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Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

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Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

#1

Post by 31reasons »

Everyone seems to be busy building MVPs in a weekend or in few months of time, and thats great as new technologies allow us to build much faster than even 10 years ago. But I want to know with that mentality and short time spans, what kind of stuff we avoid building simply because it would take years to make and has high opportunity costs for a single developer.

So as a hacker or an entrepreneur what product would you create if you have 5 years of time if you were sure you can not fail ? to put differently, What are the tough problems you think we need to solve but you simply don't have that much time or resources to do it? a new Mobile OS? file system? new language? what could it be?

EDIT: From the many comments, its interesting to note that some of the ideas are borderline science fiction! Amazing to know what a mere 5 year timescale allow human mind to think up.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

#2

Post by wheaties »

1 year to talk to people in real businesses that aren't in tech and study their problem in depth.

4 years to create what they need.

Too vague? I don't know enough about enough things outside of tech to really build something that would actually help the rest of the world. (The only thing I can think of is another Skype-like company akin to Twillio but for video communication with a phone. That probably would fail until costs come down.)

Re: Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

#4

Post by ZaneClaes »

I have a propensity to think overly-meta. I'd delve deep into connecting disparate parts of the internet, fusing services together into an experience which eliminated a lot of the "service here, service there" paradigm we currently observe. This is really an extension of what I'm already working on in the social+news realm @ Streamified.com, but ultimately would be much larger in scope, incorporating learning algorithms and neural networks to ultimately transform the internet into a sort of persistant secondary-hive-mind accessible from anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

#6

Post by ambiate »

Education. I feel teaching people reinforces learning.

Systems for targeting chronically disabled and introducing them to services they qualify for in the state. Introducing disabled to technology.

Background: My mother was born with cerebral palsy. Other than a $500/mo check, medicaid and $30 in foodstamps, she has not received any other services until 13Q1. I finally signed her up for meals on wheels and getting her cleaning services, etc, from the state. This was always available to her at no cost, but she had no clue.

My mother also has an IQ of 120 that is going to waste as she sits at home alone, many states away. Rather than going insane from loneliness, she could at least mechanical turk it up in her living room... beats talking to cats.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

#7

Post by era86 »

A fully integrated Electronic Medical Health Record (EMR/EHR) system and patient portal. Completely web-based application providing secure patient/doctor communication, scheduling, patient visit summary, health record summaries, etc.

Sell it to small/independent clinics. Then make tons of money by letting big pharma companies advertise their drugs to patients on the portal.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 5 years of uninterrupted time, what would you build and why?

#10

Post by arash_milani »

IMHO Having more time like 5 years doesn't mean anyone is going o build something more valuable; I even think by having a limited time to deliver something (e.g 6 months) you are going to deliver the most valuable thing and skip anything that is simply not needed for user. So I think you should stop thinking about the time limit as a constrain to deliver a GREAT idea.
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