56 ms·

Show HN: Get Paid to Build Your Next Side Project

1100 points by hackerews 9y ago

s73ver 9y ago
Cool idea, but it seems like some of these are beyond the realm of a "side project". Like the News Aggregator one (https://www.demandrush.com/problems/news-aggregator-paywall https://www.demandrush.com/problems/news-aggregator-paywall). That one you couldn't really do without getting a lot of license deals with content providers. That already puts it out of the league of what most are able to do as hobby projects.
BoorishBears 9y ago
This looks like such a cool idea, but already you see that the problems presented seem to be seriously underestimating how complicated what they're trying to do is. For example, detecting specific text in an image? 10 minutes in OpenCV. Detecting any text at all in any format in an image? I don't even know where to start. Maybe 10 minutes in OpenCV if they constrain the kind of text, otherwise ML? It feels like an unboundedly complicated problem.
- lighthazard 9y ago
  I think it'd be nice to gauge the interest of such a project. There is one person pledging right now, but if more do and the demand clearly seems to exist - maybe it's worth investing in.
  - convolvatron 9y ago
    there is a pretty substantial gap between '$75 for at least one month' and 'something that will make enough before someone else does it too to make it worth the time'
- mattlondon 9y ago
  In terms of ML you could probably load a pre-trained image classification convolutional model and fine-tune it a bit and get quite a reliable if not superbly exact "here is some text" classifier without too much effort. Perhaps not 10 minutes, but maybe a weekend to allow for training.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    E.g [1] trained for 20 * 10^5 iterations at 2.1 seconds per image, coming out to 48 days (!) in total. Maybe the 2.1 seconds also include the post-processing to get bounding boxes, though. Anyway, you need lots of training time. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04018 https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04018 "Multi-Oriented Text Detection with Fully Convolutional Networks"
    - mattlondon 9y ago
      Looks like they only used a single GPU for training though - you could trivially get that time down a lot if you used one of the cloud ML platforms (and were prepared to pay)
- zimmund 9y ago
  It's also not clear how it will be used later. It could be used to crop/remove watermarks or copyright messages, and I wouldn't develop it if that's its purpose.
  - scrapcode 9y ago
    Captcha solving is expensive for spammers.
    - tehlike 9y ago
      are you sure? What's your source?
    - custos 9y ago
      I can assure you it is not. It's about $0.001 per solved captcha with 97% accuracy rate and refunds on failed ones, from the service provider I know of. I've even written one, it's not complicated and not expensive.
      - Implicated 9y ago
        Can confirm, it was very cheap 5+ years ago when I was in the business of needing them solved en masse. I doubt it's gotten more expensive.
      - tehlike 9y ago
        It is still the same rate. 2.2 ish for new recaptcha, too.
        custos 9y ago
        Yeah I was able to beat that "Robot check" checkbox by Google using some fuzzy bezier curves and random mouse movements/scrolling to simulate a real user's behavior. Unfortunately Google has some other metrics to detect bots (such as no cookies showing they've seen you before, etc), so it wasn't 100% reliable.
- moduspwnens14 9y ago
  Amazon Rekognition can almost do it. It doesn't seem to detect text, specifically, but it'd be able to detect whether or not a bird is in the image, or similar. That's not what the project is asking for, but it's very close to being a very doable hobby project.
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    The problem is what birds look like is very well defined compared to text. As in, there are many types of birds, but each type has a "consistent image" but there are infinite variations of text
    - moduspwnens14 9y ago
      Fair enough. You could certainly still do it with Mechanical Turk then, although the delay in response might not meet the requester's unstated requirements.
- technoology 9y ago
  There is already an API available to do this today. The Microsoft Cognitive Services computer vision API detects words, phrases, and lines and included bounding box information indicating where the text was found. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/computer-vision https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service....
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    OCR excels at picking out digitally generated text, but it's not so great at "real world" text unless you help it by zooming in. For example, it can't tell there's text in this clear image of a VIN: http://1eask1khnn22hm3njx2dmz1a.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/VIN-number-windshield.jpg http://1eask1khnn22hm3njx2dmz1a.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c... But I bet if you took a closer picture (like you would if you were using an AR app) it'd work
- iDemonix 9y ago
  Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425 https://xkcd.com/1425
- radarsat1 9y ago
  I can't speak for the site, but I think the idea is that you sort of get this continuous funding to keep working on and improving your solution. (Makes it kind of different from bug-bounty type approaches, which I like.)
- super-serial 9y ago
  Google's Vision API extracts text in any language or format from images: https://cloud.google.com/vision/ https://cloud.google.com/vision/ There are a bunch of SaaS opportunities like this that could be made just creating wrappers for various cloud apis and selling to people who don't know they exist.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - splatcollision 9y ago
    Yep, this. Basically leveraging the knowledge difference between developers on the edge of what's available with Cloud ML API services, versus people with business problems that are not aware of same. Throw in some customization and nice marketing / design for niche use cases, and you've maybe got a business.
fomojola 9y ago
Love it! I'd specifically highlighted this concept in the thread for Oppslist (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14469317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14469317): maybe there's an opportunity here to handle both sides of the market, both soliciting ideas and driving work to the ideas? Still not sure how you handle avoiding imposters: for things like the accounting solution that's on the top of the site I think there is huge potential for abuse in either direction (either devs phishing for data or companies refusing to pay for solutions). Good luck!
19eightyfour 9y ago
This is such a great idea. And you nailed the marketing and message. It's like a democratized efficient tender process driven by the market. Brilliant and beautiful! I really feel you shall be able to capture a lot of value and create alot of value from this. Well done!
avaer 9y ago
> GET PAID TO BUILD YOUR NEXT PROJECT > Choose a problem below to get started. Get paid to build _my_ next project or _your_ next project? This is clearly a two-sided platform, but the messaging seems conflated: the headline speaks to builders and the instructions speak to end customers.
- maroonblazer 9y ago
  It's a market, so it clears when my next project and your next project are the same project.
  - epicide 9y ago
    This is a shallow equals, though. I can guarantee that we will differ in implementation specifics. This sounds like a good idea on paper, but the reality is that most of the value of a project is in the implementation details. There are countless meetings for each individual feature. I'm pretty sure the above description is how a lot of the end users (clients) are seeing this. Their contribution amounts are also insanely low (orders of magnitude lower than I would dare to value some of their projects). I don't know how contracts or SLAs (if any) apply here, but this just seems like a good way to get yourself on the hook for getting paid (I'm guessing) a tenth of minimum wage. Source: I do this sort of contract work for a living.
- Sakes 9y ago
  It appears to me that this is a tool to identify a market / need that is not being met. There are people who simply want a product/service, no desire for ownership. They post what they'd be will to pay for it, as a customer, and you decide if it is worth your time to build it. Anyone? Am I understanding this correctly?
  - hackerews 9y ago
    That's right!
    - 9y ago
inputcoffee 9y ago
Can only one person "apply" to solve it? I'm thinking of the kickstarter problem: vaporware. If, over 6 months, 5 people apply to solve a problem, who gets the subscribers? The first one, I hope not. Each subscriber chooses? P.s. Very interesting idea. Something in this direction will be useful.
- r3bl 9y ago
  From the FAQ: > Q: I submitted a problem - what happens next? > A: Over the next 14 days, developers will be able to apply to solve your problem. You'll get a list of applications and a recommendation of who to choose. So, I guess the answer is "subscriber chooses, and if there are multiple subscribers, they (or the one that paid the most) make(s) an agreement."
OzzyB 9y ago
I love the idea and initiative! My only concern is that this is a little "race to bottom"; most if not all the entries are along the lines of "I already have X but I'm paying too much!" I guess this is great for solo entrepeneur/developers, hell, if I know for certain I had 100 people waiting to pay me $50/m for X, I would definately consider building it :)
- goatherders 9y ago
  So would everyone else on the site. Thus the problem.
  - OzzyB 9y ago
    Right, once you build X for group of folks, then the next submission will be "I need a cheaper version of X" -- where X is _your_ app! :D
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
This looks like an idea/market validator posing as a job listing market. Brilliant.
goatherders 9y ago
Isn't this exactly how Freelancer/odesk/whatever work now?
- hackerews 9y ago
  Good question. The big difference is you own the products you build here, and charge a monthly fee for access (for up to X customers). It's a bit like kickstarting a SaaS business. Versus with contracting/freelancing, you get paid 1x and the product is owned by the customer you work for.
  - epicide 9y ago
