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Startups I Want to Fund

startupandrew.com

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Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#101

Post by [deleted] »

shafyy wrote: post #98
Jun8 wrote: post #9

Some ideas: 1. Social Silo-busters: Couple the evils of the garden walled social network approach with posts on how hard is it to make friends later in life, add a pinch of all that useless time spent in the car commuting (scraping the bottom of Spotify or Audible) and you arrive at: ad hoc voice-based social networks based on proximity, e.g. through limited range (100m) FM transmitters (one cheap way would be to use…

Screens to order at restaurants is one of the shittiest ideas ever. Got handed an iPad with a menu on it recently at a restaurant in LA. Took me about 5x longer to get an overview of what they have than a normal paper menu. Sometimes, paper > screen.

[deleted]

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#102

Post by godelski »

Jun8 wrote: post #13
tomjakubowski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ad hoc voice-based social networks based on proximity At the risk of being whooshed (the other points do seem sincere and "real"), do you mean... conversation? Like, you know, encountering another person in meat space and speaking to them?

Yes, but scope could be larger: If you like chatting with someone you can add them to your contacts. Another take on this would be voice-based reddit, e.g. voice chat rooms organized around topics, similar to subreddits. Everybody takes turns to talk with voice activated microphone on their phone while commuting.

I don't want to be a buzz kill, but how does this differ than HAM radio? Frequently it is people just talking on a specific frequency. They organize their own chat rooms and stuff. Some of these groups have members from all over the world. Or are you suggesting this be done without licensing? Because that's a legal problem, not a technical one.

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#103

Post by deftnerd »

NoIWont wrote: post #64
whamlastxmas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be devil's advocate: The worst possible outcome of using more air conditioning is more pollution. Pollution (on a global scale) and the associated potential climate change are considered pretty first-world (rich white dude) problems. Pollution on a local scale is definitely more legitimate, but that's overwhelmingly due to combustion engines (cars) and not power generation, which doesn't typically happen in city c…

Hmmm, Air Conditioners are heat pumps as are fridges. Pumping heat rather than generating it comes in at roughly 1/4 the energy budget. An innovative "Air Conditioner" that could store the usually dumped heat for later use (Say in preheating water for a hot tap to lower costs of heating) would probably be extremely popular if it was a decent product otherwise (Cheap, durable, easy to install). Effectively what is nee…

I remember reading recently about heat sinks for AC units that expel waste heat in as specific infrared band that sees the atmosphere as entirely transparent. In effect, it allows you to 'beam' the waste heat directly to space.

Similar to an AC unit, I would love to see two-part refrigerators. It always seemed dumb to me to cool the interior of your refrigerator by dumping heat into your home, which your AC has to then extract and dump outside. A refrigerator that had an external heat exchanger that could be placed outside, or shared with the AC heat exchanger, would be pretty spectacular.

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#104

Post by notyourday »

icebraining wrote: post #84
notyourday wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fund someone who works on internet over satellites project you are working on the rich white guy problem -- the rest do not care if internet comes via satellites -- they just want internet. But digging trenches and laying fiber is not sexy enough for a rich white guy -- at least definitely not as sexy as say "I have a constellation of 800 satellites that deliver Internet!"

Good luck digging trenches to connect all 17 000 islands in Indonesia to the Internet.

Good luck getting people on those islands behind the birds able to afford to pay even pennies for that internet. Catskills, NY, however...

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#105

Post by notyourday »

narak wrote: post #80
notyourday wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fund someone who works on internet over satellites project you are working on the rich white guy problem -- the rest do not care if internet comes via satellites -- they just want internet. But digging trenches and laying fiber is not sexy enough for a rich white guy -- at least definitely not as sexy as say "I have a constellation of 800 satellites that deliver Internet!"

https://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series-satellite... What about these guys? So you think digging tens of millions of miles of fiber trenches to bring gigabit internet to everyone is a more capex efficient solution than a few hundred nano-satellites in LEO blanketing the earth with connectivity? It will be low bandwidth but enough for farmers (what most people in the world do) to check weather, crop yield p…

Yes, it will be much more efficient.

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#106

Post by rasteau »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #51

"New insurance companies – renters insurance, title insurance, business insurance, etc have yet to enter the 21st century" I feel like a more creative and productive question is, what can we do to eliminate the need for insurance? Can we have a network of doctors offices in major cities that we pay a monthly fee to access, where the billing and costs are transparent and sane? Can we approach home owners insurance the…

>what can we do to eliminate the need for insurance? Can we have a network of doctors offices in major cities that we pay a monthly fee to access, where the billing and costs are transparent and sane?

