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Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

paulgraham.com

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Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#3

Post by chanux »

Now if I accidentally put the cursor in the wrong place, anything might happen.

This has been my experience with Google search and Gmail (the Google products I use most). It's really frustrating that sometimes I'm handling them the way I'd handle a Samurai sword. That's not how it should be.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#4

Post by ajju »

If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it. Don't say, for example, that you're going to replace email. If you do that you raise too many expectations. Your employees and investors will constantly be asking "are we there yet?"

This is critical. I have tried it the other way, and struggled for these very reasons.

I think the way to use these big ideas is not to try to identify a precise point in the future and then ask yourself how to get from here to there, like the popular image of a visionary. You'll be better off if you operate like Columbus and just head in a general westerly direction. Don't try to construct the future like a building, because your current blueprint is almost certainly mistaken. Start with something you know works, and when you expand, expand westward.

Eat small morsels, chew well!

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#6

Post by repos »

Preventative Diagnostics as Paul describes in #7 will really be the future - it's barbaric that we can only make a diagnosis when the disease has already manifested (in most cases). There are a few players in this space (Scanadu comes to mind), but it's seems like nano biosensors and the like are still very new technologies. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#7

Post by Alex3917 »

The problem with search is that not only is Google getting worse, but I've also mostly outgrown it, in that it isn't sophisticated to answer pretty much any scientific question I would want to ask.

- No way to search for a scientific question and get a summary of the current scientific consensus or viewpoints on specific issues

- It's really hard to access academic journal articles online.

- Even when you can access journal articles, it's hard to know which ones to look in to answer your question. Sometimes it's hard to even know which field(s) your question falls under.

- Even if you vaguely know which field your question falls under, you don't necessarily know any of the vocabulary used by that field.

- No way to search by dependent and independent variables, confounding variables, etc.

- No way to sort articles by the quality of their methodology, the quality of the journal they were published in, the quality of the researchers, etc.

I know this isn't a product that more than 1% of the population would use, but if someone built it then maybe there are other things it could be used for.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#8

Post by tomwalsham »

There are very few successful futurists in the literal sense.

The long bets are not on the current startup ideas which will still mould the world 5 years from now. YC's view of investing in those with the wherewithal to effect change - not those who necessarily have the answers to hand - bleeds through the ambiguous edges of this essay.

pg's reticence to put his full belief behind a specific idea due to the evanescent nature of the current concept-du-jour is good guidance - tackle the extant problems and retain half an eye on the bigger picture.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#9

Post by rmassie »

The thing about replacing e-mail is that is isn't just a todo list, for many people it's just a receipt box - the thing I keep all my notifications that I bought stuff from amazon. For others, it's still the primary means of business communication.

My work e-mail is largely about communications, with a todo element to it and unfortunately some file storage too. My "home" e-mail is completely different. It's where I get my monthly statements for banks and investments and where my notifications go. When replacing e-mail you would need to service all these components of what e-mail is.

The thing that originally made e-mail so important was it's identity factor. That seems to have withered away as other services have replaced some components of what e-mail was for.

I would argue that e-mail needs to not be replaced, just reclaimed. My e-mail client (web or otherwise) should know that an e-mail in this case is actually just a twitter DM notification and be smart about how it presents that to me. It should know that something from Bank of America is probably something I want to keep, but something else from Bank of America is just marketing junk.

I haven't seen anything that is smart enough to do that on it's own. I don't want to have to deal with creating filters - it should just know. I would totally switch from gmail if this were out there.

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