    But who makes all of the minute feature decisions? E.g. one of the projects wants a bookkeeping service. That's a pretty vague description. Especially if they want to tie it into their other systems. If I get final say in what goes in, then it seems very likely they wouldn't be on board with this (especially not after going through a project). If they get final say, then this is just contract work. The other issue is liability. In the bookkeeping example again, who is liable in case of a data breach? If there is payroll info or client info in said service, who is responsible for compliance? They couldn't pay me $500,000 a month to get me to take on that kind of responsibility, much less $500. I know I'm harping on one example, but a lot of projects would have similar issues come up. I guess my point is that sometimes I don't actually want ownership of a project like that. > you get paid 1x That really depends on a lot of factors. From what I've seen on the site, it's more like the other way around is true.
  - epicide 9y ago
    Another question for you: who determines when a project is done or that it has met the requirements for MVP? For example, say I pick up one of the projects and the subscriber picks me to work on it. Okay, great. I go and work on it and consider it done. As it turns out, there was a lot of miscommunication and they wanted something different. Do I still get paid? It seems like either way, there is a huge avenue for somebody to get screwed.
- yellowapple 9y ago
gremlinsinc 9y ago
This reminds me of what assembly was doing where people would list startup / app ideas then teams would form and build the idea and I think a few businesses came out of that.
- philippnagel 9y ago
  Shame that they had to shut down.
Arqu 9y ago
Love the idea, especially for quick and interesting side projects.
rdudek 9y ago
"Subscribe to news without paying $30/month per website" I don't think there is a legal way of actually doing this.
- maaaats 9y ago
  Well, a "Spotify for news" could be made. I know of several attempts.
  - ahussain 9y ago
    https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/ seems to be the most promising one from what I've seen
    - Grangar 9y ago
      Had to think of this right away.
    - ezekg 9y ago
      This looks very, very cool. Thanks for posting.
- epicide 9y ago
  Yeah, I've personally been wanting something like that as well, but I wouldn't want to implement it. It would be something like 10% actually writing the system and 90% dealing with news outlets to actually get them on board.
- k_sh 9y ago
  I've been sitting on a paywall-killer browser extension I wrote for a while... concerned about a potential CFAA violation from a big org, especially if I were to charge for it.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    I mean, you are essentially charging others for access to something that's not yours to provide access for (paywalled news).
hashkb 9y ago
These customers/RFPs are way below market rate for software development. Given the reality of working with clients, these proposals are likely to result in developers taking a bath.
- pc86 9y ago
  This isn't developing a product and giving it to a client. This is for developers to see clients saying "I would pay $X/mo for Y," developers to build it and then be able to charge those clients for it. Anyone who's pre-launched a SaaS knows you're lucky to get 50% of people who said they would buy to actually buy. People lie all the time. But this is a good gauge. Think an app that does Y is worth $50/mo but there's a dozen people saying they'll pay $100/mo for it? Great! A dozen people saying they'll pay $10/mo for it? Not so great.
lettergram 9y ago
Damn, this was literally a project I started working on. Although, I had a slightly different way of going about it and different way to charge, I love the idea! Gratz to OP. I'll definitely be submitting, and maybe I'll still come out with mine at some point.
- corobo 9y ago
  Can you switch it up to a specific niche? For example "Get paid to build your next video game"
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
baron816 9y ago
I think this has the potential to introduce an interesting auction model. People might want to join in, but not at the initial price point. What if everyone proposed wanting in on project stated their maximum price point, and the winning application to solve would get the price they bid at for everyone above that level. In other words customers_offering_prices = [1,1,4,15,30,30,40,80,100,150,175,10000] winning_applicant_price = 40 winning_applicant_revenue = [40,40,40,40,40,40].sum The last 6 customers receive the product and they all pay 40. Essentially a modified Vickrey auction. Everyone has an incentive to bid exactly what the product is worth to them. Edit: >Everyone has an incentive to bid exactly what the product is worth to them. Actually not true if applicants see the bids. In my example, the the best applicant would want to bid 10000 because that would maximize revenue, but exclude everyone before that. Customers would adjust their bidding as a result. But applicants should know much they can expect to receive if they win so they can bid correctly.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  sounds like an approximation of a demand curve, which if opened up the developer would give them the option to choose how to segment their market quite nicely.
- bluGill 9y ago
  Is that fair though? If something is only worth 5 to me and 40 to you, and the cost of development is 45 - neither of us along can afford the feature, but if we put aside out different contributions the total is enough to make both of us happy, or neither of are. Your model both of use get nothing when we both could be happy on a different model.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    Yes, it's fair. If you're not willing to pay what's being charged, you don't get the thing.
  - CamelCaseName 9y ago
    It is equitable, but it is not efficient. At least this is better than a Vickrey auction though, where you would only get paid $5.01 and spend $45 (net loss) rather than see the bids and do nothing. (Or see the bids and lose, but get paid $40 rather than $5.01)
cylinder 9y ago
For the top two requests, Bench exists for book keeping and Blendle for news
haidrali 9y ago
Love the concept, just submitted my side project now waiting for response Thumbs Up
pc86 9y ago
> Industry-specific deep learning interviews and walkthroughs > 1 customer paying $5/mo Sounds about right.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Yeah I had to laugh about that one as well. Especially the part about ImageNet being too general. If they knew anything about deep neural networks, they would understand why these base models are important and necessary for a candidate to understand, because they can be used to form a foundation for the solution. In many cases, you can use the model as-is (and likely pre-trained) for a use case outside of "match label to an image", with only some additional training with your specific dataset - which may only be tangentially related (or not even that!). These models (and the surrounding tools) have become for many problems more like Lego in my opinion - which is a good thing! It means they are more approachable for everyone, rather than being something mysterious and complex. Ok - if you dig, things become complicated quickly, but for many problems, you don't have to worry about these internals. Are there problems which don't fit neatly into using a modified ImageNet or LeNet or one of the other "standards"? Certainly. But I think a candidate who understands the standards and basics well is likely a better one than one who only understands a specific subset for a particular industry (if there even is such a thing, which I am sceptical of). Furthermore - it would be even better when a candidate can say "you know what - your problem doesn't need a neural network of any kind, let me introduce you to <insert standard statistical machine learning method>" - because there are tons of problems out there which can still benefit, and be a robust, easy to understand, and fast (to implement, to maintain, to execute - whatever). I love neural networks, certainly - but there's been so much hype in the news, everyone thinks they need one, which will probably lead to many investing money into worthless (or expensive) solutions, where simpler (but less "sexy") ones would have sufficed. The candidate who could know and tell the difference would be even more ideal - being able to interview/walkthru that might be a way to get a better candidate.
- BlackjackCF 9y ago
  Every single one of the projects that are on this site right now are super underpaid... It's sad that even the highest bidding project is $500/mo.
cphoover 9y ago
Just not enough money...
amelius 9y ago
> Identify location of text in an image ...for... $75 This is what my doctor charges for a flu vaccination. I guess I've chosen the wrong profession.
- orcdork 9y ago
  You don't pay your doctor $75 for sticking a needle in your arm, you pay him for his knowledge not to stick the needle in the wrong place. Looks like we've got full circle considering this same logic was applied to devs for ages.
  - amelius 9y ago
    Except that for doctors the circle somehow doesn't close upon itself. Youtube is full of videos showing how to inject oneself. Writing a text-detection script can be done perhaps with some help from Google/Stackoverflow, but requires still some intellectual effort depending on requirements.
    - s73ver 9y ago
      And when you screw up and stick it in the wrong place?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - smacktoward 9y ago
        Just have them put "LolToad69 Said It Would Work" on your tombstone.
    - h2hn 9y ago
      No way man. If you solved that problem you would be rich.
  - 15155 9y ago
    This analogy is driving me crazy, heh, but I can't resist: Flu shots are generally intramuscular, you literally just jab it into your bicep. A layperson can do it with high probabilities of success just by reading the instructions on the box. Indeed, pharmacists administer these all over the US.
sqeaky 9y ago
Blocked by my work's filter under the category "malware".
- Jemmeh 9y ago
  Same, tells me it's the security certificate. Your connection is not private. NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
tarr11 9y ago
I actually need the first item listed there (InDinero replacement), but I signed up and am sort of confused? I would very likely pay for this feature, but I'm not willing to commit to much unless it works. I would pay a nominal amount to "kickstart" it I guess, and have the option to sign up later. But it's a fairly nasty problem - porting your books a proprietary platform to QuickBooks seems full of traps.
- tenzo 9y ago
  I just signed up to 'solve this problem' as it's something I'm currently working on. Is there a particular reason why you're looking for an InDinero replacement?
  - tarr11 9y ago
