Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup? • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #311

amenghra wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lawyer friend of mine told me his firm doesn't use software to check all the "hereafter referred to" are bound to their template and vice-versa. They instead have to print the document and go through it with a highlighter. The firm charges their clients on an hourly basis, so they don't really have an incentive to be more efficient.

I feel like charging on an hourly basis is a common pattern in many industries that opens the doors to competition from startups with different pricing structures...as long as the startup can do everything in a manner compliant with the existing industry. Logojoy, for instance, is an example of a service that supplants human labor with a single "good-enough" deliverable at a low price, and does so in a fraction of th…

> I feel like charging on an hourly basis is a common pattern in many industries that opens the doors to competition from startups with different pricing structures...as long as the startup can do everything in a manner compliant with the existing industry.

That last step's a real doozy, though. Startups are a field that thinks "move fast and break stuff" is actually a good idea. That kind of thinking works when you're slinging viral social media and personal productivity services, but it is catastrophic when you try to move into an industry where your customers' lives or livelihoods are on the line.

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

#432

Post by jacalata » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

solresol wrote: post #428

sidlls wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real estate industry is very heavily regulated and, worse, these regulations are extremely fragmented. Any disruption is going to have to deal with that. Also, agents for basic residential purchases where the property is about as mundane as it gets provide very little value. However good agents will do proper diligence by inspecting the public records for the property. That part may be disruptable with software a…

6% !??!? Australian here: on my last house sale, I did a deal with the agent where if he got a price above a quite-high threshold that he would get 3% instead of his usual rate. This was seen as a remarkably generous offer, unheard of in the industry. I've only once seen someone use a buying agent: husband and wife were both hospital doctors with three young active kids and they figured they valued their time enough…

Australian who lives in the US and is looking at buying a house. What's different? Almost everything, starting from the basics like there aren't auctions, you have to submit a secret bid that the seller will read and then tell you if it was accepted or not. Factors that can affect acceptance include what percentage of your purchase will be made with cash, whether you are willing to buy it without bothering to inspect the house first, and how many days it will take for you to close the deal if accepted - and of course, everything else like whether you are the kind of nice quiet couple they think their neighbours want to live next to, whether you have the same name as their brother-in-law, and whether you are the kind of person they want to imagine living in their house once they are gone.

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

#433

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:13 AM UTC

amenghra wrote: post #295

tmsam wrote: post #235

A family member is a lawyer in the Worker's Comp, SS, and Family Law space. THE software for lawyers in this space is called A1 Law. It solves a lot of real problems lawyers in that space have (form letter generation, calendar integration, case management)... but it's so slow to use new technologies. They advertise PalmOS integration. My family member has to have their own server in a closet running the server versio…

A lawyer friend of mine told me his firm doesn't use software to check all the "hereafter referred to" are bound to their template and vice-versa. They instead have to print the document and go through it with a highlighter. The firm charges their clients on an hourly basis, so they don't really have an incentive to be more efficient.

This is what got Henry Ford fired from making watches, isn't it?

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

#434

Post by pbnjay » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:13 AM UTC

athollywood wrote: post #427

pbnjay wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I found a few articles but not a whole lot of specifics. You're suggesting something like this box? http://www.optasense.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/FiberOpt... I feel like it'd be really hard to break into this field without some data to play with. Catch-22... If you have access/desire to share some data like this I'd love to chat more (email in bio). Sounds like an interesting problem.

All of our data is proprietary unfortunately. This leads to another start up idea: a data consortium company for this type of work. I don't think we would mind giving the data up if there was a legitimate way to do so and if there was some benefit for us (I.e. advancing the rate of progress in this field).

Interesting. I'm actually part of a agricultural genomics data consortium with similar concept (companies contribute $$ and data in exchange for licensing rights to research results).

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

#435

Post by bb611 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:15 AM UTC

jklein11 wrote: post #382

jungrothmorton wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone wondering, this is not a technical problem. It is a political/business problem. It's a solved problem to make a system that stores information about home listings and transactions. Other countries have done it. Yeah, houses are annoying because of all the weird combinations. But the thing is just a CRUD app. This system still exists because of organizations that are based on information asymmetry. A small…

Could you give some more detail on what the political/business challenges are?

The biggest one is that realtors exist entirely because of regulation a the state level.

