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Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

old.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#121

Post by m3rc »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #76
m3rc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet from a business perspective, Twitter is doing terribly. The news platforms we seem to gravitate to don't end up being profitable.

Fundamentally, we refuse to pay for content. As long as we continue to do so, they won't be profitable. The issue is that we also complain about the dumbing down of online info, and decry the lack of quality content. The advertising model does not work for valuable content creation. Period. Until someone figures out what its replacement is, news (and all non mass-produced content) will continue to slowly die online.

Some people, myself included, pay for some online news content. But just by virtue of being paid doesn't make news content creators more valuable. I had a NYT subscription until their OpEd board started churning out Nazi apoliga like it was their job. The world of paid content is still pretty terrible and stuck carrying water for their corporate overlords just as much as ad-supported groups. Maybe that's the future, but if all it took for quality to go up was for paid subscriptions to exist and people to want to buy them, it would have happened by now.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#122

Post by Karrot_Kream »

encoderer wrote: post #20
CodeSheikh wrote: post #5

For #8. Dating, it has progressed pretty significantly with the likes of OkCupid, swipe-based apps (Tinder, Bubmle, Hinge), CMB to name a few. Heck it has done so well that IAC spun off its dating group as a separate business entity with its own IPO of The Match Group.

Tinder has changed everything here. Top grossing app last year. Real genius is not the swipe interface it’s the double opt-in that solves a lot of the signal v noise problem on old time dating sites like okcupid, match, etc.

Dating is still pretty broken for minorities or people who aren't into the heteronormative scene. Grindr has been great for gay men, but for minority folks (whether they be part of a minority group or have minority preferences), dating is still very much unsolved.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#123

Post by hueving »

abalone wrote: post #46

My take (just the first five): 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Spotify & Apple Music. Pay $10/mo for unlimited access to most music. Took the wind out of music piracy. (TV & film are undergoing a similar transition to subscription models, more slowly.) 2. Simplified browsing...Grandparents and small children don't want the full web... Apps. Remember this list is from just one year after the…

>But the real hero here is AWS and its "primitives"-based, bottom-up approach to outsourcing all computing.

I'm not sure 'hero' is the right word. AWS has created culture of lock-in and closed source products being acceptable in many otherwise open source pipelines. Additionally, people funnel significantly more of their money into AWS than they would with dedicated hardware.

AWS is a plague on infrastructure and a black spot in open computing history on the level of Microsoft. Kubernetes is showing promise to fix some of this.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#124

Post by m3rc »

sebleon wrote: post #81
m3rc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet from a business perspective, Twitter is doing terribly. The news platforms we seem to gravitate to don't end up being profitable.

Twitter is profitable with revenues of $732M. What’s your definition of a business failure?

Is Twitter now profitable? It was my understanding that throughout all of 2016 and 207 they were operating at a loss. And for a long time before that. If they're profitable this year it could be a turning point and I'd be wrong, at least going forward. But do we have enough data to support it at this point?

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#125

Post by tlb »

WikipediasBad wrote: post #99
abalone wrote: post #46

My take (just the first five): 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Spotify & Apple Music. Pay $10/mo for unlimited access to most music. Took the wind out of music piracy. (TV & film are undergoing a similar transition to subscription models, more slowly.) 2. Simplified browsing...Grandparents and small children don't want the full web... Apps. Remember this list is from just one year after the…

I'm particularly interested in #23 since it is clear that Wikipedia is even more dominant now than it was in 2008: More open alternatives to Wikipedia. Deletionists rule Wikipedia. Ironically, they're constrained by print-era thinking. What harm does it do if an online reference has a long tail of articles that are only interesting to a few people, so long as everyone can still find whatever they're looking for? Ther…

The advantage of deletionism is that users can have some confidence that anything they find on Wikipedia has received some attention from editors. Without deletion there'd be an unlimited number of pages, (100-𝜀)% being crap.

If you search and don't find it on Wikipedia, you can look elsewhere. That's a better experience than finding unmaintained crap.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#126

Post by [deleted] »

Zak wrote: post #79

As I was on HN in 2008 and paying attention to these sorts of things, I'll pretend I'm qualified to offer opinions. 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom - Streaming, both paid and ad-supported seems to be the answer here. It's prone to monopolies and music streaming doesn't seem to pay artists very well, but Netflix is producing quite a bit of original content. 2. Simplified browsing - mobile ate…

[deleted]

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#127

Post by tlb »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #122
encoderer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tinder has changed everything here. Top grossing app last year. Real genius is not the swipe interface it’s the double opt-in that solves a lot of the signal v noise problem on old time dating sites like okcupid, match, etc.

Dating is still pretty broken for minorities or people who aren't into the heteronormative scene. Grindr has been great for gay men, but for minority folks (whether they be part of a minority group or have minority preferences), dating is still very much unsolved.

HER (https://weareher.com/) is dating for lesbians and other non-heteronormative people.

Color Dating (http://www.colordatingapp.com/) lets you match by race/ethnicity.

Muzmatch (https://muzmatch.com/) has features needed by Muslims.

[All 3 are YC-funded]

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#129

Post by chii »

hueving wrote: post #123
abalone wrote: post #46

My take (just the first five): 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Spotify & Apple Music. Pay $10/mo for unlimited access to most music. Took the wind out of music piracy. (TV & film are undergoing a similar transition to subscription models, more slowly.) 2. Simplified browsing...Grandparents and small children don't want the full web... Apps. Remember this list is from just one year after the…

>But the real hero here is AWS and its "primitives"-based, bottom-up approach to outsourcing all computing. I'm not sure 'hero' is the right word. AWS has created culture of lock-in and closed source products being acceptable in many otherwise open source pipelines. Additionally, people funnel significantly more of their money into AWS than they would with dedicated hardware. AWS is a plague on infrastructure and a b…

aws has made infrastructure easily accessible to many without large outlay of capital, but with capabilities comparable (or even exceed) to any physical infrastructure you can buy.

this has made software services much easier to sell. in a world without AWS, only monied interests can hope to bring a service in any scale. even in the face of vendor login, AWS has increased the democracy of starting a new business.

Re: Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

#130

Post by matte_black »

sebleon wrote: post #120
matte_black wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think lifespan is only worth increasing if there is a corresponding increase in health span. My grandmothers are both in their 90s and quite lucid and healthy. I would love to be at least in their condition when I’m in my 90s, but I also am serious about exercise and nutrition so I would hope I’d be even better off than them. They do nothing of that sort. Likewise, I’d like to be with a woman at that age who would…

Right, it's better to be healthy at 90 than in chemotherapy. However, I question the societal and individual benefits of enabling everyone to live to 100. > We need to rethink the way we think about the elderly, because one day those elderly will be us. I find this Western fear of death to be toxic. One day we'll grow old and die - and that's ok, that's how life works.

If you feel everyone shouldn’t be enabled to live to 100 because there is little benefit to society, you are not that far from thinking maybe everyone shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce unless their offspring benefit society.

I personally don’t believe either of those things should be limited, I simply believe people with good genes should have an easy way to match with each other and form a relationship. That’s it. Society will take care of the rest.

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