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Ask HN: What software will you build if your financial needs were full covered?
While many of us have reasonably fulfilling professional lives, there is still the need to make mortgage payments and other financial needs that will keep us grinding away at a day job for years to come. And thus we find ourselves working on problems or industry sectors that we don't particularly care for.
So I wanted to try this thought experiment: Imagine that you are immediately freed of all financial obligations for the rest of your life (housing, taking care of family, saving for retirement etc).
What kind of software would you be bringing into existence then?
- humbleMouse 10y agoI would build a better Soundcloud, and I would make a point of sales system targeted at the medical marijuana market. I would also make a dating website for artists.
- allendoerfer 10y agoWow, you are consistent.
- humbleMouse 10y agoLOL, I suppose you can parse out a lot about my hobbies and interests by what software I would make.
- shylor 10y agoI would jump into community education and helping find opportunities.
- tmaly 10y agoI have wanted some solutions for learning for kids 2-4 years of age.
- bbcbasic 10y agoThis one is good http://readingeggs.com.au http://readingeggs.com.au
- msie 10y agoToo many dreams: I would build a better Second Life. A programming language. Something to aid medical research. A low-cost, widely accessible medical imaging solution (MRI would be the start).
- strcpy1980 10y agoI would contribute to ReactOS — opensource reverse-engineered WindowsXP.
- jeditobe 10y ago+1
- dchun 10y agoI'd contribute to computer vision. It's a thorny field with lot's of opportunity
- partisan 10y agoAn idea I have to encourage charitable giving, a SaaS. It would be for profit because that would be a worthwhile motivation for me.
- sharemywin 10y agoI've gotten bored with software so, I'll take your question and extend it to my interests. Found a motor with pretty good torque(~2 ft/lbs): https://www.servocity.com/html/124_rpm_econ_gearmotor__638352.html#.V3bIa_krJdg https://www.servocity.com/html/124_rpm_econ_gearmotor__63835... Want to turn it into a servo and eventually a robotic arm which could extend out 3 ft and lift about 1-1.5 lbs. for about $200.
- lj3 10y agoI'd create an alternative mobile OS from the ground up. I've become disillusioned with iOS and Android both. Neithor of them nor any of the alternatives make full use of the hardware. Phones are capable of doing so much, yet in practice they fail when you ask them to do much of anything. Or, maybe I'd just build myself an electric motorcycle. There's a lot of interesting work in Battery management these days and a motorcycle is a good platform for experimentation.
- Lordarminius 10y ago> Or, maybe I'd just build myself an electric motorcycle... If you do, and its well made and competitively priced, I guarantee you you will become a billionaire in less than a decade.
- lj3 10y agoDoubtful. There are dozens if not hundreds of guys who have made their own electric motorcycles[0]. Getting it to production is a whole other ballgame, one that only two companies out of dozens have managed to pull off (Zero and Brammo). [0]: http://www.evalbum.com/type/MTCY http://www.evalbum.com/type/MTCY
- Lordarminius 10y agoYou must be from the West. I repeat, a competitively priced motorcycle would upend the market and make you a very very rich. The vast majority of motorbike users reside in Asia and Africa. Imagine being able to charge your spare batteries using solar panels during the day and no longer paying for gas; an electric engine would be quieter and require less maintenance. In performance and ruggedness it would have to supersede current offerings and I guess that is quite difficult or else Yamaha, Honda, Sukam and the rest would have built one already. If I were rich I would certainly consider funding such a project.
- lj3 10y ago> I repeat, a competitively priced motorcycle would upend the market and make you a very very rich. There are dozens of cheap chinese knockoff electric scooters available in Asia. Upend the market? Please. > Imagine being able to charge your spare batteries using solar panels during the day and no longer paying for gas. I don't have to imagine. Been there, done that, along with hundreds if not thousands of others. As I said before, you have no idea what it takes to go from a working prototype to a finished, mass produced shippable product. There's a reason only 2 companies have ever pulled it off and one of them went bankrupt. If you want a fun rabbit hole to dive down, google 'homologation' sometime. I'm not saying somebody with access to billions in capital can't eventually break even and start making a profit, but we're talking a 10-20 year break even period. Longer, if you have to do what Tesla did and create an entire solar infrastructure in Asia and Africa.
- benologist 10y agoI think we could be doing much more to enable the other 1/2 of humanity to join us online as equals, Stripe Atlas is like a tentative step 1 of many. People in developing countries face such stupid limitations that effectively restrict them to just being consumers of the internet. I have some ideas percolating that I hope will help democratize the internet a little bit more for when I finish with my current company. There are also a lot of shitty practices I would like to help erode - like automatically converting abandoned free trials into paying customers, or not providing an online way to cancel online trials etc. "Dark patterns" rely on nobody calling them out. Frivolous privacy violations and impediments are also an area of interest, especially as the least democratic countries join us online encumbered by hateful laws.
- purans 10y agoWould do farming, at the end world needs to eat
- J_Darnley 10y agoWell if all that were true and I had the skills to: a Winamp v5 clone, a Firefox < v4 clone.