Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#91

Post by unimpressive » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:39 AM UTC

clavalle wrote: post #88

hkarthik wrote: post #82

There's a definite opportunity to build a competitor to Apple and reach the hackers first: building a better PC for hackers to create new software built on Open Source and Web technologies. The cracks are starting to show with using Mac OSX as a primary machine for hacking. It's got unix under the hood, but every successive release has become more consumer focused and less hacker friendly. The proprietary nature of d…

I don't see the difference between what you just described and what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu.

Canonical != Hardware manufacturer.

The problem with the hardware business is that good hardware takes money to make. It's not the sort of thing that you can fund on the kind of margins that most startup rounds deal with.

(Disclosure: I have never attempted a startup or tried to obtain funding for one.)

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#92

Post by pg » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:40 AM UTC

lunarscape wrote: post #46

"2. Replace Email" Google tried this with Wave and they failed. I wish they had succeeded. I think they should have spun it was "Email 2.0" and made the transition easier.

I think we'll see it again, though not necessarily from Google. What failed about Wave was the way the project was organized and pitched to users, not the idea.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#93

Post by jmduke » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:41 AM UTC

sawyer wrote: post #15

If Microsoft : Google :: Google : Facebook, I'm not sure that the frightening startup idea here is to replace Google. Don't get me wrong, I've also started to see some cracks in the G edifice; and Facebook has definitely begun to set their agenda, but doesn't that mean search in general is already waning and that the next big thing will be whatever replaces Facebook? Great essay though, lots to think about. I really…

> What aspiring drama writers / directors need are tools equivalent to game level editors to create their scenes without actors, cameras or studios.

I'm not trying to be intentionally dense, but that's just literature.

If you get rid of things like actors or cameras, you're no longer operating within the medium of television/cinema. And that's not specifically bad, but that's not specifically good, either.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#94

Post by dkrich » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:43 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #75

diego wrote: post #22

"GMail is slow because Google can't afford to spend a lot on it. But people will pay for this. I'd have no problem paying $50 a month." Ok. Number of Paul Grahams in the world times $600/year = ? Most people on the web are ridiculously stingy. "I would pay for this" is a terrible way to think for an entrepreneur. Believing that what we think represents the masses is a rookie mistake.

Most households have no problem paying $50/month for a service that their whole family uses frequently: cable TV . So here is my idea: make and sell this great email-like/todo-list/file-sharing/whatever service that an entire household can use, and charge $50/month. That's only $10/month/user for a family of five. Come up with reasonable limits to ensure enough revenue (eg. max 10 users per plan).

I'm not sure you can compare cable to email. I may be in the minority here, but I agree that email is not really a pain point for me. I pay $50/month for cable because that represents a choice of having ready access to television or nothing.

The idea that households would pay $50/month for email is a bit of a stretch given that the alternative is free email that works pretty damn well.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#95

Post by eurleif » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:44 AM UTC

jmduke wrote: post #93

sawyer wrote: post #15

If Microsoft : Google :: Google : Facebook, I'm not sure that the frightening startup idea here is to replace Google. Don't get me wrong, I've also started to see some cracks in the G edifice; and Facebook has definitely begun to set their agenda, but doesn't that mean search in general is already waning and that the next big thing will be whatever replaces Facebook? Great essay though, lots to think about. I really…

> What aspiring drama writers / directors need are tools equivalent to game level editors to create their scenes without actors, cameras or studios. I'm not trying to be intentionally dense, but that's just literature. If you get rid of things like actors or cameras, you're no longer operating within the medium of television/cinema. And that's not specifically bad, but that's not specifically good, either.

So Pixar makes literature?

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#96

Post by tesseract » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:47 AM UTC

hkarthik wrote: post #82

There's a definite opportunity to build a competitor to Apple and reach the hackers first: building a better PC for hackers to create new software built on Open Source and Web technologies. The cracks are starting to show with using Mac OSX as a primary machine for hacking. It's got unix under the hood, but every successive release has become more consumer focused and less hacker friendly. The proprietary nature of d…

Do you think there is really a large number of hackers who are not satisfied by the Mac on the one hand, or Linux on a Thinkpad on the other, and who would buy into this new system?

OK, so you really just want to target hackers first and then move into the consumer space once you have some traction. But consumers are starting to move away from laptops and toward things like smartphones and tablets. Apple is moving in this direction and has a head start. If you start by making laptops, Apple's head start is just going to grow.

Better to figure out what is going to come after smartphones and tablets, and get there before Apple does. I don't see any particular reason to retrace Apple's steps and start by building a laptop.

