Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask PG: Will you post an update to "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund"?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 76 posts

Ask PG: Will you post an update to "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund"?

#1

Post by awwstn »

Here's a link to the original one from 2008: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

Much of it still seems relevant and proved over the ensuing 5 years to be quite prescient. I'd love to hear what new ideas/themes have emerged in the time since this was written.

Re: Ask PG: Will you post an update to "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund"?

#5

Post by taylorbuley »

News will morph significantly in the more competitive environment of the web. So called "blogs" (because the old media call everything published online a "blog") like PerezHilton and TechCrunch are one sign of the future. News sites like Reddit and Digg are another. But these are just the beginning.

I'll make the bold claim that we haven't yet seen this "morph" in media. The blog concept is now staid yet Buzzfeed is the most innovative publisher we have. And they are just re-branding the advertorial as "native advertising."

The only changes I've seen lately are larger and more diverse media to accompany text. Not a substantially new product as far as I can tell.

Re: Ask PG: Will you post an update to "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund"?

#6

Post by TaylorAlexander »

I thought I had read in one of those that PG really wants to replace banks and credit cards. Or maybe it was someone else. Either way, that's one of the things I'd love to get into as far as "big picture" stuff (along with a cloud-based "space station" on venus, but the bank thing might be slightly less difficult). I'd completely revamp the entire purchase process, as much as legally possible (and realistically doing that would also require lobbying to change any outdated laws we can that aren't being protected by the other banks. You'd have to go after all the peripheral laws first I feel like, or else the banks would crush you with their influence). The entire transfer of funds and the documentation of the purchase would be re-done based on what we can actually do with this kind of data. It's insane that my bank only tells me things like "AMAZON MKTPLACE PMTS AMZN.COM/BILL WA 06/26" for an amazon purchase. Mint tries to parse that and just has no idea how to classify it. The truth is, the bank should only get sufficient information for facilitating the transfer, and there needs to be a simple system of reporting detailed purchase info directly from the store to the user. Getting this to work with many vendors would be a pain, but it doesn't help that currently I don't know anything about those systems. I have some ideas on how to kind of abstract that out...

Re: Ask PG: Will you post an update to "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund"?

#10

Post by scott_s »

kamakazizuru wrote: post #8
stephengillie wrote: post #3

I'm guessing that online dating will still be on the list.

it probably always will be - so long as the man / woman imbalance with dating doesnt even out!

I'm not sure what imbalance, exactly, that you mean, but I don't see anything of the sort as the reason that online dating isn't going anywhere. The fundamental problem I see is that meeting new people is hard. Particularly after school, with a full-time job, if you recently moved to where you live, and if you don't live in a city (being close helps, but it's not the same).
Post reply on HN