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Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#11

Post by diwank »

joakimlob wrote: post #6

So you're a startup with no product or idea? Stop calling yourself a startup then. Find yourself something interesting to work on, that you like, do your homework. I see in your profile that you're an "Idea Architect", "thinker", "creator", well you really don't look like one of these with this message.

I don't know why you made the harsh comment but it is unfair to judge people on the basis of a single post/comment.

I think maybe you miscomprehended the purpose of this post. So let me rephrase this: Please give me instances when you face problems in your everyday life. This can help us identify common trends in what people need.

Model answer: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250749

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#12

Post by diwank »

robinwarren wrote: post #3

Some sources of free ideas: http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://androidforums.com/application-requests/ http://www.judegomila.com/2012/01/challengeyourself-in-2012-... I think you're still going to be guessing though. It's good that you recognise that as you should then move to validate that guess work somehow. Good luck!

Thank you so much for compiling this entire list in one place. Great inspiration. Handy as hell! :)

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#13

Post by DanBC »

I watch a movie. I see an actor wearing a nice watch, or using a nice pen.

I want to go to a website and search for $ACTOR_NAME and $MOVIE_NAME and get a list of watch models, or pen brands, or clothing manufacturers.

See, for example, people searching for the coat worn by Zooey Deschannel in "Yesman".

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#14

Post by retroafroman »

DanBC wrote: post #13

I watch a movie. I see an actor wearing a nice watch, or using a nice pen. I want to go to a website and search for $ACTOR_NAME and $MOVIE_NAME and get a list of watch models, or pen brands, or clothing manufacturers. See, for example, people searching for the coat worn by Zooey Deschannel in "Yesman".

http://curvio.com/ is trying to do what with TV

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#16

Post by SingAlong »

sitanshu7 wrote: post #5
46Bit wrote: post #2

My advice? Attend some hack weekends, build lots of stuff, see what draws the eye in demos and decide if you're interested in something related. Rapid prototyping with a readymade set of alpha testers.

It may sound silly but there are no hack weekends happening around us (We're located in India.) We had already been thinking about doing something like this. And we realized that if we made ideas inexpensive and quick to implement, it would make our life easier and our startup more viable (analogy: git branching.) How would we do that? Select, prototype, distribute and collect feedback. Selection being the key here (…

Hey sitanshu, I'm from Bangalore and I'm always game for hacking events anytime. CIS, I know, would be happy to host hackdays in Bangalore.

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#17

Post by diwank »

DanBC wrote: post #13

I watch a movie. I see an actor wearing a nice watch, or using a nice pen. I want to go to a website and search for $ACTOR_NAME and $MOVIE_NAME and get a list of watch models, or pen brands, or clothing manufacturers. See, for example, people searching for the coat worn by Zooey Deschannel in "Yesman".

Nice one!

In fact, why limit to just movies? You can take this idea and implement it everywhere. Associating and tagging real-life objects with entertainment and web media. You know, so you can facilitate searching real objects within virtual contexts.

Could be a mind blowing technology. :)

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#18

Post by diwank »

ksajadi wrote: post #15

not sure about the idea, but you can start with changing the name: diwank? unless you really mean it to be humorous in British English by saying you want to fix things that suck or something, I'd suggest changing it!

Haha. It's just there for the time being. Actually that's my personal website. My name is Diwank Singh. ;)

Blag: blag.diwank.name

Poems: poet.diwank.name

Home Page: singh.diwank.name

Re: Ask HN: We are a startup looking for ideas. What should we do?

#19

Post by AznHisoka »

1) Payment receipts/tax software Here's a pain: If I own a small business, I need something where I can forward all my payment receipts (GitHub, Constant Contact, web hosting, etc), tag it, parse it and at the end of the month/year/tax season, see where my money went. Great for taxes too because I always end up having to go back and add it all up myself. I know Mint can do this but I don't need all that bank crawling nonsense, I just wanna forward receipts to an email address (maybe using a Google filter to automate the process), and be able to view the numbers in some concise dashboard. BTW, if someone knows of any solution out there I'm missing, let me know 'cause this is a pain of mine.

2) Image resizing as a service. It can be a small pain to resize images using ImageMagick (installing it can be a headache), or any third party solutions. If the price is affordable, I wouldn't mind paying for image resizing as a service, image overlaying, or watermarking as a service. Maybe make it a few cent per API call.

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