Some companies I suspect might be following a long-term strategy similar to this already:

* Google, with the rumored heads-up display project based on Android

* Jawbone

* Razer (in this case Apple is not the target)

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#97

Post by densh » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:47 AM UTC

tomwalsham wrote: post #86

jballanc wrote: post #76

Man finds a black kind of rock that burns; discovers that you can get a lot of this rock if you dig deeper, but deep mines have water. In order to successfully mine this rock, man devises a steam powered engine (neatly enough powered by this same rock) to pump out the water. No, not the steam engines you're familiar with. This is the Newcomen Steam Engine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_engine The Newcomen Eng…

This perspective is interesting when applied to communications. Parlay. Courier. Pigeon. Mail. Telegraph. Telephone. Transatlantic Comms. Fax. Early Internet. Email. Text Messaging. Live Chat. Voip. Twitter. Facebook Messages. Video Chat. It's a naîve summary of communications history, but look at the persistence of some of the early players. Many have not been replaced to this day - snailmail, POTS, Fax, Email, Chat…

I don't seem to understand why did you put "Facebook Messages" in a line of great inventions. Isn't it just another "Live Chat"? Am i missing something?

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#98

Post by intended » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:52 AM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #35

aptwebapps wrote: post #21

The last graph of #6 is great. I hate to stray into politics but my scary ideas revolve around public policy and the various actions people undertake in the public sphere that affect it. More specifically: Is it possible, by providing better tools for publishing and accessing information, to substantially improve public policy debates? Can we reduce the very large rewards for dishonesty and the use of disinformation?…

Interesting idea. I think the most intractable part is that many people believe what they want to believe. They gravitate to a world view for various reasons, backfit it to the data, rationalize the cherrypicking of supporting data and discarding of refuting data, integrate it into their id or ego, fight tooth and nail to protect it, and happily accept the political dis/misinformation you're referring to. I'd imagine…

Yup, psych has been looking at this intently for a while - I think cognitive has been doing work looking into this.

There was an article on this a while back on HN as well - why walmart knew someones daughter was pregnant before her dad did. (forbes, after taking it from wired iirc)

Its based on the fact that peoples habits (in regards to shopping) are ingrained, and that there are only a few times in life when those habits are open to change.

Thats when there is a major change in their life - like a new job, baby, marriage and so on.

Dan O Reily (from arming the Donkeys) also had an old pod cast on this.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#99

Post by mrb » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:52 AM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #94

mrb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most households have no problem paying $50/month for a service that their whole family uses frequently: cable TV . So here is my idea: make and sell this great email-like/todo-list/file-sharing/whatever service that an entire household can use, and charge $50/month. That's only $10/month/user for a family of five. Come up with reasonable limits to ensure enough revenue (eg. max 10 users per plan).

I'm not sure you can compare cable to email. I may be in the minority here, but I agree that email is not really a pain point for me. I pay $50/month for cable because that represents a choice of having ready access to television or nothing. The idea that households would pay $50/month for email is a bit of a stretch given that the alternative is free email that works pretty damn well.

I am not talking about email as you know it.

I am talking about this service that pg thinks needs to replace email. I do agree with him that people currently use email in a way it was not intended to (todo list, sending files, etc), and that surely there must be a better way of doing these tasks, that would be worth $50/month, while getting rid of the limitations of email such as attachment size limits.

In fact I know I am right, because the reason we, in 2012, still have no easy way to share large files between friends and family members, is precisely because the storage and bandwidth costs are higher than the cost of email.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#100

Post by RyanMcGreal » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 5:53 AM UTC

tomwalsham wrote: post #86

jballanc wrote: post #76

Man finds a black kind of rock that burns; discovers that you can get a lot of this rock if you dig deeper, but deep mines have water. In order to successfully mine this rock, man devises a steam powered engine (neatly enough powered by this same rock) to pump out the water. No, not the steam engines you're familiar with. This is the Newcomen Steam Engine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_engine The Newcomen Eng…

This perspective is interesting when applied to communications. Parlay. Courier. Pigeon. Mail. Telegraph. Telephone. Transatlantic Comms. Fax. Early Internet. Email. Text Messaging. Live Chat. Voip. Twitter. Facebook Messages. Video Chat. It's a naîve summary of communications history, but look at the persistence of some of the early players. Many have not been replaced to this day - snailmail, POTS, Fax, Email, Chat…

> there is still massive value in some of the oldest methods, with some evolutionary shifts.

Yes, and newer protocols often carry emulation layers for older protocols, so we have things like POTS running on top of TCP/IP, when just several years ago most of us still had TCP/IP running on top of POTS via dialup modems.

The other day I needed my insurance company to send a fax to my bank (banking regulations mandate the use of faxes rather than electronic formats to share documents). The insurance agent did it by hitting a few keys on her computer. A piece of paper didn't leave her office, but it arrived on cue at the bank's fax machine nonetheless.

Sidenote: One of the interesting side effects of the internet disrupting traditional retail is that the losses in traditional lettermail delivery are being offset by massive gains in package delivery. The USPS has pilloried itself by doubling down with huge new investments in the part of its business that is shrinking instead of pivoting into the obvious growth opportunity.