Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#121

Post by nl » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

hkarthik wrote: post #82

There's a definite opportunity to build a competitor to Apple and reach the hackers first: building a better PC for hackers to create new software built on Open Source and Web technologies. The cracks are starting to show with using Mac OSX as a primary machine for hacking. It's got unix under the hood, but every successive release has become more consumer focused and less hacker friendly. The proprietary nature of d…

It's here, but not how you think: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Do you know any hacker who knows about Raspberry Pi and isn't planning on buying one?

Radically undercutting existing platforms in price, but with comparable functionality enables totally new uses for general purpose computing devices. That's how to take on the Mac/PC business - not by hitting it head on.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#122

Post by TheCowboy » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 6:52 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #120

run4yourlives wrote: post #104

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

Seriously? Search is another word for artificial intelligence. Email means a universal way for people to communicate. Lunar bases & flying cars aren't ambitious, they are just expensive. Personal robots are here now in vertical spaces[1] and there are at least 200,000 cyborgs walking around now[2]. I think both these areas are worth working in, but I think you underestimate the ambition of a word like search . [1] ht…

They're expensive because they're inefficient. To accomplish them efficiently is ambitious and elegant without a doubt.

A startup that can chip away at what makes these things so inefficient is going in the right direction. Looking for inefficiencies, such as with present day email, is a good way to find a direction.

Economics is still at its heart the study of the problem of scarcity. Economies, and all economic activity, attempt to alleviate or manage that problem.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#123

Post by sid- » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 6:58 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #83

diego wrote: post #22

"GMail is slow because Google can't afford to spend a lot on it. But people will pay for this. I'd have no problem paying $50 a month." Ok. Number of Paul Grahams in the world times $600/year = ? Most people on the web are ridiculously stingy. "I would pay for this" is a terrible way to think for an entrepreneur. Believing that what we think represents the masses is a rookie mistake.

Number of business email users? Tens of millions certainly. "Would I pay for this?" is a great question for founders to ask, because it combines two of the most powerful techniques for generating startup ideas: solving problems you yourself have, and using payment as a test of how much people want something. One of my techniques for helping founders to come up with ideas is to ask them what they need so much that the…

One of the simple ideas we could do with email for power users is to show the sender a list of imap folders the receiver has created in his inbox and allow the sender(maybe an assistant) to target the emails in that folder thus turning it into a collaborative effort in organizing stuff

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#124

Post by jacoblyles » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:02 AM UTC

It would be great to have a todo list with a similar interface to today's email-integrated calendar apps. Someone could send me a todo item, and I could accept or reject it. If I accept it, it gets synced across both of our todo lists. That would be a huge step up over putting todo items in email.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#125

Post by staunch » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:06 AM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #104

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

Facebook and Google have improved the daily lives of billions of people. Tesla Motors' electric car? Very impressive and a lot of promise, but so far all it's done is increase the self-satisfaction of ~1000 people.

Look at Star Trek. Other than the spaceship itself the most impressive things are the technology the people use. The Siri-like computer interface, iPad-like computers, Skype-like communications technology, etc.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#126

Post by nl » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:07 AM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #110

repos wrote: post #6

Preventative Diagnostics as Paul describes in #7 will really be the future - it's barbaric that we can only make a diagnosis when the disease has already manifested (in most cases). There are a few players in this space (Scanadu comes to mind), but it's seems like nano biosensors and the like are still very new technologies. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm not optimistic. I think pg's discussion of automatic diagnosis is a bit ill-informed. For example, the recent trial that showed screening CT scans reduce mortality in lung cancer cost 250 million dollars to run. Even then, nobody is sure if it is even a cost effective measure. It is difficult and costly to produce a screening test. It also takes many years to validate. Then there is the problem of what to do with…

Is that the case for all cancers though?

I live in Australia, and we are indoctrinated to check your skin for moles that maybe cancerous. There are claims that the high rate of early detection leads to higher survival rates[1].

My understanding is that early detection of bowel, breast and prostate cancer is relatively easy and produces good outcomes too.

