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Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

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21–30 of 52 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#21
post #20

[deleted]

There might be something there, but I don't think cuts are a very good example. For cuts, the advice is always: close 'em up if they're big, leave 'em alone if they're small. Ditto for allergic reactions: many different kinds of reactions will look exactly the same.

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#22
The biggest pain I found living in London (that can be solved in a week) is bus lines visualization. I find almost impossible to visualize the route of a bus, much less to combine two routes to get to a point. The official site gives line number information from point to point, but no visualization. I don't know if the London transports has an API with real time information, but it could be cool to have all the buses diplayed in a map. This could be expanded to see delays, or other line issues.

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#23
post #22

The biggest pain I found living in London (that can be solved in a week) is bus lines visualization. I find almost impossible to visualize the route of a bus, much less to combine two routes to get to a point. The official site gives line number information from point to point, but no visualization. I don't know if the London transports has an API with real time information, but it could be cool to have all the buses…

Curious to understand: how are the official ones not good enough or useful?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/maps/bus

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#25
idea: spareroom with personal weighting.

I want to optimize for travel time to work, travel time to grocery, travel time to gym, price.

Everyone is optimizing for travel time by deciding to live in the same country where they work, for example.

Yet the concept of showing properties on the map is flawed as it assumes distances matter, while that's not true.

Maybe just forget the idea of spareroom and create a time-map. You tell it where you are, and it colors you the world by travel-time. That may be feasible in a week.

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#26
You might talk to some realtors and investors in commercial real estate. I know one guy who complains extensively about all the spreadsheets they mess with to do investment return projections. He wishes it were a web-based app he could access. He says this is an endemic problem in the industry where there are some very high-priced tools for modeling, but not much at the lower end. A SaaS might have a place taking over a lot of work in the low-mid end of the market.

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#27
post #22

The biggest pain I found living in London (that can be solved in a week) is bus lines visualization. I find almost impossible to visualize the route of a bus, much less to combine two routes to get to a point. The official site gives line number information from point to point, but no visualization. I don't know if the London transports has an API with real time information, but it could be cool to have all the buses…

There is a visualisation on the website its just super hard to find! http://www.tfl.gov.uk/bus/route/14/?direction=inbound

It would be cool to be able to click somewhere on that map and then somewhere else and have all the routes in x radius display. (I dislike the tube so this would be amazing!)

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#28
post #7

Problems in Real Estate listings: Accuracy (many expired listings out there)- a good MVP would be a third party solution to feed inaccurate listing reports back to Rightmove / Zoopla etc, along with information on what part of the listing was inaccurate. Shared Flat - finding the perfect room mate. Kinda like a dating app, only for room shares. As someone else mentioned, Neighbourhoods aggregation of data from Gov we…

gov info london - http://data.london.gov.uk/ and there's glasgow too http://open.glasgow.gov.uk Probably some more if you searcha bout!

Also: http://data.gov.uk/

The real problem is finding the useful needle in the data haystack, because there is an incredible amount of open data out there.

I've had exactly this on my ideas list for a long time, it's something that interests me.

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#29

Here's a simple process to follow: 1) Identify a pain-point you are personally experiencing in some X-industry 2) Search through to the deepest darkest hole of the internet to find an existing solution 3) Identify whether current players are poorly marketing themselves OR if the market is too small (only 500 people need this??) 4) If after analyzing 3), the idea is viable, go for it, else begin from 1) again.

That's a good process! My personal pain-point in this is paying way too much rent for way too little. (However, that's just the supply/demand mechanisms doing its work). But also, the landlord aren't delivering what it promised before I moved in...

It might be interesting to look into creating a service for form-letters for various real-estate complaints. I know that previously, I've had to deal with landlords who were withholding my security deposit, or refusing to make repairs, and a way to quickly generate official, legally-correct letters for requesting what I am legally entitled to could be useful.

Re: Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week?

#30
post #22

The biggest pain I found living in London (that can be solved in a week) is bus lines visualization. I find almost impossible to visualize the route of a bus, much less to combine two routes to get to a point. The official site gives line number information from point to point, but no visualization. I don't know if the London transports has an API with real time information, but it could be cool to have all the buses…

When I lived in Boston, I had this problem. When I visited London, I had this problem. Now that I live in Austin, I have this problem.
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