Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work) • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#201

Post by kahawe » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 11:09 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #164

blhack wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but no. Absolutely not. This is not "toxic" for anybody. "Waste up to a year of their life?" When I was 16, my friends and I thought we were going to take over the world by starting a "tech company". We knew we were all nerds, and we knew we wanted to own a "tech company". We got together, thought up a cool name, made a cool website, and got some cool business cards. Was this a stupid idea? Yes. Did I lear…

Yes, business school is a waste. Yes, Java cash register programs are a waste. Yes, doomed Craigslist competitors are a waste. People too young to go to business school have cashed out of YC companies. Aspire to that, not to rationalizing very expensive learning experiences.

So basically you are trying to say any kind of education and learning process is a waste unless you go and aim straight at multinational multibillion dollar success or what is your point?

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#202

Post by WalterGR » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 11:33 AM UTC

sedachv wrote: post #99

This reads like a list of the Montreal startup scene. So far I've met people working on dating sites, purposeless recommendation engines (to be fair, in one of those startups two of the guys were part of the team that won the Netflix prize, the other one is headed by someone who placed second in the GitHub contest, so they're not dilettantes at least), social travel ("we'll get film students to make videos about rest…

Local events

This is my "Dream Project" - i.e. the one I'll build when I have endless free time that I'd like to devote to working.

I'd love to know why you think it's of dubious utility. (Aside from movie times, I've never discovered an event through an "event site" - but I feel like I could...)

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#203

Post by pornel » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 12:57 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #13

It's true that such ideas tend to be magnets for sloppy thinking, but I think most if not all of them could be pulled off if done right.

I think the fact that many tried and failed could be explained that these are "iceberg problems":

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/code-icebergs.ht...

It's not impossible, just much much harder than it seems.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#204

Post by igravious » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 4:02 PM UTC

dnsworks wrote: post #114

Geeks are so incredibly negative it's why I end up trying to convince friends to find a better career filled with happier people whenever they ask how to get into the tech field. There's nothing more pathetic then that guy who is the born skeptic and can't see beyond his own inability to find success, constantly putting down every idea his friends give him. I'm told that's what it's like trying to do a start-up in En…

Is this is general geek trait? I have a (very good) friend who always rubbishes my ideas as unworkable, impossible, idealistic, or whatever. He earns a much better salary than me but the funny thing is, I got him into tech and taught a _lot_ in the beginning. He gravitated towards the Microsoft ecosystem and I gravitated towards open source so that whenever we find something we would both like to work on we can't agree on the tools! Groooan. He's one of the smartest guys I know and he's always coming up with ideas (as am I in my own way) but whenever I say, come on, let's do one of these he always demurs. (Not that I'm much better.) I love tech and coding but I'm in the process of giving it up to a certain extent for a stint in academia.

That was a sly dig at Engerland, right ;-)

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#205

Post by artmageddon » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 4:17 PM UTC

mikeklaas wrote: post #138

clistctrl wrote: post #48

I was honestly expecting to see something about a bar revolving around gaming. I've heard it proposed by at least 4 seperate nerd friends.

http://manabar.com/ (Zero Punctuation guy)

The site you linked to is for another bar(and a page with a Flash intro that pumps Jennifer Lopez into your ears, I should add)...

This is the correct site: http://www.manabar.com.au/

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#206

Post by fbru02 » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 4:25 PM UTC

timf wrote: post #35

> Giant, Purposeless, Unfocused Machine Learning System. There's a YC company that does this in a general way but I would not label their use cases as "purposeless". http://www.directededge.com/

why is directedge a better alternative to hunch?

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#207

Post by blhack » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 4:28 PM UTC

sandaru1 wrote: post #194

blhack wrote: post #40

I hope I don't come across as negative here, but I hate lists like this. Peopel are always raining on each others' ideas "Oh, what, you're going to make a myspace clone? Bahahahaha." (facebook) "Oh, what, you're going to make a facebook clone? Bahahahaha." (twitter) "Oh, what, you're going to make another dating website? Bahahahaha." (Okcupid, plentyoffish) "Oh, what, you're going to make another social bookmarking w…

>> You want to apply gaming mechanics to exercise? Good! Do it and tell me about it! That sounds awesome! Make an iPhone app for it, make a facebook app for it, let me pick random strangers across the internet to challenge at it. Make leaderboards and lots of badgers, and blog about it. If you fail, write more blog posts about why you failed. We just did that for Medical field - "Prognosis", currently at 5th position…

Did you just show this app off on HN the other day?

(Just installed it. Was this supposed to be only for doctors...or?)

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#208

Post by sandaru1 » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 4:36 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #207

sandaru1 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You want to apply gaming mechanics to exercise? Good! Do it and tell me about it! That sounds awesome! Make an iPhone app for it, make a facebook app for it, let me pick random strangers across the internet to challenge at it. Make leaderboards and lots of badgers, and blog about it. If you fail, write more blog posts about why you failed. We just did that for Medical field - "Prognosis", currently at 5th position…

Did you just show this app off on HN the other day? (Just installed it. Was this supposed to be only for doctors...or?)

Yes, posted on HN about 5 days ago. Our main user group is doctors and medical students (or any healthcare professionals who are familiar with little bit of medicine).

Take a look at iMedicalApps review for detailed analysis (good and bad) : http://www.imedicalapps.com/2010/11/prognosis-your-diagnosis...

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#209

Post by DrJokepu » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 4:50 PM UTC

there wrote: post #32

is anyone still trying to innovate in the online dating arena? i thought okcupid has had it pretty much locked for a while.

OkCupid still has a bunch of problems. Less experienced men don't get any replies, experienced men get replies but often struggle to find interesting women and women, especially attractive ones get so many messages (many of them really disturbing) that they just can't keep up with them. In fact, a very attractive female friend of mine went back to one of the paying dinosaurs sites after trying out OkCupid for a week because no matter how many messages she got, she couldn't find any men she was even remotely attracted to. It seems that there's an awful lot of potential in creating a dating site that alleviates these issues, although it is a hard problem to crack.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#210

Post by cadr » Wed, Dec 01, 2010, 5:17 PM UTC

ebiester wrote: post #166

smanek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like someone did do them! Obvious examples include: 1. basecamp/fogbugz/jira 2. Confluence/Sharepoint 3. django/rails 4. Google Docs 5. Facebook

No. People still haven't done #3 right. Alpha five comes closest, but apparently nobody has heard of them. It should be built on top of SQL server, or Oracle. People are using it already. It should have a subset of Crystal Reports, with an easy way to develop simple entry yet let you override the business logic if necessary. Essentially, combine ext-js with django's administration, with a marketplace of addons for va…

Have you used Alpha Five? Any comments on it? Glancing over the page it looks like it might be in the realm of what I am thinking of.

As an aside, one thing that these type of tools often lack is integrated testing. Which is a shame, because it seems like it should be easier in these tools, as the tool can have a lot of context about what the fields, etc, mean.