    In short, service quality has gone down. I feel like for the amount I'm paying, I could get a lot more value somewhere else. The problem is that it's very expensive and risky to switch accounting packages. When we started with them, we paid about $400, and they did payroll, accounting, and taxes, plus Stripe integration for a DE C corp. We had a monthly meeting with a bookkeeper. We'd get responses to all requests within a day or two. Now, we pay 3x that (our revenue has grown) they've eliminated payroll, they've outsourced our bookkeeping to somewhere else, and often don't respond for many days. They delay filing taxes until Sept always. I don't really feel like they understand our business particularly well. They've quoted me nearly double to switch to accrual accounting, and I suspect it's even more expensive than that. I can't really use it for management purposes or cashflow forecasting, which are my two biggest pain points. I'd rather be on Xero or QB which are industry standard. I could then work with experts who could help solve specific problems (accrual accounting, revenue recognition, etc) on an industry standard platform. I'm not interested in moving to another bookkeeping software however, unless it's QB or Xero.
- wdaher 9y ago
  Just signed up to "solve this problem", since we've been building ~the exact thing that post describes: an accounting service built on top of QuickBooks Online, with really robust integrations for services startups use (e.g. Gusto, Stripe, Expensify, etc.) Like inDinero or some of the other options out there, we're a service that takes care of your books for you, so you don't need to think about them. But with a few key differences: * We're built on QuickBooks Online, so you're not locked into a system that no one else knows how to use. (It's still a proprietary system, but it's the industry standard.) * We take a hybrid humans + software approach. Most of the work of keeping the books updated is tedious data entry, and when humans do the work (no matter how talented they are), it's super-error-prone and frustrating. Our attitude is: computers should do the tedious repetitive work, and our talented team of pros should focus on (a) doing the tricky stuff, (b) understanding the specifics of your business, and (c) answering any questions you have. * We're startup people, so we've had these problems ourselves. This is our third startup — our previous companies were Ksplice (acq. by Oracle) and Zulip (acq. by Dropbox), so we're definitely not strangers to building software. (Incidentally, we've done a bunch of migrations from inDinero before.) Basically, our thesis is: humans + software each doing what they do best. (Or, if you like, we're building an Iron Man suit for our people to do your books with higher quality.) We're in private beta today and have been doing the books for a bunch of tech companies (all the way from newly incorporated to well on their way to their Series B). We're actively taking on a steady stream of new customers, so if you're interested, send me a note: waseem@zapgram.com
adamb 9y ago
Cool seed for a community! Seems to lack a place for discussion about submitted ideas, so I'll follow others' lead and discuss here. The "industry specific deep learning" project is similar to something I'm working on right now. Though I'm not planning to charge for it. To any folks here interested in this: Are you looking for a tool to get started in ML or for a resource to apply existing ML knowledge to a specific (possibly new) domain?
sanbor 9y ago
Photoshop license costs $348 a year. If 1000 people get together and put $400 each, you'll get $400000. That money could be used to leverage a Gimp to be more Photoshop-users friendly. Then you don't have to keep with the subscription model. You have a great piece of open source software available for everyone to use as long as they want. You can do another round to get more features added. This solves the issue that you get with subscription based services, which is that if you stop paying every month/year you loose access to the tool to do your work. Instead of building yet another SaaS wouldn't be smarter for users to gather and pay for a software libre solution?
- bb88 9y ago
  I think the photoshop vs gimp is a bad comparison, mostly because throwing money at gimp to make it better is a bad idea. It would be better to start from scratch. Now if you wanted to throw $400 for a photoshop like system to start from the ground up and work across all three platforms, I think you've got a great idea. You'd avoid the cruft, you could do subscription/pay-per-use cloud based filters, you could start with 32bits per channel from the start, instead of the slow transition to GEGL...
  - formula1 9y ago
    Why would spending money on a brand new system with no proof of success be better than a matured application with plugin support?
    - callumlocke 9y ago
      Because GIMP has a lot of baggage: a very particular UI, a community of active users (many of whom probably like it exactly how it is thanks), and a terrible name.
      - robotresearcher 9y ago
        So fork it. New name, new UI. Seashore was a try at this a decade ago. http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/Screenshots.html http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/Screens...
soared 9y ago
I can't access the site. https error: NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
vlokshin 9y ago
Interesting concept, if the balance can get figured out right (making sure customers or devs aren't getting screwed). There should also be a discussion section. For example, I see: >Can't find good replacement for expensive accounting/bookkeeper service I'd love to recommend Bench.co (use it and love it) and avoid someone wasting their time. It's much more affordable than 500/mo. I do love the concept though. @OP: I'll share this with the https://turtle.ai/ https://turtle.ai/ developer community and see if there is any interest.
wellsjohnston 9y ago
How is this different from Upwork?
- civilian 9y ago
  It's not exclusive; it's just a way for people to express what services they wish existed.
- davidpelayo 9y ago
  Submitted projects, if developed, could be, potentially, for many customers. Also, the developers is who owns the software.
aub3bhat 9y ago
>> Identify location of text in image. We have hundreds of images uploaded to our app each day. The issue is some of these images have text that we want cropped out. There you go [1] originally from [2] [1] https://github.com/AKSHAYUBHAT/CTPN/blob/master/demo.ipynb https://github.com/AKSHAYUBHAT/CTPN/blob/master/demo.ipynb [2] https://github.com/tianzhi0549/CTPN https://github.com/tianzhi0549/CTPN
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pascalxus 9y ago
This is a great start! There is a huge demand for more opportunities like this. Entrepreneurs and businesses are so tired of building yet another useless app, out of sheer lack of problems to solve. But, with a site like this, you can find problems that are actually problems. The site just needs more customers and more problems.
TomK32 9y ago
You missed a great chance by not putting a newsletter onto it.
- hackerews 9y ago
  https://www.demandrush.com/alerts https://www.demandrush.com/alerts
  - TomK32 9y ago
    clearly not prominently enough placed.
mabynogy 9y ago
Same idea than Opps List with a different perspective: https://www.oppslist.com/ https://www.oppslist.com/ The idea is good but it's difficult to use because you can't reach the people.
skdotdan 9y ago
Awesome. Great idea, nice execution.
bluetwo 9y ago
I would be curious what the business plan for this site looked like.
pvsukale3 9y ago
shouldn't it be " Get paid to build someone else's project"?
cdiamand 9y ago
Very cool! Will be watching this to see how it evolves.
gricardo99 9y ago
>Monthly subscription for science fiction and fantasy books Isn't that the public library?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Or, http://www.booklender.com http://www.booklender.com for those who want delivery, a wider selection than many public libraries, etc.
- civilian 9y ago
  I think that the curation aspect of it is also a big thing. Think of this as a "loot crate" for but for books. I think the service should also have _two_ services. One is for great sci-fi fantasy books of all time-- obviously that's going to be cheaper. The more expensive service would be for books that have come out in the last 2 years. For myself, I often look at the winner & nominees for the Hugo and the Nebula for the last two years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winners_and_nominees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winn... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winners_and_nominees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel#Wi... Keep in mind that media mail is like, $2.60? If I was making this service, I would want to ship 3 books quarterly, rather than 1 book monthly. There ought to be economies of scale by buying hundreds of books from a publisher. What do book retailers pay for books anyway? One benefit is that you also won't be returning books, like brick-and-mortar bookstores do. An additional awesome feature would be if it connected to your GoodReads account and never sent you duplicates.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    > I think that the curation aspect of it is also a big thing. The librarians at my public library are great at making suggestions. They also have themed book displays that they rotate every week (eg. physical fitness one week, high fantasy another etc.)
    - gricardo99 9y ago
      I agree curation is value-add. A good librarian is probably as good as it gets. Also, the internets are filled with curated lists. Book lists have come up here on HN a number of times [1][2][3], even Sci-fi specific[4]. But I get it, push button services are very appealing, and can save a lot of time. Just click subscribe and get a constant supply of books you'll love at a reasonable price. It's a business model that can work surprising well[5]. 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229312 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556160 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9056319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9056319 5 - https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/ https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/
jmull 9y ago
I guess I get it (maybe ?): There are already many, many marketplaces for tech development of all shapes and forms. For this one I guess it's: Hey, people who want some tech developed: If you can formulate your problem as an interesting side project you will (1) be likely to find someone actually willing & able to do it cheaply; (2) you are likely to be able to aggregate your buying power with another buyer; (3) you pay a subscription so it isn't a large up-front cost. and; Hey, tech developers who like to do interesting side-projects: Here's a bunch of interesting side projects that you might have done them anyway, except here you will (might) get paid to do them! One way to look at it is in comparison to kickstarter. In kickstarter, a producer runs the campaign by championing an idea and setting a funding model and the consumer can choose to buy in by providing dollars. Here, the consumer champions the idea and sets the price, the funding model is a subscription, and producers can choose to buy in by providing work... and also more consumers can buy in by subscribing with dollars. I guess for this market to work, it has be be more efficient at satisfying the demand for X-aaS development than existing markets, though I don't know how it might be.
