Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Requests for Startups

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–407 of 407 posts

Re: New Requests for Startups

#401

Post by prawn »

bcohen5055 wrote: post #254
rcarrigan87 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger question may be why do we even still have "textbooks," at least in their traditional form? Are textbooks the optimal way to learn given all the technology we have today? I'm sure there are quite a few start-ups working on this problem.

I'd have to say there is a good use case for textbooks in engineering. Go into any mechanical engineer or chemical engineers cubical and you will find that they all have many of their college textbooks. Textbook chapters are a way better organized than websites when you are looking up values in tables, applying them to equations, and adapting example problems.

That's not anything that couldn't be solved with a better designed informational website or app. Those textbooks persist only because someone's making a lot of money from making them required parts of a course.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#402

Post by SupremumLimit »

radicalbyte wrote: post #393
SupremumLimit wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is reasonable, and there are lots of people attempting to make RAD systems. Unfortunately, they always place severe limitations on the kind of software that can be created with them, and hence none of them have become particularly popular. It seems that there's something missing from all the existing implementations of your suggestion. Perhaps it is that the UI and data flow primitives that we have…

Delphi, Visual Basic, FoxPro and Access were all extremely popular RAD tools exactly because they made creating a certain class of systems extremely easy.

I had the misfortune of using Visual FoxPro once upon a time. It was horrifyingly bad, but perhaps by that time (2002-2004) it was suffering serious impedance mismatch with the rest of technology which had moved on. Anyway, I wouldn't call it a good example :)

Regardless, that was kind of my point - all these systems are only good as long as you stay within their constraints. The unfortunate thing is that the constraints always end up being way too tight in practice.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#403

Post by maxcan »

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #381
theuri wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Max - Agreed - low cost index funds are a dime a dozen. Even "hot" startups like WealthFront / Betterment are a waste of money - you can spend a minute on the site, get their recommendation, hop over to Vanguard and carry it out yourself (and save thousands). Just send yourself a reminder to rebalance once a year and you're done. The biggest driver in building wealth, from our experience and that of working at Gu…

> using behavioral finance to automatically accumulate more assets over time Can you explain what that means?

I believe that he's referring to sweep accounts and save-by-default instruments that have a pretty established track record of improving savings rates.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#404

Post by alphydan »

ccozan wrote: post #19
chrisacky wrote: post #6

- INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE "An important trend is the API-ification of everything. As more and more businesses are accessible with a web API, the Internet becomes more and more powerful." I think a POSTman style Zapier, love-child would go down very well. Also products like Mashery where you provide APIs as a service and charge. Notably missing from the list... - Anything related to travel. - Anything related to stora…

Let me reply regarding travel: - is full 99% of so established players, with lots of money. To enter this marked requires either equally amount of money or something truly truly innovative...which brings to point 2: - what is left to invent in this area to be so disruptive so that a start-up in this area makes sense? I'd love to be contradicted, but I think all important things in travel have been invented.

How about this:

If you travel quite a bit (say 10 international flights/yr), would you pay 15k/yr to never have to think about travel? You book meetings on your phone "Jan 20, Calcuta | Feb 23, Tucson, etc | OScon in X, etc" and everything else happens behind the curtains.

The startup books flights, hotels, taxi, shuttles, trains, etc, and your Google Now just talks to you: You have a flight tomorrow at 8:00. When you land: Take train A293 at 3pm, etc.

The more you travel, and based on feedback, the app learns (less train, a little more up-scale hotels, she doesn't mind taking the bus, etc)

Like being a millionaire with a full-time assistant, but for the middle class. Does that exist? Could AI tackle it? Maybe a semi-automated version?

Re: New Requests for Startups

#405

Post by drzaiusapelord »

GuiA wrote: post #331
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As far as gaming goes, we'll probably see half-assed VR from Microsoft and Sony. Look at all the amazing things the Kinect did. I played a few Kinect games. The effect is amazing. Imagine if Facebook bought it instead of MS. I don't see why MS or Sony would make things half-assed. If anything, VR gaming might be a natural monopoly from a commercial entity instead of some open standards things Oculus kinda-sorta is p…

> Look at all the amazing things the Kinect did Mmh, what amazing things did he do? Last time I checked, there is no killer app for the Kinect. Microsoft tried to force it on everyone by bundling it with the Xbox One (because no one wanted it otherwise), and now they're removing it because even when their console is bundled with it, no one does anything with it.

It certainly was explosive on the 360. As an Xbox One owner, there just aren't too many games that make use of it, compared to the dozens on titles on the 360. There's a dance game and a token fitness game and not much else. I think if the console launched with 5-10 good Kinect games, it would be a different story. It looks like MS was too afraid of being a second run console if they waited too long after the PS4's debut and launched with very few titles and very few good titles, let alone kinect titles.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#406

Post by bradleysmith »

GuiA wrote: post #330
bradleysmith wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I didn't mean like Flipboard or Circa. I also wouldn't expect much support for these kinds of things. I meant companies that are trying to change how news is consumed and produced, not those that prettify how it is presented for final consumption. PG outlined the problem pretty clearly in 2008[0]. Perhaps you believe the news industry is healthy and functioning in delivering accurate current events to world citiz…

Cool, I wasn't sure what you were talking about so your examples help. I'm not sure that the news industry is healthy and functioning, but I do know that world citizens seem to be very happy living in a world of celebrity photos and memes and " listicles" these days. The fact that PG's examples are Perez Hilton and TechCrunch demonstrates that pretty well. The only thing that has really changed news is that now every…

Appreciate your thought out reply.

>I do know that world citizens seem to be very happy living in a world of celebrity photos and memes and " listicles" these days.

Like they were happy using nokia 3600 phones before there were touch screens.

Listen, I'm not saying it's a guaranteed money maker or something; I'm saying it's a category of industry that could use improvement and attention from startups. It is poised for profound change.

>The only thing that has really changed news is that now everyone has a camera on their phone and can post footage of events on Twitter, Instagram, etc.

That's very true. I've found it quite interesting that ordinary citizens have been breaking stories before professional journalists could even make it to scene for a number of years now. Makes me think the industry could use a change.

I hope we could see more change than you predict, but wouldn't be surprised if you were right. I'll leave it at that.

EDIT: Cut an unfinished thought.

Post reply on HN