There are radical ways to do early detection (sub dermal computers continually monitoring, etc etc) but there are ugly hacked solutions that just might work, too.

How much would it cost to build a toilet with a bowel cancer test kit built in?

[1] http://www.cancer.org.au/policy/positionstatements/sunsmart/...

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#127

Post by samstave » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:12 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #83

diego wrote: post #22

"GMail is slow because Google can't afford to spend a lot on it. But people will pay for this. I'd have no problem paying $50 a month." Ok. Number of Paul Grahams in the world times $600/year = ? Most people on the web are ridiculously stingy. "I would pay for this" is a terrible way to think for an entrepreneur. Believing that what we think represents the masses is a rookie mistake.

Number of business email users? Tens of millions certainly. "Would I pay for this?" is a great question for founders to ask, because it combines two of the most powerful techniques for generating startup ideas: solving problems you yourself have, and using payment as a test of how much people want something. One of my techniques for helping founders to come up with ideas is to ask them what they need so much that the…

But there are decades of precedent against how much people will pay for email.

Look at a large enterprise org - you think that Lockheed with 150K employees would spend $50/yr/user on email?

Hell no. they dont spend 7.5MM per year on their email accounts for the employees.

Thats the problem with enterprise scaling vs cloud/startup scaling. They are inverse;

The enterprise wants the cost per unit to go down when scaling. The startup/cloud wants the profitability to increase at the same rate when scaling.

We all want great services, but NOBODY wants to pay for it.

I myself seek to offload cost at every opportunity; work pays for machine, phone, travel, software etc...

Same model.

Yeah - I'll seek to solve problems I have, but not based on how much I would pay - but how much I would like to offload that cost.

(Clearly there is a lot of grey here, and there are areas where this doesn't make sense -- and others where it does -- and these are not mutually exclusive. (i.e. in areas where I am both building for the consumer and the provider (healthcare))

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#128

Post by staunch » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:13 AM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #12

In my experience, Sand Hill Road does not want "frighteningly ambitious" startup ideas if substantial capital expenditure is involved. (In fairness, they are willing to hear those pitches – I guess that's something.) > Now Steve is gone there's a vacuum we can all feel. Pixar got funded only because Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs!) paid for it of pocket to the tune of $50 million total. It's Pixar that made him a billionaire…

It's likely that even Steve Jobs would not have invested in Pixar if he knew how much it was going to cost to make it successful. He originally put up $10 million ($5 million for Lucas and $5 million to finance it). It became a money pit that either pride or faith compelled him to keep funding.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#129

Post by jamesrcole » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:20 AM UTC

gbog wrote: post #116

jamesrcole wrote: post #106

Great post, but minor quibble: The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to do a better job than Samsung and HP and Nokia, and that seems pretty doable. That really should be: The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But they wouldn't have to. They'd just have to do a better job than Samsung an…

Hell, thanks, you just pointed out that pg is not PC. Hope he will never start writing in this silly new grammar.

I don't find 'they' any less readable than using 'he' or using 'she'.

Re: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

#130

Post by yirt » Sat, Mar 10, 2012, 7:25 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #125

run4yourlives wrote: post #104

Does it bother anyone that "frightenly ambitious" begins with search and email? Seriously? This is the pinnacle of our contribution to mankind - building search engines and to-do lists? Where's the lunar base? The flying car? The personal robot? The cyborg? Meh, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy. (To be fair I did like the other ones).

Facebook and Google have improved the daily lives of billions of people. Tesla Motors' electric car? Very impressive and a lot of promise, but so far all it's done is increase the self-satisfaction of ~1000 people. Look at Star Trek. Other than the spaceship itself the most impressive things are the technology the people use. The Siri-like computer interface, iPad-like computers, Skype-like communications technology,…

And yet, Star Trek falls firmly into the social SF camp. The tech is incidental, left abstract or waved away with babble so that the personal interactions can proceed. Obsessing over the latest gadget incarnation wrapped in shiny branding is just the opposite, consumerism rather than tech which quietly enables.