grogenaut 9y ago
A few of these can be solved other ways or need more deets. The Google doc one for instance really just should go to am esigner. Or if this is a more light weight internal thing then Google docs needs mutable git like tags. To me this is almost begging for a s/o style comment section.
demarq 9y ago
I think you might need to vet some of those customers for ethics. Some of the things being asked for are inherently illegal. On the other hand, it seems there is a ton of money to be made on the site!
conmarap 9y ago
This is pretty cool! I found myself reading through all of the entries I can see and even cook up some solutions on the spot. However, how do you make a profit off of it? Do you take a cut of the end cost?
hmhrex 9y ago
Surprisingly there's one in here that I'm already starting to work on. That at least confirms to me that I'm not THE sole person who wants this service. Applied. I'm interested to see how this process works.
iandanforth 9y ago
I would strongly suggest that there be an option to list existing solutions. A sustainable model means identifying real needs, not duplicating products that people are merely ignorant of.
- hackerews 9y ago
  Great idea.
- pascalxus 9y ago
  excellent suggestion. OP, please include this feature.
pkamb 9y ago
Does anything like this exist for putting bounties on small scripts / extensions? I just posted these questions yesterday, in the hope of finding solutions to a couple common annoyances I have with Google search: https://superuser.com/questions/1218986/keyboard-shortcut-to-toggle-between-google-search-type-tabs-images-maps-etc https://superuser.com/questions/1218986/keyboard-shortcut-to... https://superuser.com/questions/1218989/how-to-maintain-order-of-the-google-search-type-links-images-maps-etc-rath https://superuser.com/questions/1218989/how-to-maintain-orde... I don't want the overhead of "hiring a freelancer" to do the work. But I'd definitely pay a bounty if someone came in with the answer / script / extension / app that solved the problem.
- slimsag 9y ago
  I'm curious: In your mind, what is the difference between 'hiring a freelancer' and 'paying a bounty to someone who comes with the answer'? I'd suggest to you odesk.com, but that is a site for hiring freelancers. Although I've seen it used many times for 'here's what I want, deliver it and the money is yours' rather than a .. 'work for me at X/hr and I'll direct you' kind of thing.
  - pkamb 9y ago
    - I don't want to own the resulting code. Open Source delivery, or a link to someone else's extension that accomplishes the goal. - Payment on the order of $10 for some simple script, not $300+. They can make up the difference via multiple bounties, selling to multiple people, etc. - Public question that can be found by others with the same problem (who can upvote or add to the bounty), as well as people who are able to deliver the solution. Stack Exchange, but with payment. - I don't want anything to do with reading resumes, selecting the worker, scheduling, payments, etc. This is what I think of when I hear "freelance".
    - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
      I understand what you're getting at, but the price is an issue. I do something similar: I write very small programs for embedded systems: simple timers, sequencers, alarms, etc. for around $100. In some cases, we're talking 15 minutes of work, tops. If I could charge just $30 and instead sell it to multiple people, I would, but the odds of that happening are so slim, I have to have a $100 minimum. The problem is that even for well-defined problems, what people need tends to be so different that the best you can do is have a common framework for similar problems. The code itself is rarely even close to identical
subhsandhu1 9y ago
<a href="http://www.desilyrics.in/2017/06/main-agar-lyrics-tubelight-atif-aslam.html">Main http://www.desilyrics.in/2017/06/main-agar-lyrics-tubelight-... Agar Lyrics Tubelight</a>: A new recently released Hindi Songs sung by Atif Aslam and composed by Pritam, while Main Agar lyrics penned by Kausar Munir. Featuring Salman Khan and Sohail Khan.
id122015 9y ago
So this is similar to crowdfunding except that we can ask what we want to be built ? What I'm willing to pay for but cant easily develop myself is to add features from OSX to linux. Not too many, I'd start with: - a graphical browser like Finder where I could color tag files. - UI/UX: do something about easier configuration of the trackpad. Even when I installed linux on Macbook the trackpad does not work the same or does not have all the tapping actions instead of clicking. I cant even drag files/links to file-browser-sidebar/dock or such things.
- hackerews 9y ago
  Add to https://www.demandrush.com https://www.demandrush.com!
dsacco 9y ago
I wish these weren't all subscription-based, because this could work for the exact thing I want: I will pay $100 - $500 for an Arq Backup[1] clone on Linux, with the same UI polish as Arq for macOS or Windows, optional encryption, deduplication and supporting all the same backup locations, including: * AWS S3/Glacier * GCP Nearline/Coldline * Backblaze B2 * Dropbox * SFTP * NAS * Google Drive If you're absolutely going to force monthly subscription pricing down my throat, I guess I'll pay up to $20/month. I want this badly. I know about rclone, Duplicity, Duplicati, that awesome rsync/cron workflow you have, etc. I want Arq (or something just like it). Arq works flawlessly - it is absolutely superlative when it comes to backups on Windows and macOS. I use an Ubuntu workstation as my daily driver at home and I have a MacBook Pro. Through very careful configuration I have gradually made Ubuntu about as enjoyable to use as macOS (with the exception of 1Password, which has to run under Wine). But I don't want to use the command line, or handle an API myself, or keep track of cron. Duplicati was the closest thing to what I'm looking for, but it's cludgey and started not working for me recently. I know polished UI isn't exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Linux. But if you're the kind of person who makes "Ask HN: What is your pain point?" posts or who is looking for a problem to solve, this is a burning problem I am willing to throw money at. EDIT: I'm adding a bunch of HN comments to demonstrate the interest I've seen for this.[2][3][4][5][6][7] ____________ 1. https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/ 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14403321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14403321 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11742226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11742226 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185632 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718015 6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360604 7. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011339
- hackerews 9y ago
  Post it to https://www.demandrush.com https://www.demandrush.com! We're getting great feedback from folks needing products/services that don't yet fit into the initial structure we set up. Happy to help.
- bertjk 9y ago
jeremiahwv 9y ago
Service that allows me to get paid for my next side project [451+ customers, each paying $XX per month]
kuldeep_kap 9y ago
It's interesting how there are more comments and votes here in HN post than the projects posted and voted on the app.
- hackerews 9y ago
  Good point. Right now we're making sure only vetted projects go up - eg we chat with each person to confirm it's real problem and they'd pay.
  - kuldeep_kap 9y ago
    Interesting. I think it would be good to have just 'upvotes' so you can tell general interest with the idea. Its always good to know for creators whether there is interest from other users.
0verc00ked 9y ago
This is a great idea. I'm curious to see how it evolves.
- hackerews 9y ago
  Same here!
TekMol 9y ago
"Copyright 2017 DemandRush" - I'm always surprised when I see these types of statements on US based websites. In Europe, this would make no sense. A website is not a legal entity, so it can not be a copyright holder. Does the statement make more sense in the US, or is it just a common misconception among people who build websites? The terms page says "Welcome to DemandRush, a website and online service of Grafly, Inc". So I would expect the real copyright holder is Grafly Inc?
- biztos 9y ago
  IANAL etc. but I do think it's a common misunderstanding / wishful thinking in the US (where I'm from). In the US you can just "be a company" if you want (with no liability protection), that's between you and the tax man... but if you want to give the operation a name other than your own, you have to register that name (they call it "DBA" for "Doing Business As")[0]. But at least as far back as the early 90's it's been common to put "(c) MyCoolDomainName.com" on a web site, and I'm pretty sure most people mean "copyright ME until/unless I get around to making a business out of this, and if I do then copyright whatever business ends up owning the domain name." And I would assume, though again IANAL, that's not quite what it really means. Unlike, say, Germany, the US has no requirement for anything like an "Impressum" for a web site. Nor could it, really, due to the constitution. (But I Am also Not A Supreme Court Justice so my interpretation of the constitution may be less sticky than others'.) [0]: https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/choose-register-your-business/register-your-business-name https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/choose-register-your-b...
  - polshaw 9y ago
    Copyright is an automatic right however, so AFAICT it makes no difference legally if you claim it or not or under what moniker. At best it serves as a reminder to the reader.
avip 9y ago
First I absolutely love the idea, and even more the execution, of this site. Several questions about where could this go post 1-day HN buzz: 1. How are existing solutions being presented to the ignorant "wannabuy"? 2. How is this list sorted? 3. How are duplicates managed? 4. Where is the "discussion" required to even minimally spec the ideas and bring them to a buildable form?
jclardy 9y ago