After that is the extremely entrenched business interest in the status quo - a lot of people are making money off the current system, and any real disruption is going to cost 95-99% of the real estate industry their jobs.

As noted elsewhere, the level of regulation is such that even offering better data to buyers/sellers has a lot of regulatory overhead, including physical offices with real people.

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

#436

Post by athollywood » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

j15t wrote: post #426

athollywood wrote: post #383

The oil and gas industry is ripe with potential start ups. Here are a few that come to mind: 1. A better system for automation and measurement. Current solutions aren't ideal when it comes to setting up new systems as well as updating and maintaining existing systems. We build several million dollar facilities a month and each one has automation and measurement equipment that has to be individually set up and program…

Hi, would you happen to have any additional information on #3? (links to companies that require these services and/or industry reports)? I am work with technology that might be useful for this type of application. Thanks!

I guess I'll explain how the business side of drilling a well works. An operator (think Chevron) will decide where and when the well is drilled. They will then hire a drilling company (say H&P) that owns and operates rigs to drill the well. Even though the drilling company operates the rig, they basically drill it however the operator ask them too.

So to answer your question, any operator requires these services, though most dont know it. A company called Pason is the leading company in the drilling data industry. Their bread and butter is just data measurement and streaming, though they recently have entered the analytics space. Their technology seems pretty promising.

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

#437

Post by flylib » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

wehadfun wrote: post #228

bdangubic wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire Real-Estate industry is ripe for disruption. Exactly why are we paying 6% to "agents"? What are "agents" actually doing? 10+ years ago the need for "Real Estate Agents" was there as information was not readily accessible. Things like "what kind of area is this property in", "what are schools like" "what are prospects for this area 5 years down the road" and so on. All this information (and MUCH more) is cu…

Wife's a real estate agent so I have some insight. Agents mainly do two things: 1. If selling they can put your house into MLS. 2. For buyers they can let you into a house. Being able to do these things requires NAR membership, a state license, and other fees and cost real estate agents thousands per year. Also driving meetings clients at houses takes gas and time. Also your 6% commisiion is paying for all the other…

Opendoor is already doing agentless open houses with access codes (smart locks) and cameras throughout the house where people can visit whenever they want without calling ahead, not that difficult

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

#438

Post by tacon » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:20 AM UTC

athollywood wrote: post #427

pbnjay wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I found a few articles but not a whole lot of specifics. You're suggesting something like this box? http://www.optasense.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/FiberOpt... I feel like it'd be really hard to break into this field without some data to play with. Catch-22... If you have access/desire to share some data like this I'd love to chat more (email in bio). Sounds like an interesting problem.

All of our data is proprietary unfortunately. This leads to another start up idea: a data consortium company for this type of work. I don't think we would mind giving the data up if there was a legitimate way to do so and if there was some benefit for us (I.e. advancing the rate of progress in this field).

@athollywood Are you available for offline discussions? Maybe you could put some contact info in the public section of your profile. Feel free to email me: xenon@mailworks.org

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

#439

Post by lucaspiller » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:27 AM UTC

Gruselbauer wrote: post #408

I work for a small high end cosmetics business in the European Union. That particular industry has a lot of compliance and documentation rules imposed on it by Brussels. My predecessor in the line sadly pushed using Apple's Filemaker for that. It's not even that bad in the latest version and certainly offers some advantages over similar solutions but the guy was horribly in over his head. I'm talking fifty fields in…

You could take a look at Jira. I understand most people reading this are probably cringing right now, but the cause of that and what makes Jira appropriate is just how customisable it is. You can setup custom fields, validations, workflows.

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

#440

Post by treehau5 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 4:27 AM UTC

vinay427 wrote: post #425

treehau5 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not develop ideas and businesses that provide value to all of society and provide benefits such as a basic income that compensate for the fewer workers needed? Because this is a pipe dream that ignores the decades long of suffering it will take to reach that state, if ever.

Certainly, but automation seems inevitable at this point because it actually is beneficial to most of society, in terms of productivity. I don't think becoming less automated to save jobs is any less of a pipe dream.

> I don't think becoming less automated to save jobs is any less of a pipe dream.

It may seem inevitable. Until you have an entire generation of the work force put out of work. Then the only thing that will be inevitable will be civil war. We always need to have work for people to do. It's fundamental to our nature. It's the modern expression of hunter/gathering.