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> 25. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a we

by pkamb 9y ago

> 25. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a weakness, you may find there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves. http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Remarkably prescient for 2008. 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Something is broken when Sony and Universal are suing children. Actually, at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels' business model. The current situation can't be the final answer. 8. Dating. Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem. Tinder launched in 2012. 17. New payment methods. There are almost certainly things whose growth is held back because there's no way to charge for them. Bitcoin.
- placeybordeaux 9y ago
  w.r.t bitcoin being the new payment method, so far bitcoin hasn't enabled the really game changing thing: frictionless micropayments. It's possible that lighting networks will enable this (load up your browser with 5 bucks and lock that up in a connection to the LN, pay for articles then pay 1 cent to skip ads, buy premium features one at a time etc), but we haven't seen this yet.
  - DINKDINK 9y ago
    >we haven't seen [frictionless micropayments from the lighting network] yet. You post should be corected: Frictionless micropayments are already running on the lighting network, are already operational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baHHMNA8yf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baHHMNA8yf4
    - placeybordeaux 9y ago
      Thats lighting network on litecoin's chain. Bitcoin is still far from activating seg wit. Any metrics on how large the lighting network is on litecoin yet? I have a couple laying around and would be happy to lock them up with a big node.
  - Frondo 9y ago
    Having read the Scott McCloud book that focused on micropayments almost 20 years ago, and having seen so very many people try something and have it go nowhere, I've come to the conclusion that micropayments are simply never going to be a thing. My guess is, at the end of the day, people don't want to think about money transactions when doing ordinary things. You know that word "gamify"? Adding badges and shit to things to make tedious things "fun"? Micropayments do the opposite. Transactifying your ordinary processes makes them less fun because you're constantly thinking about spending money. It just adds friction, even just cognitive friction, when everything we do is about reducing it. I think this is also why Patreon is taking off. People don't think about paying a penny to read a single comic, they just toss a few bucks at a comic artist each month.
    - placeybordeaux 9y ago
      What do you think about non-human actors interacting through micropayments? Either your computer acting in your interests with a small sum of money, or autonomous agents that live through a couple hours of compute at the cheapest price & keep their own wallet.
- javiramos 9y ago
  AWS: 4. Outsourced IT. In most companies the IT department is an expensive bottleneck. Getting them to make you a simple web form could take months. Enter Wufoo. Now if the marketing department wants to put a form on the web, they can do it themselves in 5 minutes. You can take practically anything users still depend on IT departments for and base a startup on it, and you will have the enormous force of their present dissatisfaction pushing you forward.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I guess Alan Kay is wrong: The best way to predict the future is to suggest others build for you.

by pkamb 9y ago

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Remarkably prescient for 2008. 1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom. Something is broken when Sony and Universal are suing children. Actually, at least two things are broken: the software that file sharers use, and the record labels' business model. The current situation can't be the final answer. 8. Dating. Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem. Tinder launched in 2012. 17. New payment methods. There are almost certainly things whose growth is held back because there's no way to charge for them. Bitcoin.

placeybordeaux 9y ago
w.r.t bitcoin being the new payment method, so far bitcoin hasn't enabled the really game changing thing: frictionless micropayments. It's possible that lighting networks will enable this (load up your browser with 5 bucks and lock that up in a connection to the LN, pay for articles then pay 1 cent to skip ads, buy premium features one at a time etc), but we haven't seen this yet.
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  >we haven't seen [frictionless micropayments from the lighting network] yet. You post should be corected: Frictionless micropayments are already running on the lighting network, are already operational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baHHMNA8yf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baHHMNA8yf4
  - placeybordeaux 9y ago
    Thats lighting network on litecoin's chain. Bitcoin is still far from activating seg wit. Any metrics on how large the lighting network is on litecoin yet? I have a couple laying around and would be happy to lock them up with a big node.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Having read the Scott McCloud book that focused on micropayments almost 20 years ago, and having seen so very many people try something and have it go nowhere, I've come to the conclusion that micropayments are simply never going to be a thing. My guess is, at the end of the day, people don't want to think about money transactions when doing ordinary things. You know that word "gamify"? Adding badges and shit to things to make tedious things "fun"? Micropayments do the opposite. Transactifying your ordinary processes makes them less fun because you're constantly thinking about spending money. It just adds friction, even just cognitive friction, when everything we do is about reducing it. I think this is also why Patreon is taking off. People don't think about paying a penny to read a single comic, they just toss a few bucks at a comic artist each month.
  - placeybordeaux 9y ago
    What do you think about non-human actors interacting through micropayments? Either your computer acting in your interests with a small sum of money, or autonomous agents that live through a couple hours of compute at the cheapest price & keep their own wallet.
javiramos 9y ago
AWS: 4. Outsourced IT. In most companies the IT department is an expensive bottleneck. Getting them to make you a simple web form could take months. Enter Wufoo. Now if the marketing department wants to put a form on the web, they can do it themselves in 5 minutes. You can take practically anything users still depend on IT departments for and base a startup on it, and you will have the enormous force of their present dissatisfaction pushing you forward.
icebraining 9y ago
I guess Alan Kay is wrong: The best way to predict the future is to suggest others build for you.