I like the idea, but I find the site a bit confusing. What is a "pre-subscription"? Are people paying their suggested monthly fee up front? It says that the site makes money from the first three months, so when you sign up are you already subscribing to a nonexistent service? And as for "solving", what if they fail? Is it no commitment? Is any of the funding up front, or is it just built on the promise of possible future subscriptions? I think the idea could work, but directing the balance between both sides is going to be the problem, a lot of the "buyers" are wanting to pay an amount that will work at scale (like $5/mo) but not really if someone is trying to bootstrap a solution.
darepublic 9y ago
You're dangling 100 dollars for problems that is solved could be million dollar solutions. Come on.
civilian 9y ago
For "Automated time tracking from Google Apps/Slack": Toggl is a great service, works in the web or as a desktop app, and has slack integration: https://toggl.com/slack-time-tracking https://toggl.com/slack-time-tracking
nonconvergent 9y ago
A few of these can be solved with a comment. "Need to see revision history for View-Only Google Docs" - Don't use a shared Google Doc as the agent of record. Email it to each other as an agreed contract. "Can't find good replacement for expensive accounting/bookkeeper service" Have you tried literally anything else? You're paying $500/month for this solution, have considered just getting an accountant and emailing him spreadsheets? "Monthly subscription for science fiction and fantasy books" "Subscribe to news without paying $30/month per website" - Existing solutions already exist and require a supply chain and distribution rights negotiation more than they do a developer to slap it into a webapp.
- ahmetkun 9y ago
  actually they still could use google docs, as it keeps revision history for every document automatically.
- dzenos 9y ago
  "Email it to each other as an agreed contract." - But this makes it super hard to find the particular version and to be on the same page. This really leads to multiple versions of the same document and thus it is easy to lose work and information; common to work on an outdated version; difficult to know who did what and when; hard to track comments and versions. Just signed up with our solution on demandrush: Tuiqo, simple document versioning - https://tuiqo.com https://tuiqo.com. We just graduated from YC Startup School Founders track.
nonconvergent 9y ago
A few of these can be solved with a comment. "Need to see revision history for View-Only Google Docs" - Don't use a shared Google Doc as the agent of record. Email it to each other as an agreed contract. "Can't find good replacement for expensive accounting/bookkeeper service" Have you tried literally anything else? You're paying $500/month for this solution, have considered just getting an accountant and emailing him spreadsheets? "Monthly subscription for science fiction and fantasy books" "Subscribe to news without paying $30/month per website" - Existing solutions already exist and require a supply chain and distribution rights negotiation more than they do a developer to slap it into a webapp.
kirillzubovsky 9y ago
I find it a little funny how unrealistic people can be when evaluating the cost of their problem. Take this one for example: "We have hundreds of images uploaded to our app each day. The issue is some of these images have text that we want cropped out." -- willing to pay? $75/month. Baller! Chances are this is a problem for a data-mining / ai-training platform that wants to create a better image set. They are charging clients tens of thousands of dollars, and yet willing to pay $100/month to improve the data. lol
- coss 9y ago
  It's just 1's and 0's, how hard can it be?
- shams93 9y ago
  Yeah like replace Quicken for $500 a month, maybe if I was living in a place with no infrastructure I could pull that but then I would never see the site or the post.
- giarc 9y ago
  Sounds like a project for Mechanical Turk.
- duskwuff 9y ago
  My guess was actually that this would be for some sort of image site, to crop attribution information out of images. :/
- iamwil 9y ago
  On the other hand, it can also go the other way. Non-technical customers don't actually care how hard something is to build, as long as it solves their problem. So it often surprises engineers how a 1 day script can make lots of money for them. Freelancers often make the same mistake--charging by what it costs to them, plus a little bit more. You should charge how much value it brings to the customer, not how much it costs you to make. Easy to say, hard to do.
mgkimsal 9y ago
Wish there was a way to ask people for clarification. > https://www.demandrush.com/problems/fantasy-scifi-subscription https://www.demandrush.com/problems/fantasy-scifi-subscripti... > I'd love a Netflix-style platform, website or app that, where I'd have a selection of high quality books to choose from. Amazon has a 'unlimited book rental' subscription model (I know not all books are in there). "What systems has this person already looked at, and why were they rejected?" That probably needs to be a base question.
rkeene2 9y ago
Feature request: RSS feed, so I can see when new projects are added
- hackerews 9y ago
  Try this https://www.demandrush.com/alerts https://www.demandrush.com/alerts
  - rkeene2 9y ago
    This wants to send me email, which I then have to aggregate myself whenever I want to look at that type of information. An RSS feed would be much more beneficial since I could subscribe to it, let the aggregator take care of it and when I want to look at that type of data I'll see a global view of those feeds over time.
    - manquer 9y ago
      Not a exactly a solution... you can use iftt or zapier kind of services to easily convert the email to rss
RandyRanderson 9y ago
This is a really good idea! You need to force ppl to upload some graphics, though.
sjbase 9y ago
Super cool idea, but there's a ton of potential for misunderstanding. Example: User: "I want {A}." Winning developer: builds {a} User: "This is useless to me. I wanted {A}, not {a}" Developer: "But you never said you were case-sensitive!" It can easily go the other way, with the user saying "Well i said {a}, but I meant {A}. {a} is useless to me." Who pays when nobody is clearly in the wrong about some ambiguity? The FAQ hints at an "initial 3 month subscription." Am I missing more info on the process?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
enknamel 9y ago
The site is down right now for me. Is this like Patreon but for open source projects? If so, I would love that.
- chmod775 9y ago
  It's reverse patreon.
Sindrome 9y ago
Adblocker for podcasts - HEARTLESS
- mdaniel 9y ago
  In this specific case, they might be "attacking" the wrong side of the equation. For example, KQED offers a pledge-free stream for donors, because they know the subscriber and are the origin of the content (or at least a gateway to it, for upstream NPR content). I think it would be absolutely magical if I could get an ad-free feed from the podcasts I donate to already. That said, there is no way that ads in podcasts inflict $15/mo worth of suffering upon me. The "skip ahead 30 seconds" button is absolutely perfect for not hearing yet another Squarespace ad
DesiLurker 9y ago
why is there no search feature on this site? perhaps they should start a bounty for that first before submitting to HN .. smh
- hackerews 9y ago
  not enough problems yet for search. hopefully soon!
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
What about intellectual property? Can the kind sponsors of a side project get to claim the result?
- hackerews 9y ago
  No - the developer/startup that builds each project owns the product they build. Good question.
hackerews 9y ago
Awesome. Over $1k MRR of opportunities up in last few hours. Looking forward to see these products built!
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  The amount of dev needed to get that $1k MRR is probably in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. I wouldn't get too excited yet.
quadrangle 9y ago
For reference, the site CoFundOS.org (which is now something TOTALLY unrelated) used to be a bounty service just like this where people all added their pledge to fund the start of some new project if someone came along and accepted the task. Not sure if there's any reference available anymore. They focused on Open Source, whereas DemandRush seems to focus on services, many of which could qualify as SaaSS even, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... Anyway, the big issues here are those all bounty-type sites face (which seems, for some reason, to be the thing everyone keeps trying over and over and keeps thinking is a new idea). See for reference, https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software#bounties https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software...
- quadrangle 9y ago
  Too late to edit, but it might be worth adding that while CoFundOS got a good handful of projects listed and handfuls of people pledging, my memory is that none of the projects ever amounted to anything. There's a lot of reasons why this sort of approach may seem promising but never really take off. It's also possible (though I'm skeptical) that it just takes a certain amount of design, promotion, and right-place-right-time…
adv0r 9y ago
rename "get paid to build THEIR side project"
greatNespresso 9y ago
Just thinking, but it could be cool to add a comment feature, in order to discuss publicly about implementation details, constraints and quick solutions.
- hackerews 9y ago
  On the way!
  - greatNespresso 9y ago
    Awesome !
intrasight 9y ago
The title is misleading. In none of the listed projects do you "get paid". I often do "glue things together with APIs" types of projects (you could argue that all software is basically that) using modern cloud services which make it relatively easy. But doing anything takes several days and therefore costs a couple thousand dollars - the activation energy for a project. I'll always do the projects where a client is willing to pay that activation energy before doing something which is "speculative". Having said that, I think the idea of doing something like "Upwork" but with client aggregation and monthly pricing is a great idea - but still speculative, so a great idea for somebody else to pursue.
FollowSteph3 9y ago
The devil is in the details. The items are so open ended that they could just about anything...
mvindahl 9y ago
Nice idea. A bit simplistic in its current form, though. One thing that would be really nice would be some kind of discussion thread for each topic. What does the customer really need? If there are ten interested customers, do they want the same thing? Which alternatives were considered? Which tradeoffs would be acceptable? Also, IMHO, it would be cool if the site could handle the mundane details of hosting and billing. But I guess that there are probably other sites that do that kind of thing already?

