Text messaging. It's been discussed here before but it's worth repeating.
Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
31–40 of 103 posts
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#32The largest industry that is 'over ripe' is the energy industry. In particular, electricity distribution. Creating devices that perform 'demand management' are nearly trivial.
In Australia, the normal price for large scale wholesale electricity from the national grid is Aust $48 per Mw/hr. But several times a year the 'spot price' is over Aust $10,000 per Mw/hr.
This is the reason companies have 'peaking' plants that only operate 3-5 days a year.
There will be 2 main stratergies:
1. Owner / user generated power would be transferred back to the grid during high price periods.
2. Load shedding (automatic turn-off of power) would occur during high price period.
The primary requirement is a 'smarter grid'
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#33online auctions. ebay sucks, for both the buyers and sellers. and ebay doesn't even like auctions anymore, they're moving towards the amazon-style marketplace model.
Man, if only someone was going after them, one step at a time. Oh wait.
The self-pimping done, you're being too narrow in terming it "online auctions". Auctions don't make a ton of sense for the vast majority of items sold online - they're only really useful for unique stuff. That's why they're moving towards Amazon's fixed price model. The problem with fixed price is that it's a "take it or leave it" proposition. Well, Dawdle solves the "take it or leave it" issue by letting potential buyers name their own price with our StandingOffer technology.
First video games and gear, then the world! MWA HAHAHAH AHA !!!!!!1eleventy-seven
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#34Job search. There are a ton of competitors in this space, established and startup, but so far its all crap. I've been looking for a new job recently and I'm completely dissatisfied with everything that's out there. Craigslist is still probably the best resource for finding tech jobs, at least in San Francisco but there has to be a better way. A couple of ideas have popped into my head recently about ways to really sh…
Have you seen indeed.com?
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#35Read the 'The 4-steps to the Epiphany' by Steven Blank (http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...)
Things to look for in a disruptive market:
1) The presence of the 'Earlyvangelist'. It does not matter if you can disrupt an industry if no one will realize the value of the innovation. This means finding real people at real companies and gathering requirements for something they will buy.
2) An existing distribution channel that is available for the new product.
3) Existing product positioning that you can leverage. As a startup, its hard to disrupt when you have to spend all your money on advertising, branding, or explaining what your product is.
4) Large existing market.
The book has a helpful framework for analyzing markets base on some of these factors, maturity, etc. This identifies the primary constraints of market risk. From there you can work with the customer to build a better product, and if you are lucky the risk shifts towards execution.
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good one. Ebay is just such a force to be reckoned with, but they've completely lost their soul. They've pissed their sellers off like none other. You would have to have something so different and innovative to start stealing their thunder. Maybe you start in a different niche ie- Etsy. I really like what Etsy is doing.
So far the only auction site I have seen that has gone anywhere is tfields.com which started as a transformers toys auction site and grew from there. It is a real catch-22, you need lots of buyers and sellers suddenly.
I think the best model to beat ebay is to create a "Ning" style auction site where you have separate auction sites dependent on the community that they target.
The best strategy for a startup to topple a massive corporation is to flank them. Hit them in their weak spots, grow, and eventually you might get enough resources to topple them.
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#37Classifieds. CraigsList is not the be-all end-all of buying/selling things locally online. It may be a tough nut to crack, but it won't be hard to radically improve upon their horrible user experience. I would love to see some competition in this space.
Not going to happen. Craigslist is at that early Google period where everyone who uses it for the first time never looks back and is uber-loyal to the brand. A slick competitor with a great interface and new tools still has to climb that huge Ebay/Facebook-style mountain (no users no stuff, no reason)
What about layering some features on top of Craigslist that are mind-numblingly idiotic to leave out? I'm thinking better meta-data for apartment listings, for example.
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#38I think the enterprise sphere as a whole is ripe for disruption, which we've been witnessing with SaaS and other web 2.0 applications coming out as of late.
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not going to happen. Craigslist is at that early Google period where everyone who uses it for the first time never looks back and is uber-loyal to the brand. A slick competitor with a great interface and new tools still has to climb that huge Ebay/Facebook-style mountain (no users no stuff, no reason)
What about layering some features on top of Craigslist that are mind-numblingly idiotic to leave out? I'm thinking better meta-data for apartment listings, for example.
I don't know about 'they,' but if you build it I will come.
Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
#40Real estate listings. Only limited information on a MLS is viewable without a broker. And getting your house information on one can cost 200 to 500, or up to 6% of the price. There are already free internet listings, but those can lack listings and information on houses.