What are some market segments / areas that are ready to be disrupted? If you're a VC, what are some problems you don't see a lot of startups trying to solve?
Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
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Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#2Lithium recycling technology. Electrochemical storage may be a renewable technology to store energy but the raw materials are not infinite.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#3The old shared hosting market is still pretty large. But it is stuck with ancient stuff like cpanel and mostly dominated by stagnant players like EIG, GoDaddy, and the like.
Seems like there's room for a move something like what DigitalOcean did in the VPS space.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#4Contract Economy: There is still a significant opportunity for a Freelancer/Upwork group to exist. Something that better vets quality while not pushing for Toptal prices. I suspect you'd need to set up physical presence in the likely countries properly vet and control quality but this could easily be covered by a premium for a know quantity vs going to western rates.
Crytpo Currency: There is room for more disruption here. I suspect a currency that is both trackable and backed by a pool of commodities/currencies could be quite popular. Traceable would make theft risk reduced as money could effectively be returned if it is stolen and being backed/hedged by currencies/commodities would help with confidence.
Cargo: I'm surprised we haven't seen electric cargo ships. Even combine solar with sail as winds are favorable. This combined with auto-navigation (at least between ports) seems more easily achievable than cars yet technology is further behind.
Dockable Phone to PC (physical or even better if wireless dock): Surprised no-one has done this well yet. I can image whoever does this with really take ownership of the OS space. I always felt this could be the best route for Microsoft to re-enter the mobile space with force.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#5Doesn't seem like that many groups have really both studied the existing AGI research _and_ are seriously trying to apply the latest NN developments like GANs to (virtually) embodied AGI.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#6I'm hoping it will be voice application development. I think it will take off once the 3rd platform announces. It will be Siri or Cortana.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#7Outsourced testing. I can think of a few sites that would pay a pretty penny to have unit, spec, and acceptance-tests written for their pre-existing code.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#8Outsourced testing. I can think of a few sites that would pay a pretty penny to have unit, spec, and acceptance-tests written for their pre-existing code.
See https://www.rainforestqa.com/, a YC company. They do some of this.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#9Contract Economy: There is still a significant opportunity for a Freelancer/Upwork group to exist. Something that better vets quality while not pushing for Toptal prices. I suspect you'd need to set up physical presence in the likely countries properly vet and control quality but this could easily be covered by a premium for a know quantity vs going to western rates. Crytpo Currency: There is room for more disruption…
Cargo ships don't have enough free surface area to mount the number of solar panels that would be needed for propulsion. Sails are already being used on a few ships but they only save a small percentage of fuel.
Re: Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups?
#10Fix ads. I think there is a need for a product that allows websites to self-manage their ads, allowing them to handle display, tracking, payment, and client management internally. Imagine being able to get rid of all the third-party ad and tracking scripts on your website in favor of hosting and managing all of it on your own domain, displaying ads that are guaranteed to be relevant and attractive (since you chose them) and setting your own prices.