Anything that has to do with mining engineering and the use of software is just ripe for startups, getting the industry to adopt thought is a different story.
Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
441–450 of 734 posts
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#442Uber for cooks. People cook food in their homes. You select the food from several cooks in your area in an app, drive to their house and pick the food. I imagine a housewife/househusband that is already cooking for her/his family to prepare more portions. Snap a photo, a description, and price. It can be extra income for something that she/him is already doing. People would use the product because it is convenient, s…
I don't remember where or what but I remember this idea being discussed a few months ago on HN and there were quite a few reasons this is unlikely to happen. Because safety of properly cooked food and human consumption and other reasons. If you could stay relatively small and under radar. And get lucky enough for nothing bad to happen long enough to make billions like Uber. Then maybe have chance to pull off and get proper legal support/lobbyists
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire Real-Estate industry is ripe for disruption. Exactly why are we paying 6% to "agents"? https://www.redfin.com/ is already doing this. They charge half the normal fee if you're selling and they give about half of their fee to you after purchase if you're buying. (We bought our house with them.)
Sure, but what you are paying 1/2 for? Imagine owning a home which sells for $1,000,000. Currently you pay roughly 6% - $60,000. You pick Redfin - they charge take the money and give you back 1/2 but you are still paying them $30,000!! But if your house is sold for $100,000 you'd pay $6,000 or $3,000 to Redfin. The whole thing is just the biggest currently running scam that I can think of and someone will come along…
Sadly your commission on that million dollar house is actually $45k -- Redfin cuts their seller's agent commission in half (3% becomes 1.5%) but the other half goes to the buyer's agent, so you pay 4.5% rather than 6%.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#444A 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…
Actually, I'm a lawyer and a product owner at a big accounting firm, so I'm pretty well positioned to discuss this topic. I have half a dozen solid startup ideas that I'm tempted to take and start running with right now. Documentation management alone is in desperate need of innovation. I build toy apps in my spare time that cut thousands of dollars of charge hours young associates waste on bullshit tasks, just within my one small practice group. The whole legal software industry is a joke.
But here's the real problem for anyone looking to innovate in that space: the customers. Lawyers are as a rule anti-technology, slow to adapt new techniques, and set in their ways. Worse yet, they just bill their clients for their shitty software like Lexis or WestLaw, so they aren't even personally motivated to reduce costs.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#445Uber for cooks. People cook food in their homes. You select the food from several cooks in your area in an app, drive to their house and pick the food. I imagine a housewife/househusband that is already cooking for her/his family to prepare more portions. Snap a photo, a description, and price. It can be extra income for something that she/him is already doing. People would use the product because it is convenient, s…
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but what you are paying 1/2 for? Imagine owning a home which sells for $1,000,000. Currently you pay roughly 6% - $60,000. You pick Redfin - they charge take the money and give you back 1/2 but you are still paying them $30,000!! But if your house is sold for $100,000 you'd pay $6,000 or $3,000 to Redfin. The whole thing is just the biggest currently running scam that I can think of and someone will come along…
Exactly. Does it take ten times as much work for a real estate agent to sell a $1m house versus a $100k house? Obviously not. So what are we paying ten times as much for in the one case, and if there's no connection between effort and fee, what are we paying for, and why, even in the low end case? Totally a scam, totally ripe for disruption.
The level of service is pretty low too. Its basically handling setting up a few appointments to see houses, helping grease the skids for inspections, and setting up a closing with a settlement company/lawyer. Stuff that really doesn't take all that much expertise/knowledge.
I'm sure there are little things that go on behind the magic curtain, but definitely something that could be automated in a b2b fashion.
The worst part of it all - all that money is spent basically to protect the seller so they can wash their hands of the whole deal once the house is sold. There is very little to no buyer protection in the real estate world.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#447There's probably a SaaS in locksmithing. http://masterkeypro.com/ is sort of the only entry in the market and cores/companies-that-need-key-schedules change just often enough that say $5-10 month could gain traction.
Essentially inventory management for locks, including the specific bitting(s) for each lock? That actually sounds really fun to build, not terribly challenging, and probably has huge market reach.
One quick challenge though, my understanding is that the average org that needs this either contracts or has full time staff who manage their locks. Those are normally guys who manage this by placing the 10 cores they need to re-key on their work bench, maybe putting a tape label on, and then just going to the individual locks and dropping in a new core. I get the value as a management tool, but does this really improve things for the average staff locksmith?
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Yeah someone needs to tell the real estate people their jobs aren't safe from the robot apocalypse either.
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
On 2, buyers can be let into the home by the seller's agent.
True a buyer could be let into a home by sellers agent and even use the sellers agent to purchase the home. Agents love this! Its called getting both ends of the deal. It doubles the agents commission. Does not benefit buyer at though and actually is a bad idea.
Yeah, even with a buyers agent, the buyer doesn't get much. Both agents (if being paid out of the 6% commission) have a fiduciary responsibility to the seller.
About the only thing a buyer gets out of the whole deal is a title search to make sure there are no outstanding liens on the property - and they have to pay for that themselves!
Re: Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup?
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a friend who works in construction glass. (It's NYC, that's a big market). They ship millions of dollars of complex, custom molded glass every year. Everything's kept track of by emailing excel spreadsheets.
That's disgusting. I feel filthy. I replaced a system in my first client school that also used excel attachments for tracking student data, exams results, attendance, assignments, etc. I could physically feel better once I saw my own implementation replacing email attachment system. Since then email-excel has been a sensitive topic for me.
I've recently found a department for the company I'm working for needs help as they have literally reached the limits of Excel.
They have a sheet with around 30 rows and 150 columns, and they have 100 of these sheets (in a single Excel file). Some parts use formulas, but usually when somebody needs to change something they need to go through every single sheet. The issue is now when they try to add new data Excel won't let them.
I don't even want to know how they share the file or do backups.