard didn't move the download figures even by an iota but local people began talking about the company casually and even recognizing some of the employees on the streets, telling them how they like the product.

Re: Request for Startups

#16
I agree those are problems, but I don't see startups solving them (except for nr. 2).

ad 1) There are already quite easy ways to be somewhat resilient - people who do that are preppers, who are by majority considered to be crazy. Content preservation probably can't be really done on company level because it would be ripe with copyright abuses and in case of SHTF it would be impossible to actually deliver the content to people who want it. Maybe there is small market specialized archiving systems with hundreds of TB space for personal digital archivists, but that's about it. If the owner of data/content wants have it safely backed up it can be already done easily.

ad 3) that's for academia and open source to solve, because a) no one would believe private company it's not showing good numbers so the current government looks better and b) elections are won by being in opposition to current governments and offering "improvements", having long term plans would be contrary to that. And deriving correct actions from the hard data would be impossible because current state of economical, sociological and environmental sciences (even medicine is here with regard to health policies) is such that they can't really be called science (replication crisis).

Re: Request for Startups

#17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ad spendings are included in the prices of consumer products No ads and no price haggling are big reasons why Tesla is so popular.

Apple too Also, the lack of options. It's much easier to buy from Apple or Tesla (even though I don't use any Apple products except a Mac Mini), simply because the number of options are less. At this point, I don't know the difference between a Vostro, a Latitude and an XPS.

I don't know where you live, but in France there are plenty of Apple ads. Some are run by third parties ( e.g. telecoms advertising you can get the latest iPhone with them, mostly in the form of a huge Apple ad with a small logo of the operator actually advertising ) but most are not.

Re: Request for Startups

#18
post #17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple too Also, the lack of options. It's much easier to buy from Apple or Tesla (even though I don't use any Apple products except a Mac Mini), simply because the number of options are less. At this point, I don't know the difference between a Vostro, a Latitude and an XPS.

I don't know where you live, but in France there are plenty of Apple ads. Some are run by third parties ( e.g. telecoms advertising you can get the latest iPhone with them, mostly in the form of a huge Apple ad with a small logo of the operator actually advertising ) but most are not.

Exactly. During holiday season half of ads are for Apple.

Re: Request for Startups

#19
post #7

On ads: the fundamental problem with them is that most people don't realize that they are paying for digital content and free social services anyway, albeit indirectly, since the ad spendings are included in the prices of consumer products. Even if you use an ad blocker you pay for the ads you don't see anyway. In fact the more we use free social platforms and digital content, the more we pay for it from our pockets.…

> Pick whatever method of keeping the users' eyes on the screens and be less greedy, more efficient.

Being greedy for your users’ limited life is at least as bad as whatever Google does, IMO.

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