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Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

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Re: Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

#31

Post by codegeek »

logicalmonster wrote: post #28
codegeek wrote: post #27

A startup that can get rid of Health Insurance companies butting in between Doctors and Patients and existing only for catastrophic events (cancer etc). Get rid of Insurance premiums, copays, deductibles and all the other crazy stuff. Let patients pay out of pocket directly to Doctors. That would bring down the cost of healthcare like crazy. Yes I know this will require some legislations etc and I am a nobody in this…

I don't know the practical realities and complex legalities of this field too well, but when I was paying cash for common medical procedures for a few years, the biggest problem I had was finding out the prices of procedures. Trying to call a medical office and get a price for anything was often a frustrating exercise. The staff would say things like "The doctor has to examine you first and then tell you how much it…

Yes and again, that is because of our system which requires Health Insurance. Those people at the front desk are low level hires who only understand how to ask for your Insurance card before they can do anything. When you throw the "cash question" at them, they have no clue. This is again all by design.

Re: Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

#32

Post by squeaky-clean »

traverseda wrote: post #3

Bulk laundry service using RFIDs. The economics of scale are different when you can just throw all the fabric into one giant washer/dryer, like the type they use in hospitals, and let robots sort out who owns what. My province has one central laundry facility that services basically all government buildings (hospitals, prisons, etc) using giant washing machines. RFIDs let us turn something like that into something th…

There are mesh/fabric bags meant for holding delicates that you want to machine wash. I wonder if you could just make a jumbo sized laundry mesh that could fit a whole load? Maybe with some sort of agitator in the sensor?

My concern with rfid based laundry sorting is how do you get the rfid onto my clothes? If it's a sticker, it can come off in the wash or leave residue if it remains on for the whole wash. If you're using something like clothespins, I don't want small puncture holes added to my clothes each time they're washed.

Re: Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

#34

Post by traverseda »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #32
traverseda wrote: post #3

Bulk laundry service using RFIDs. The economics of scale are different when you can just throw all the fabric into one giant washer/dryer, like the type they use in hospitals, and let robots sort out who owns what. My province has one central laundry facility that services basically all government buildings (hospitals, prisons, etc) using giant washing machines. RFIDs let us turn something like that into something th…

There are mesh/fabric bags meant for holding delicates that you want to machine wash. I wonder if you could just make a jumbo sized laundry mesh that could fit a whole load? Maybe with some sort of agitator in the sensor? My concern with rfid based laundry sorting is how do you get the rfid onto my clothes? If it's a sticker, it can come off in the wash or leave residue if it remains on for the whole wash. If you're…

I was imagining they be permanently sewn into the clothing. Sure, a privacy nightmare but not really any worse than the tire pressure monitoring system already in most cars.

Re: Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

#35

Post by mtmail »

muzani wrote: post #25

Data driven astrology, numerology, or similar divining tools. Find out your compatibility with a date! Should you take this job? Make this decision? High risk or low risk investments this year? Potentially fun, but seems like it would get too cultlike if it works. More likely it could end up disproving astrology and pissing off certain people. Numerology would be interesting as there's no preset canon that 14 exudes…

I actually worked on that at a corporate job. We got daily horoscope from a FTP server, many months aheads. All static ad spots were tarot readers, premium phone numbers and other astrology related services (scams in IMHO).

There was an oracle feature where you can ask yes/no questions with over 1000 submissions per day, all from "should I leave my boyfriend" to "should I kill myself". The list of manually refused/tuned words was long, kind of crazy to think people would base real-life decision on effectively a random answer (random plus some hashing of normalized input).

There was also a compatibility checker where you provide two first names. Also an algorithm with some normalizing and fine-tuning. I think it returned a score from 1 to 100.

I switched departments as soon as possible.

Re: Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

#36

Post by warrenm »

traverseda wrote: post #16
warrenm wrote: post #11

Creating food forests in cities - changing "traditional" city landscaping into perennial forageable forests - fruit & nut trees, berry bushes, etc

I'd worry about pests. I've done some food forest type stuff and you can run into pest problems pretty easily. Rats and pigeons and all that. Rats will eat under-ripe fruits before humans can harvest them, and for taller trees like apple trees windfall apples will litter the street. I think you need some kind of animal to clean up food waste from food forests and even traditional farms, and you'd really like that to…

I might make more sense to do it in parks, etc - not just along the streets ... but I think there's some potential for it :)

Re: Ask HN: Startup ideas that you'll never do?

#37

Post by gtsteve »

A search engine for physical shops, which indexes their items and inventory so you know where to go when you want a specific type of cheese for a recipe and you're in an unfamiliar small town.

Of course you can just ask locals but that's so analogue.

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