1100 points by hackerews 9y ago

Cool idea, but it seems like some of these are beyond the realm of a "side project". Like the News Aggregator one (https://www.demandrush.com/problems/news-aggregator-paywall https://www.demandrush.com/problems/news-aggregator-paywall). That one you couldn't really do without getting a lot of license deals with content providers. That already puts it out of the league of what most are able to do as hobby projects.

BoorishBears 9y ago

This looks like such a cool idea, but already you see that the problems presented seem to be seriously underestimating how complicated what they're trying to do is. For example, detecting specific text in an image? 10 minutes in OpenCV. Detecting any text at all in any format in an image? I don't even know where to start. Maybe 10 minutes in OpenCV if they constrain the kind of text, otherwise ML? It feels like an unboundedly complicated problem.

lighthazard 9y ago
I think it'd be nice to gauge the interest of such a project. There is one person pledging right now, but if more do and the demand clearly seems to exist - maybe it's worth investing in.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  there is a pretty substantial gap between '$75 for at least one month' and 'something that will make enough before someone else does it too to make it worth the time'
mattlondon 9y ago
In terms of ML you could probably load a pre-trained image classification convolutional model and fine-tune it a bit and get quite a reliable if not superbly exact "here is some text" classifier without too much effort. Perhaps not 10 minutes, but maybe a weekend to allow for training.
- yorwba 9y ago
  E.g [1] trained for 20 * 10^5 iterations at 2.1 seconds per image, coming out to 48 days (!) in total. Maybe the 2.1 seconds also include the post-processing to get bounding boxes, though. Anyway, you need lots of training time. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04018 https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04018 "Multi-Oriented Text Detection with Fully Convolutional Networks"
  - mattlondon 9y ago
    Looks like they only used a single GPU for training though - you could trivially get that time down a lot if you used one of the cloud ML platforms (and were prepared to pay)
zimmund 9y ago
It's also not clear how it will be used later. It could be used to crop/remove watermarks or copyright messages, and I wouldn't develop it if that's its purpose.
- scrapcode 9y ago
  Captcha solving is expensive for spammers.
  - tehlike 9y ago
    are you sure? What's your source?
  - custos 9y ago
    I can assure you it is not. It's about $0.001 per solved captcha with 97% accuracy rate and refunds on failed ones, from the service provider I know of. I've even written one, it's not complicated and not expensive.
    - Implicated 9y ago
      Can confirm, it was very cheap 5+ years ago when I was in the business of needing them solved en masse. I doubt it's gotten more expensive.
    - tehlike 9y ago
      It is still the same rate. 2.2 ish for new recaptcha, too.
      - custos 9y ago
        Yeah I was able to beat that "Robot check" checkbox by Google using some fuzzy bezier curves and random mouse movements/scrolling to simulate a real user's behavior. Unfortunately Google has some other metrics to detect bots (such as no cookies showing they've seen you before, etc), so it wasn't 100% reliable.
moduspwnens14 9y ago
Amazon Rekognition can almost do it. It doesn't seem to detect text, specifically, but it'd be able to detect whether or not a bird is in the image, or similar. That's not what the project is asking for, but it's very close to being a very doable hobby project.
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  The problem is what birds look like is very well defined compared to text. As in, there are many types of birds, but each type has a "consistent image" but there are infinite variations of text
  - moduspwnens14 9y ago
    Fair enough. You could certainly still do it with Mechanical Turk then, although the delay in response might not meet the requester's unstated requirements.
technoology 9y ago
There is already an API available to do this today. The Microsoft Cognitive Services computer vision API detects words, phrases, and lines and included bounding box information indicating where the text was found. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/computer-vision https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service....
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  OCR excels at picking out digitally generated text, but it's not so great at "real world" text unless you help it by zooming in. For example, it can't tell there's text in this clear image of a VIN: http://1eask1khnn22hm3njx2dmz1a.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/VIN-number-windshield.jpg http://1eask1khnn22hm3njx2dmz1a.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c... But I bet if you took a closer picture (like you would if you were using an AR app) it'd work
iDemonix 9y ago
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425 https://xkcd.com/1425
radarsat1 9y ago
I can't speak for the site, but I think the idea is that you sort of get this continuous funding to keep working on and improving your solution. (Makes it kind of different from bug-bounty type approaches, which I like.)
super-serial 9y ago
Google's Vision API extracts text in any language or format from images: https://cloud.google.com/vision/ https://cloud.google.com/vision/ There are a bunch of SaaS opportunities like this that could be made just creating wrappers for various cloud apis and selling to people who don't know they exist.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- splatcollision 9y ago
  Yep, this. Basically leveraging the knowledge difference between developers on the edge of what's available with Cloud ML API services, versus people with business problems that are not aware of same. Throw in some customization and nice marketing / design for niche use cases, and you've maybe got a business.

fomojola 9y ago

Love it! I'd specifically highlighted this concept in the thread for Oppslist (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14469317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14469317): maybe there's an opportunity here to handle both sides of the market, both soliciting ideas and driving work to the ideas? Still not sure how you handle avoiding imposters: for things like the accounting solution that's on the top of the site I think there is huge potential for abuse in either direction (either devs phishing for data or companies refusing to pay for solutions). Good luck!

