Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#91

Post by anthony_barker » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 4:20 AM UTC

Almost any industry can be rattled if the power goes to the consumer instead of the vendor. This has happened with consumer products but could go to services etc.

-automobile disrupted by cars from asia - oh shit happened!

-book industry disrupted by self published electronic books

-shipping industry disrupted by automation - happening

-pcs industry by netbooks with no moving parts/cellphones

-Windows/Office by Ubuntu/Openoffice (outside of USA)

-power industry by cheap solar cells - pipedream

-housing industry by prefab homes - pipedream

-newspapers by online media - happening

-drug industry by Indian made generic drugs - legislation won't let it happen

-all driving trades (taxis, truck driver etc) by automated DARPA style cars - pipedream

-most manufacturing jobs by cheap chinese/korean robots - happening

-most farming jobs by automation (eg AutoFarm - gps/AI driven tractors) - happening

-Californian/Arizona farming by cheaper farms in Mexico, Guatamala etc - happening

-drive through order takers by voice recognition -Long distance by skype, calling card & SIP providers - happening

-Business travel by HD Video conferencing systems - happening (Cisco + HP)

-Telecom equipment by Huawei

-Oil furnaces by alternative pellet combustion system (see Jon Udell) -??

-Military soldiers by remote controlled robots - happening

-billboards by gps aware ads

-interbroker dealers by cheaper competitors (ITG - etc) - happening

- speeding ticket writing by RFID tag reading systems (UK) -various industries by the rental business (Netflicks, Zipcar etc)

Candidates that will not be disrupted

- Governments - always political and loath change

- Unions

- Near monopolies (Heathcare, Cell phone)

- Religion to an extent

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#92

Post by eli » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 4:27 AM UTC

masonlee wrote: post #87

eli wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is difficult to tackle if you don't already have a serious presence in the mobile industry.

There are still a lot of innovations you can make here without replacing the SMS backbone wholesale. For example, users interact with user interfaces, not messaging layers. If you can get people using your interface, you can switch the messaging layer where appropriate. Notice Google now sending IM to SMS? At my startup, Borange, we send group SMS for free on the iPhone, and are working with metadata and a user inter…

You mean like 3jam, Limbo, sms.ac, Zemble, Google's Dodgeball, Yahoo's ill-fated "Mixd," and a dozen others who are no longer around and I forgot about?

Jeez, I truly do wish you guys luck, but group/social SMS is a pretty tough nut to crack.

(I used to cover the mobile industry for a trade publication.)

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#93

Post by bmunro » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 4:32 AM UTC

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #54

Blackboard and other proprietary software that colleges use. Blackboard sucks and could be easily replaced by hacking together open source solutions and presenting it in a slick package (like 37 signals) but tailored for college instead of business.

There is an open source competitor - Moodle (moodle.org)

My university currently uses Blackboard. Some of the computing subjects are trialling moodle to see whether the whole university could switch from Blackboard.

Moodle is simpler to use and less buggy.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#94

Post by webwright » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 6:45 AM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #43

auston wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen indeed.com?

Wow, Quantcast/Compete estimate their monthly users to be 6-9 million. Their AdSense account must be quite healthy. I wonder how they got granted access to the data from the first few sites they index.

Yaw I was in the jobs industry. There's simplyhired.com and jobster.com ...

6-9 million uniques isn't really worth the funding any of them received, I don't think.

They didn't ask permission for the data any more than Google did. Scrape/index/refresh/repeat.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#95

Post by rokhayakebe » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 7:24 AM UTC

coglethorpe wrote: post #42

josefresco wrote: post #15

Earlier 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)

I've used Craigslist for a car sale and wasn't impressed. I ended up paying a fee to AutoTrader and sold it fairly fast.

I think I help to sellore close to 100 cars through CL. Fast.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#96

Post by mkmark » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 7:53 AM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #7

Look at a lot of big traditional B2B businesses. They haven't gotten much coverage because they aren't sexy and visible to the normal consumer. - ERP ssystems are impossible to understand for the people that work with them, and require an army of highly paid consultants just to get it up and running. - financial software for large companies doesn't allow managers to see numbers in real-time, is difficult to get numbe…

True. But I would highly recommend that you consider "how to sell a B2B product" before considering legacy segments like ERP. Its non-trivial to build a new product from scratch in these spaces but there is an opportunity to build SaaS version of ERP products for small and mid-market customers. See these examples: http://www.coupa.com and http://www.nurturehq.com. Both are good products with large markets, are completely hosted and don't involve any legacy integrations which can be a killer.

However, all such products do require a systematic sales team/plan/process including inbound/outbound/inside sales kind of approaches to build revenue.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#97

Post by natrius » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 8:06 AM UTC

webwright wrote: post #94

bemmu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Quantcast/Compete estimate their monthly users to be 6-9 million. Their AdSense account must be quite healthy. I wonder how they got granted access to the data from the first few sites they index.

Yaw I was in the jobs industry. There's simplyhired.com and jobster.com ... 6-9 million uniques isn't really worth the funding any of them received, I don't think. They didn't ask permission for the data any more than Google did. Scrape/index/refresh/repeat.

Some links from indeed have affiliate IDs in them, so there are definitely some partnerships involved for some of their sources.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#98

Post by jgrahamc » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 11:29 AM UTC

njharman wrote: post #79

josefresco wrote: post #23

Health Care.

HIPPA, medical records, billing, medical office automation. The medical industry is in the information dark ages and finally being dragged into relative modernity by the government.

Forget medical records. What about an online health care expenses manager like Quicken. If you've ever dealt with many doctors, or more than one insurance, or just the US health care insurance system in general it's a nightmare to keep track of what's been claimed, billed, paid back, written off, reduced, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#99

Post by sachinag » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 4:16 PM UTC

tontoa4 wrote: post #69

sachinag wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, if only someone was going after them, one step at a time. Oh wait. http://www.dawdle.com 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 lea…

Check your layout in FireFox... it's not happy. Good design though.

We can't replicate, but this has been modded up very high - can someone show me a screenshot or help us out? Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?

#100

Post by khafra » Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 5:03 PM UTC

tontoa4 wrote: post #70

coglethorpe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Craigslist for a car sale and wasn't impressed. I ended up paying a fee to AutoTrader and sold it fairly fast.

I'm working on the motorcycle equivalent at MotoListr.com.

Your interface is cleaner and more attractive, but cycletrader.com is a pretty well established competitor. Do you have a plan for beating them along any particular axis?