We had something like that once, it was called Lodge Practice (also Club Practice and Contract Practice)[0]. Due to their low cost for medical services, physician cartels such as the AMA fought to kill them[1][2][3].

[0] http://www.freenation.org/a/f12l3.html

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/45648...

[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/45599...

[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/47651...

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#107

Post by dragonwriter »

deftnerd wrote: post #103
NoIWont wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, Air Conditioners are heat pumps as are fridges. Pumping heat rather than generating it comes in at roughly 1/4 the energy budget. An innovative "Air Conditioner" that could store the usually dumped heat for later use (Say in preheating water for a hot tap to lower costs of heating) would probably be extremely popular if it was a decent product otherwise (Cheap, durable, easy to install). Effectively what is nee…

I remember reading recently about heat sinks for AC units that expel waste heat in as specific infrared band that sees the atmosphere as entirely transparent. In effect, it allows you to 'beam' the waste heat directly to space. Similar to an AC unit, I would love to see two-part refrigerators. It always seemed dumb to me to cool the interior of your refrigerator by dumping heat into your home, which your AC has to th…

> It always seemed dumb to me to cool the interior of your refrigerator by dumping heat into your home, which your AC has to then extract and dump outside.

It seems dumb in California, but in my much of the country (and much of the inhabited world, though there's a lot where this isn't true, too), you need heating of living space more than cooling, so pumping heat out of a fridge into the living space is a double win most of the year, and added complexity to avoid it is pure waste.

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#108

Post by csydas »

wink wrote: post #68
Jun8 wrote: post #9

Some ideas: 1. Social Silo-busters: Couple the evils of the garden walled social network approach with posts on how hard is it to make friends later in life, add a pinch of all that useless time spent in the car commuting (scraping the bottom of Spotify or Audible) and you arrive at: ad hoc voice-based social networks based on proximity, e.g. through limited range (100m) FM transmitters (one cheap way would be to use…

> Why can’t I manage waste pickup from an app? Spoken like someone who never lived in an apartment complex? Sure, if you have a house and the garbage truck comes along, you might influence this, although I don't see what's there to manage. I don't see garbage pickup as highly inefficient. I see this where I live, in the city you have paper and organics extra, cans and glass if you're a good citizen and very maybe pla…

Well, a lot of major cities in Asia have already solved this by either changing how they handle the public garbage pickup requirements (e.g., Korea has special bags for regular trash and organic trash you need to purchase, else the garbage collectors won't take it), and also doing more frequent/regular pickups and having you sort your trash in order for it to be accepted. In my short time in Korea, just knowing you have a direct cost on the trash by means of the bags changes how you shop and produce garbage.

I don't think this is something you need an app for. Maybe the city can use it to manage notifications, but they could do this just as easily through free SMS or through a unified public announcement system/site. It doesn't seem like something looking for disruption, except for those who want to needlessly introduce a middle-man into garbage collection.

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#109

Post by irq11 »

Aeolun wrote: post #72
Sophistifunk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great list of products that should exist, but they're expensive and time consuming to do well, and nobody but JetBrains knows how to get people to pay for them . Even Microsoft is giving away most of their dev tools these days.

Jetbrains can make people pay for them because their products are just insanely good value for money. I currently get their whole suite for $15 a month, and I get to use them at work and for freelance assignments. I mean, it’s a no-brainer.

You’re not rebutting the parent comment. I’ve built tools in this space. The bar for “insanely good” is very high, and the market size is quite small.

It’s a crappy business from an investor perspective, and legions of nerds have washed up on this particular beachhead.

Re: Startups I Want to Fund

#110

Post by TeMPOraL »

csydas wrote: post #108
wink wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can’t I manage waste pickup from an app? Spoken like someone who never lived in an apartment complex? Sure, if you have a house and the garbage truck comes along, you might influence this, although I don't see what's there to manage. I don't see garbage pickup as highly inefficient. I see this where I live, in the city you have paper and organics extra, cans and glass if you're a good citizen and very maybe pla…

Well, a lot of major cities in Asia have already solved this by either changing how they handle the public garbage pickup requirements (e.g., Korea has special bags for regular trash and organic trash you need to purchase, else the garbage collectors won't take it), and also doing more frequent/regular pickups and having you sort your trash in order for it to be accepted. In my short time in Korea, just knowing you h…

I also hope they have severe penalties for dumping trash near the nearest river or bush. Because this is what I still see happening in my country, especially on the countryside.
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