19eightyfour 9y ago

This is such a great idea. And you nailed the marketing and message. It's like a democratized efficient tender process driven by the market. Brilliant and beautiful! I really feel you shall be able to capture a lot of value and create alot of value from this. Well done!

avaer 9y ago

> GET PAID TO BUILD YOUR NEXT PROJECT > Choose a problem below to get started. Get paid to build _my_ next project or _your_ next project? This is clearly a two-sided platform, but the messaging seems conflated: the headline speaks to builders and the instructions speak to end customers.

maroonblazer 9y ago
It's a market, so it clears when my next project and your next project are the same project.
- epicide 9y ago
  This is a shallow equals, though. I can guarantee that we will differ in implementation specifics. This sounds like a good idea on paper, but the reality is that most of the value of a project is in the implementation details. There are countless meetings for each individual feature. I'm pretty sure the above description is how a lot of the end users (clients) are seeing this. Their contribution amounts are also insanely low (orders of magnitude lower than I would dare to value some of their projects). I don't know how contracts or SLAs (if any) apply here, but this just seems like a good way to get yourself on the hook for getting paid (I'm guessing) a tenth of minimum wage. Source: I do this sort of contract work for a living.
Sakes 9y ago
It appears to me that this is a tool to identify a market / need that is not being met. There are people who simply want a product/service, no desire for ownership. They post what they'd be will to pay for it, as a customer, and you decide if it is worth your time to build it. Anyone? Am I understanding this correctly?
- hackerews 9y ago
  That's right!
  - 9y ago

inputcoffee 9y ago

Can only one person "apply" to solve it? I'm thinking of the kickstarter problem: vaporware. If, over 6 months, 5 people apply to solve a problem, who gets the subscribers? The first one, I hope not. Each subscriber chooses? P.s. Very interesting idea. Something in this direction will be useful.

r3bl 9y ago
From the FAQ: > Q: I submitted a problem - what happens next? > A: Over the next 14 days, developers will be able to apply to solve your problem. You'll get a list of applications and a recommendation of who to choose. So, I guess the answer is "subscriber chooses, and if there are multiple subscribers, they (or the one that paid the most) make(s) an agreement."

OzzyB 9y ago

I love the idea and initiative! My only concern is that this is a little "race to bottom"; most if not all the entries are along the lines of "I already have X but I'm paying too much!" I guess this is great for solo entrepeneur/developers, hell, if I know for certain I had 100 people waiting to pay me $50/m for X, I would definately consider building it :)

goatherders 9y ago
So would everyone else on the site. Thus the problem.
- OzzyB 9y ago
  Right, once you build X for group of folks, then the next submission will be "I need a cheaper version of X" -- where X is _your_ app! :D
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

This looks like an idea/market validator posing as a job listing market. Brilliant.

goatherders 9y ago

Isn't this exactly how Freelancer/odesk/whatever work now?

hackerews 9y ago
Good question. The big difference is you own the products you build here, and charge a monthly fee for access (for up to X customers). It's a bit like kickstarting a SaaS business. Versus with contracting/freelancing, you get paid 1x and the product is owned by the customer you work for.
- epicide 9y ago
  But who makes all of the minute feature decisions? E.g. one of the projects wants a bookkeeping service. That's a pretty vague description. Especially if they want to tie it into their other systems. If I get final say in what goes in, then it seems very likely they wouldn't be on board with this (especially not after going through a project). If they get final say, then this is just contract work. The other issue is liability. In the bookkeeping example again, who is liable in case of a data breach? If there is payroll info or client info in said service, who is responsible for compliance? They couldn't pay me $500,000 a month to get me to take on that kind of responsibility, much less $500. I know I'm harping on one example, but a lot of projects would have similar issues come up. I guess my point is that sometimes I don't actually want ownership of a project like that. > you get paid 1x That really depends on a lot of factors. From what I've seen on the site, it's more like the other way around is true.
- epicide 9y ago
  Another question for you: who determines when a project is done or that it has met the requirements for MVP? For example, say I pick up one of the projects and the subscriber picks me to work on it. Okay, great. I go and work on it and consider it done. As it turns out, there was a lot of miscommunication and they wanted something different. Do I still get paid? It seems like either way, there is a huge avenue for somebody to get screwed.
yellowapple 9y ago

gremlinsinc 9y ago

This reminds me of what assembly was doing where people would list startup / app ideas then teams would form and build the idea and I think a few businesses came out of that.

philippnagel 9y ago
Shame that they had to shut down.

Arqu 9y ago

Love the idea, especially for quick and interesting side projects.

rdudek 9y ago

"Subscribe to news without paying $30/month per website" I don't think there is a legal way of actually doing this.

maaaats 9y ago
Well, a "Spotify for news" could be made. I know of several attempts.
- ahussain 9y ago
  https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/ seems to be the most promising one from what I've seen
  - Grangar 9y ago
    Had to think of this right away.
  - ezekg 9y ago
    This looks very, very cool. Thanks for posting.
epicide 9y ago
Yeah, I've personally been wanting something like that as well, but I wouldn't want to implement it. It would be something like 10% actually writing the system and 90% dealing with news outlets to actually get them on board.
k_sh 9y ago
I've been sitting on a paywall-killer browser extension I wrote for a while... concerned about a potential CFAA violation from a big org, especially if I were to charge for it.
- s73ver 9y ago
  I mean, you are essentially charging others for access to something that's not yours to provide access for (paywalled news).

hashkb 9y ago

These customers/RFPs are way below market rate for software development. Given the reality of working with clients, these proposals are likely to result in developers taking a bath.

pc86 9y ago
This isn't developing a product and giving it to a client. This is for developers to see clients saying "I would pay $X/mo for Y," developers to build it and then be able to charge those clients for it. Anyone who's pre-launched a SaaS knows you're lucky to get 50% of people who said they would buy to actually buy. People lie all the time. But this is a good gauge. Think an app that does Y is worth $50/mo but there's a dozen people saying they'll pay $100/mo for it? Great! A dozen people saying they'll pay $10/mo for it? Not so great.

lettergram 9y ago

Damn, this was literally a project I started working on. Although, I had a slightly different way of going about it and different way to charge, I love the idea! Gratz to OP. I'll definitely be submitting, and maybe I'll still come out with mine at some point.

corobo 9y ago
Can you switch it up to a specific niche? For example "Get paid to build your next video game"
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

baron816 9y ago

I think this has the potential to introduce an interesting auction model. People might want to join in, but not at the initial price point. What if everyone proposed wanting in on project stated their maximum price point, and the winning application to solve would get the price they bid at for everyone above that level. In other words customers_offering_prices = [1,1,4,15,30,30,40,80,100,150,175,10000] winning_applicant_price = 40 winning_applicant_revenue = [40,40,40,40,40,40].sum The last 6 customers receive the product and they all pay 40. Essentially a modified Vickrey auction. Everyone has an incentive to bid exactly what the product is worth to them. Edit: >Everyone has an incentive to bid exactly what the product is worth to them. Actually not true if applicants see the bids. In my example, the the best applicant would want to bid 10000 because that would maximize revenue, but exclude everyone before that. Customers would adjust their bidding as a result. But applicants should know much they can expect to receive if they win so they can bid correctly.

beaconstudios 9y ago
sounds like an approximation of a demand curve, which if opened up the developer would give them the option to choose how to segment their market quite nicely.
bluGill 9y ago
Is that fair though? If something is only worth 5 to me and 40 to you, and the cost of development is 45 - neither of us along can afford the feature, but if we put aside out different contributions the total is enough to make both of us happy, or neither of are. Your model both of use get nothing when we both could be happy on a different model.
- s73ver 9y ago
  Yes, it's fair. If you're not willing to pay what's being charged, you don't get the thing.
- CamelCaseName 9y ago
  It is equitable, but it is not efficient. At least this is better than a Vickrey auction though, where you would only get paid $5.01 and spend $45 (net loss) rather than see the bids and do nothing. (Or see the bids and lose, but get paid $40 rather than $5.01)

cylinder 9y ago

For the top two requests, Bench exists for book keeping and Blendle for news

haidrali 9y ago

Love the concept, just submitted my side project now waiting for response Thumbs Up

pc86 9y ago

> Industry-specific deep learning interviews and walkthroughs > 1 customer paying $5/mo Sounds about right.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cr0sh 9y ago
Yeah I had to laugh about that one as well. Especially the part about ImageNet being too general. If they knew anything about deep neural networks, they would understand why these base models are important and necessary for a candidate to understand, because they can be used to form a foundation for the solution. In many cases, you can use the model as-is (and likely pre-trained) for a use case outside of "match label to an image", with only some additional training with your specific dataset - which may only be tangentially related (or not even that!). These models (and the surrounding tools) have become for many problems more like Lego in my opinion - which is a good thing! It means they are more approachable for everyone, rather than being something mysterious and complex. Ok - if you dig, things become complicated quickly, but for many problems, you don't have to worry about these internals. Are there problems which don't fit neatly into using a modified ImageNet or LeNet or one of the other "standards"? Certainly. But I think a candidate who understands the standards and basics well is likely a better one than one who only understands a specific subset for a particular industry (if there even is such a thing, which I am sceptical of). Furthermore - it would be even better when a candidate can say "you know what - your problem doesn't need a neural network of any kind, let me introduce you to <insert standard statistical machine learning method>" - because there are tons of problems out there which can still benefit, and be a robust, easy to understand, and fast (to implement, to maintain, to execute - whatever). I love neural networks, certainly - but there's been so much hype in the news, everyone thinks they need one, which will probably lead to many investing money into worthless (or expensive) solutions, where simpler (but less "sexy") ones would have sufficed. The candidate who could know and tell the difference would be even more ideal - being able to interview/walkthru that might be a way to get a better candidate.
BlackjackCF 9y ago
Every single one of the projects that are on this site right now are super underpaid... It's sad that even the highest bidding project is $500/mo.

