How would I get started?

> However, why does everyone assume that the inquiring mind is an idiot?

Because the inquiring mind did zero research and asked a question so broad and so vague that it was impossible for anyone to answer it without months of work and very specific knowledge.

To quote Carl Sagan: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." I don't think anyone was wanting to sit and spend hours explaining to the author how to do something incredibly difficult and complex without the author putting anything forward. Why not just take that knowledge and do it myself?

Nicely written!

Unfortunately not! It is something I've seen before and the charge goes straight to customers/insurance with even mundane things in healthcare - like paying $50 for a pair of plastic gloves as an extreme example.

I don't actually have any new novel ways to transport medicine though, I was just making an example. More than likely the high charges are because of the very small number of providers of mobile, certified and absolutely secure cold storage devices. I think my guess on asking about the certifications is probably the right aspect to tackle first if considering this, because the certifications are no doubt extremely challenging to obtain.

EDIT: Also want to add - if anybody finds the idea of cheaper medical transport appealing, please try and make it a reality! Decreasing the cost of medicine by any sort of factor is probably the single best thing that could be done for humanity as a whole at present, and will probably make you more money than some new social network.

> find somebody knowledgeable in the field or industry,

This, or actually get yourself into the field, work for some time.

In a lecture(startupschool), Jessica Livingston(Partner, YC) talked about a guy who made app that allows users to order food from their phone. She said that he was an example of 'a good founder' because he actually joined a restaurant as a waiter just to learn how things worked.

Take away? (Get your self involved in, know widely about, find spots which you should do better) in the field you want to start your company in[Joel Spolsky also said something of this sort in his lecture!]

And of course this thread fills up with more of the same negativism trying to justify itself.

PG nailed it with the term "middlebrow dismissal". Which is a politer term than what I think when I come across it.

I never think to myself "Wow, what a realistic, practical, well-informed comment that generic negative feedback was. My respect for that commenter has certainly increased!" Particularly when it's the 500th example of the same thing in the same thread. Why do people do that? You can't possibly imagine you're adding any value in that case.

It's a growing problem here, and for me at least it's completely contrary to why I visit this site.

In the end, I don't care if the dude is capable of starting his own cable company or not. For one thing, I'm smart enough to know it's not my place to judge that. It's completely irrelevant what I think about that. I can wallow in my own mediocrity without feeling compelled to assign it to someone else.

But the value of the post to me, and to the site in general, is to consider the question. How would you go about starting a cable company? The question of whether any particular individual is capable doing such is COMPLETELY lacking in interest for me. I don't care about that answer, and I especially don't care about some random internet commenter's opinon on that topic. But the question itself is of interest to me, and I hope to others on this site.

If it's not, then maybe there's less value in this community than I'd hoped.

Sorry, a little riled up here. The continuing attempt at justifying the attitude is a bad, bad sign.