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If you had no concern about market fit and funding, what would you work on?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: If you had no concern about market fit and funding, what would you work on?

#21

Post by qlk1123 »

tikkun wrote: post #2

> it should significantly enhance the human civilization in one or multiple domains (so things like rendering Mandelbrot set infinitely faster does not cut it IMO I feel compelled to note that "greatness cannot be planned" [1] and often things that significant enhance human civilization didn't seem like that at first. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKazBM3b74I

Thanks for sharing.

This presentation is pretty inspiring to me, but at the same time there is just no obvious way to leverage the claim. How can any management allow subordinates to do things without any objectives to justify?

Generally I buy the reasoning, but maybe that's just I cannot identify any fundamental flaws now.

Re: If you had no concern about market fit and funding, what would you work on?

#23

Post by solardev »

goksankobe wrote: post #15
solardev wrote: post #3

I'd want to build some a generalized community-making/matchmaking system that can bring supply and demand together, but optimized for user satisfaction instead of external profit. For everything like: * Nonprofit online dating that emphasizes quality matches and relationship satisfaction, not Match Group profits * Municipal Uber/Lyft that connects drivers and passengers and takes a minimum cut just to maintain the se…

Sometimes we just need a single variant of such fundamental services that just "works", but today we, in a very wasteful manner, get hundreds of variants each of which is trying to steal some percentage of the pie. Yeah sure thats how capitalism works and competition fuels improvement, but I think its also ridding us on bringing much more users under a single umbrella to maximize the interactions.

Yeah, it's a delicate balance, isn't it? On one hand having too many similar choices just leads to decision paralysis (and in the case of Match Group's dating services, they are all so similar these days it's kinda pointless anyway... a bunch of false choices with similar algorithms). On the other hand, governments also tend not to be very innovative or user-friendly (tried to handle DMV stuff or taxes lately?).

But I would love to see a model where the private sector can continue to innovate, but the government at some point steps in to buy/nationalize some operations (like a national fiber rollout, or basic digital infrastructure) the same way they build roads or other civil infrastructure.

Re: If you had no concern about market fit and funding, what would you work on?

#24

Post by vegetablepotpie »

solardev wrote: post #3

I'd want to build some a generalized community-making/matchmaking system that can bring supply and demand together, but optimized for user satisfaction instead of external profit. For everything like: * Nonprofit online dating that emphasizes quality matches and relationship satisfaction, not Match Group profits * Municipal Uber/Lyft that connects drivers and passengers and takes a minimum cut just to maintain the se…

This seems similar to the types of projects that Code for America works on.

https://codeforamerica.org/about-us/

Re: If you had no concern about market fit and funding, what would you work on?

#25

Post by solardev »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #24
solardev wrote: post #3

I'd want to build some a generalized community-making/matchmaking system that can bring supply and demand together, but optimized for user satisfaction instead of external profit. For everything like: * Nonprofit online dating that emphasizes quality matches and relationship satisfaction, not Match Group profits * Municipal Uber/Lyft that connects drivers and passengers and takes a minimum cut just to maintain the se…

This seems similar to the types of projects that Code for America works on. https://codeforamerica.org/about-us/

Hmm, interesting, thanks for sharing! Their open engineering positions are a bit old-fashioned, but nothing too bad. And their ask for "Experience with the justice system, social safety net, or other mission relevant experience" really speaks to me. I'd be very interested in applying if I didn't have a commitment to my current employer. I will have to keep them in mind for the future. Thank you for the tip!

Re: If you had no concern about market fit and funding, what would you work on?

#26

Post by vegetablepotpie »

I would like to make an actually good open source UML/SysML tool.

There is doxygen, and it’s a very good tool, but it goes one way, from code to diagrams. There is Umbrello, it is bidirectional, in theory, but it’s really half baked. It feels like something put together in semester. It’s very buggy.

Would this significantly enhance human civilization? It’s hard to say. It would being together programming, systems engineering, and management on projects. A good outcome would be that if everyone is using the same models, then quirks in design of buildings, cars, software etc. might get revealed at the design stage and corrected before they are baked in during manufacturing and users have to deal with them. This would make the world an easier place to live in.

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