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Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#191

Post by contingencies »

weaksauce wrote: post #176
contingencies wrote: post #13

Normally I live in China, and rarely eat western breakfast. Recently I returned to Australia to spend some Christmas time with my extended family. A few mornings ago, I put some real bread I cut from a sourdough loaf in a toaster. Due to its irregular size, when it popped it didn't pop out completely, resulting in a sort of "toaster is too hot to insert fingers, toast is too hot to hold, toast is ready, find metallic…

To be fair there shouldn't be any voltage inside the toaster basket area when the toast has popped up. Unless they did something stupid when designing the toaster. And you can always unplug it before sticking utensils in there.

Sure. To be clear the gripe is less about the potential for a shock (real or otherwise) and more about the clearly nontrivial frequency and irritation of the issue.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#192

Post by joeld42 »

One of the best places to look is where an emerging platform overlaps with existing specialty fields. For example, VR is currently an emerging platform, here's a few things that maybe someone is pursuing but there's no established solution for:

- 3D Storyboarding for VR cinematic storytelling (mixed desktop/VR)

- VR home tours for real estate

- VR sports training for golf/tennis/baseball

- Rehearsal/Staging VR for event planning.

- VR Training for DIY/Construction.

etc.. In particular if there is a field that you personally work in or know someone that's a great place to start.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#193

Post by rubicon33 »

joeld42 wrote: post #192

One of the best places to look is where an emerging platform overlaps with existing specialty fields. For example, VR is currently an emerging platform, here's a few things that maybe someone is pursuing but there's no established solution for: - 3D Storyboarding for VR cinematic storytelling (mixed desktop/VR) - VR home tours for real estate - VR sports training for golf/tennis/baseball - Rehearsal/Staging VR for ev…

What about VR for surgery training?

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#194

Post by 205guy »

dvdhnt wrote: post #2

Semi-related... I work in wellness and healthcare. I don't know about you, but I despise filling out the same forms over and over again when seeing new healthcare providers. I'd love to start a service modeled after granular smartphone permissions where (a) I check in at a new office (scan a code, they scan my code, beacon, something like that) (b) the office then requests x, y, and z information (c) a push is sent t…

France has national healthcare and everyone has a smart card with vital information, and all doctors have the hardware to read it and software to process it. Or at least they did 15 years ago when I was there.

Edit to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carte_Vitale

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#195

Post by 205guy »

dvdhnt wrote: post #2

Semi-related... I work in wellness and healthcare. I don't know about you, but I despise filling out the same forms over and over again when seeing new healthcare providers. I'd love to start a service modeled after granular smartphone permissions where (a) I check in at a new office (scan a code, they scan my code, beacon, something like that) (b) the office then requests x, y, and z information (c) a push is sent t…

France has national healthcare and everyone has a smart card with vital information, and all doctors have the hardware to read it and software to process it. Or at least they did 15 years ago when I was there.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#196

Post by seppin »

flamesnare3 wrote: post #35
chollida1 wrote: post #27

Data management. 1) Cleaning the data as it comes in rather than in batches so we can use it sooner, invalid data is discarded, outlier detection, normalizing inputs etc.... 2) Warehousing of the data with proper indexes so you can perform some advanced queries on unstructured data 3) Some data is sent in bulk at the end of day, some of the data is streamed in fire hose style. How can we preprocess the fire hose data…

I think Palantir provides solutions to this problem

For $$$

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#197

Post by anjc »

saosebastiao wrote: post #56

These questions pop up every now and then, and while I get the intent, you're not gonna get anything useful out of it. The idea that someone who knows how to code can disrupt an industry that they are not a part of is disingenuous, and the examples that you can find are exceptions, not the rule. It's also extremely naive and presumptuous...what makes you think people in the industry haven't already tried? People who…

I sort of agree. But it is also true that there are many industries and groups that are way behind the state of the art in technology. That may be for good reason, or it may be because it hasn't worked for them yet, or may be because it can't work, or because they avoid tech, or...umpteen reasons.

So yes, a CS grad probably wont come along and revolutionise the Supply Chain industry, but mainly because SC has been at the forefront of areas of tech for decades. A CS grad may, however, come along and revolutionise...well just look at all of the recent famous tech companies...communications, travel, social, arts and crafts...whatever. Many areas are ripe for fresh eyes and new approaches.

I do agree that domain knowledge is often massively under-emphasised though.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#198

Post by emerongi »

rmrm wrote: post #130

My wife is a corporate attorney. They pass drafts of contracts around by email using MS word with change tracking enabled. Some sort of attorney targeted simple revision tracking front end using git would be a mighty step forward.

I'm actually close to launching this kind of product. A bit more complex than Word + Git, but I hope it will be worth it.

One question: is there a use case for live group-editing? Same way live code editors work. I have to admit that I'm not super familiar of the workflows in that industry, so I am mostly just designing features the way I would like them to work.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#199

Post by brightball »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #3

Not in my industry but I'm part of an HOA and I swear 2/3 of what the people paid to administer it do seems streamlinable/automatable with lots of opportunity for making money along the way. Every time I deal with them I proclaim to myself, STARTUP! Then I forget about it..

I'm on my HOA and I imagine the hardest part of making this work would actually be sales. The sales cycle for an HOA would be multiple months between meetings and actually making a decision. Then there's the issue of rotating responsibility, retraining, no guarantees of technical skills among board volunteers.

I'd tend to agree with the other comments that the hired out management companies would be a much better sales target since they have a real profit motive to efficiency gains. At best a neighborhood HOA is looking at periodically saving some time and being a bit better organized.

Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?

#200

Post by EricDeb »

dvdhnt wrote: post #2

Semi-related... I work in wellness and healthcare. I don't know about you, but I despise filling out the same forms over and over again when seeing new healthcare providers. I'd love to start a service modeled after granular smartphone permissions where (a) I check in at a new office (scan a code, they scan my code, beacon, something like that) (b) the office then requests x, y, and z information (c) a push is sent t…

agreed providing the same exact 4 pages of info to every doctor's office is insane.
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