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How would I get started?

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Re: How would I get started?

#21

Post by RyanZAG »

I'd say there is a big difference between 'asking for feedback' and 'fishing for ideas'.

"I want to launch a new courier service. How would I get started?"

This seems much more in the 'fishing for ideas' stage and hoping you can crowd source the process of creating your business while paying nothing for the privilege. Most people aren't going to help you.

"I've started planning my new courier service. It will be mostly in the healthcare industry as hospitals are over-paying on delivery costs of fragile medicine. I've worked out some ideas on how I can better fit and transport fragile medicine. However, I don't know how I would get contacts in the medical industry to test drive the technology. Who should I try and talk to and does anybody know of any existing studies into this? Anybody work in the field of transporting fragile goods and know what certifications are required?"

This is much more in the field of 'asking for feedback' and is very unlikely to be brushed aside.

Re: How would I get started?

#22

Post by napoleond »

A lot of those questions would get really good answers on Quora (and I agree, they should be welcomed here more openly).

A really good story related to all of this is the way Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic: http://ravithesun.wordpress.com/2006/12/25/birth-of-virgin-a... (couldn't find a better source, but I heard him tell the same story at an event)

Re: How would I get started?

#23

Post by polyfractal »

I don't understand your complaint...there were plenty of helpful posts in that thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893858

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893826

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893857

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4894121

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893841

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4894378

You asked for advice and received some great information. Just because the overwhelming advice is "This is not a great idea, you will need a lot of money to fight established, entrenched businesses" doesn't mean the advice was unhelpful.

Did you want everyone to sugar coat their opinions with "Yeah! Go get them tiger! We believe in you!", or did you want serious advice that can lead you to making an informed, rational decision?

If you were a CEO of a company, would you want your employees to tell you whatever you wanted to hear ("yes-men"), or would you want people who actually advised you and helped make an appropriate decision (even when it may be counter to your opinion)?

Re: How would I get started?

#25

Post by EwanG »

RyanZAG wrote: post #21

I'd say there is a big difference between 'asking for feedback' and 'fishing for ideas'. "I want to launch a new courier service. How would I get started?" This seems much more in the 'fishing for ideas' stage and hoping you can crowd source the process of creating your business while paying nothing for the privilege. Most people aren't going to help you. "I've started planning my new courier service. It will be most…

I'm hoping you're actually working on the service you just described? Between the delivery of meds and labs, it is "interesting" how much hospitals pay just to get things from A to B - though the custody chain tracking certainly plays a part.

Re: How would I get started?

#26

Post by atdrummond »

Mz wrote: post #16
unimpressive wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to your website?

Sure thing. Here is the original site: http://www.healthgazelle.com/oldsite/archive.shtml Here is the site I am trying to migrate everything to and trying to figure out how to better present what I know: http://www.healthgazelle.com/ Because most people do not believe me, I am up against a brick wall. I cannot get people to talk to me and it is making forward progress very challenging, to put it mildly.

What is the actual goal of the site/proposed business?

A one sentence pitch would be great as it isn't clear to me from either version of your website.

Re: How would I get started?

#27

Post by chernevik »

Everybody already knows it would be great if we could get cable speed and reliability without actually laying cable. Building a business around that is easy. The hard part is actually achieving that.

Asking people for the miracle upon which you'd like to build a business, that anyone could build given that miracle, isn't a request for constructive feedback. At its absolute best it is a request for an IP handout.

Re: How would I get started?

#28

Post by robinh »

Mz wrote: post #10
robbiea wrote: post #4

I definitely agree with this article. We shouldn't be pessimistic about someone's grand vision. However, if you really wanted to start a cable company you probably wouldn't be asking hacker news on how to start a cable company. You would already have other resources that you can tap into and get started on it.

Wow, what elegant hypocrisy. I want to change healthcare. I have spent twelve years getting myself well when the entire world says it cannot be done. I have a website. I have a mental model for how to proceed forward. I don't have the programming skills I need. I am deeply in debt from the process of accomplishing "the impossible". The specifics of my personal situation are unconducive to applying to Y-Combinator. I…

"Having nothing currently in hand (or seeming to) is not proof of lack of seriousness."

Yes it is. Ten years ago it might not have been, but these days, when vast troves of information are at virtually everyone's fingertips, there is no excuse for not having done some basic research before asking such huge questions and expecting other people to do all the work for you.

Re: How would I get started?

#29

Post by ryguytilidie »

nhebb wrote: post #13

I didn't take part in the previous thread, but I kind of took umbrage with the question. It's really hard to take a question like that seriously when it appears that the OP has put zero effort into researching the subject. How can you not be pessimistic about that? If you're not the kind of person that can do even the most basic research of how cable companies operate, then I don't have one iota of confidence that yo…

exactly. The ideas this guy cites, like Elon Musk, are completely unrelated. Elon Musk actually researched these markets, figured out what to do and did it. To equate that with asking a completely unresearched question on Hacker News feels like the author was really grasping at straws here...

Re: How would I get started?

#30

Post by Mz »

atdrummond wrote: post #26
Mz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure thing. Here is the original site: http://www.healthgazelle.com/oldsite/archive.shtml Here is the site I am trying to migrate everything to and trying to figure out how to better present what I know: http://www.healthgazelle.com/ Because most people do not believe me, I am up against a brick wall. I cannot get people to talk to me and it is making forward progress very challenging, to put it mildly.

What is the actual goal of the site/proposed business? A one sentence pitch would be great as it isn't clear to me from either version of your website.

I will work on that. I don't currently have a one sentence pitch. (My background is not in business. I have a lot of room to grow in that regard.)

The goal is to share the mental model that helped me get well when I was sentenced to death. It does not neatly fit with current mental models. Conventional medicine uses a disease model. This is a wellness model. I struggle to communicate it. People think something is deadly, thus we must nuke the body with something equally deadly. They miss that the body is the battlefield and they are turning it into a wasteland which cannot defend itself. Your body can produce its own army. You need to supply it the means to do so. Then support its effort to defend itself.

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