cphoover 9y ago

Just not enough money...

amelius 9y ago

> Identify location of text in an image ...for... $75 This is what my doctor charges for a flu vaccination. I guess I've chosen the wrong profession.

orcdork 9y ago
You don't pay your doctor $75 for sticking a needle in your arm, you pay him for his knowledge not to stick the needle in the wrong place. Looks like we've got full circle considering this same logic was applied to devs for ages.
- amelius 9y ago
  Except that for doctors the circle somehow doesn't close upon itself. Youtube is full of videos showing how to inject oneself. Writing a text-detection script can be done perhaps with some help from Google/Stackoverflow, but requires still some intellectual effort depending on requirements.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    And when you screw up and stick it in the wrong place?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - smacktoward 9y ago
      Just have them put "LolToad69 Said It Would Work" on your tombstone.
  - h2hn 9y ago
    No way man. If you solved that problem you would be rich.
- 15155 9y ago
  This analogy is driving me crazy, heh, but I can't resist: Flu shots are generally intramuscular, you literally just jab it into your bicep. A layperson can do it with high probabilities of success just by reading the instructions on the box. Indeed, pharmacists administer these all over the US.

sqeaky 9y ago

Blocked by my work's filter under the category "malware".

Jemmeh 9y ago
Same, tells me it's the security certificate. Your connection is not private. NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID

tarr11 9y ago

I actually need the first item listed there (InDinero replacement), but I signed up and am sort of confused? I would very likely pay for this feature, but I'm not willing to commit to much unless it works. I would pay a nominal amount to "kickstart" it I guess, and have the option to sign up later. But it's a fairly nasty problem - porting your books a proprietary platform to QuickBooks seems full of traps.

tenzo 9y ago
I just signed up to 'solve this problem' as it's something I'm currently working on. Is there a particular reason why you're looking for an InDinero replacement?
- tarr11 9y ago
  In short, service quality has gone down. I feel like for the amount I'm paying, I could get a lot more value somewhere else. The problem is that it's very expensive and risky to switch accounting packages. When we started with them, we paid about $400, and they did payroll, accounting, and taxes, plus Stripe integration for a DE C corp. We had a monthly meeting with a bookkeeper. We'd get responses to all requests within a day or two. Now, we pay 3x that (our revenue has grown) they've eliminated payroll, they've outsourced our bookkeeping to somewhere else, and often don't respond for many days. They delay filing taxes until Sept always. I don't really feel like they understand our business particularly well. They've quoted me nearly double to switch to accrual accounting, and I suspect it's even more expensive than that. I can't really use it for management purposes or cashflow forecasting, which are my two biggest pain points. I'd rather be on Xero or QB which are industry standard. I could then work with experts who could help solve specific problems (accrual accounting, revenue recognition, etc) on an industry standard platform. I'm not interested in moving to another bookkeeping software however, unless it's QB or Xero.
wdaher 9y ago
Just signed up to "solve this problem", since we've been building ~the exact thing that post describes: an accounting service built on top of QuickBooks Online, with really robust integrations for services startups use (e.g. Gusto, Stripe, Expensify, etc.) Like inDinero or some of the other options out there, we're a service that takes care of your books for you, so you don't need to think about them. But with a few key differences: * We're built on QuickBooks Online, so you're not locked into a system that no one else knows how to use. (It's still a proprietary system, but it's the industry standard.) * We take a hybrid humans + software approach. Most of the work of keeping the books updated is tedious data entry, and when humans do the work (no matter how talented they are), it's super-error-prone and frustrating. Our attitude is: computers should do the tedious repetitive work, and our talented team of pros should focus on (a) doing the tricky stuff, (b) understanding the specifics of your business, and (c) answering any questions you have. * We're startup people, so we've had these problems ourselves. This is our third startup — our previous companies were Ksplice (acq. by Oracle) and Zulip (acq. by Dropbox), so we're definitely not strangers to building software. (Incidentally, we've done a bunch of migrations from inDinero before.) Basically, our thesis is: humans + software each doing what they do best. (Or, if you like, we're building an Iron Man suit for our people to do your books with higher quality.) We're in private beta today and have been doing the books for a bunch of tech companies (all the way from newly incorporated to well on their way to their Series B). We're actively taking on a steady stream of new customers, so if you're interested, send me a note: waseem@zapgram.com

adamb 9y ago

Cool seed for a community! Seems to lack a place for discussion about submitted ideas, so I'll follow others' lead and discuss here. The "industry specific deep learning" project is similar to something I'm working on right now. Though I'm not planning to charge for it. To any folks here interested in this: Are you looking for a tool to get started in ML or for a resource to apply existing ML knowledge to a specific (possibly new) domain?

sanbor 9y ago

Photoshop license costs $348 a year. If 1000 people get together and put $400 each, you'll get $400000. That money could be used to leverage a Gimp to be more Photoshop-users friendly. Then you don't have to keep with the subscription model. You have a great piece of open source software available for everyone to use as long as they want. You can do another round to get more features added. This solves the issue that you get with subscription based services, which is that if you stop paying every month/year you loose access to the tool to do your work. Instead of building yet another SaaS wouldn't be smarter for users to gather and pay for a software libre solution?

bb88 9y ago
I think the photoshop vs gimp is a bad comparison, mostly because throwing money at gimp to make it better is a bad idea. It would be better to start from scratch. Now if you wanted to throw $400 for a photoshop like system to start from the ground up and work across all three platforms, I think you've got a great idea. You'd avoid the cruft, you could do subscription/pay-per-use cloud based filters, you could start with 32bits per channel from the start, instead of the slow transition to GEGL...
- formula1 9y ago
  Why would spending money on a brand new system with no proof of success be better than a matured application with plugin support?
  - callumlocke 9y ago
    Because GIMP has a lot of baggage: a very particular UI, a community of active users (many of whom probably like it exactly how it is thanks), and a terrible name.
    - robotresearcher 9y ago
      So fork it. New name, new UI. Seashore was a try at this a decade ago. http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/Screenshots.html http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/Screens...

soared 9y ago

I can't access the site. https error: NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID

vlokshin 9y ago

Interesting concept, if the balance can get figured out right (making sure customers or devs aren't getting screwed). There should also be a discussion section. For example, I see: >Can't find good replacement for expensive accounting/bookkeeper service I'd love to recommend Bench.co (use it and love it) and avoid someone wasting their time. It's much more affordable than 500/mo. I do love the concept though. @OP: I'll share this with the https://turtle.ai/ https://turtle.ai/ developer community and see if there is any interest.

wellsjohnston 9y ago

How is this different from Upwork?

civilian 9y ago
It's not exclusive; it's just a way for people to express what services they wish existed.
davidpelayo 9y ago
Submitted projects, if developed, could be, potentially, for many customers. Also, the developers is who owns the software.

aub3bhat 9y ago

>> Identify location of text in image. We have hundreds of images uploaded to our app each day. The issue is some of these images have text that we want cropped out. There you go [1] originally from [2] [1] https://github.com/AKSHAYUBHAT/CTPN/blob/master/demo.ipynb https://github.com/AKSHAYUBHAT/CTPN/blob/master/demo.ipynb [2] https://github.com/tianzhi0549/CTPN https://github.com/tianzhi0549/CTPN

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pascalxus 9y ago

This is a great start! There is a huge demand for more opportunities like this. Entrepreneurs and businesses are so tired of building yet another useless app, out of sheer lack of problems to solve. But, with a site like this, you can find problems that are actually problems. The site just needs more customers and more problems.

TomK32 9y ago

You missed a great chance by not putting a newsletter onto it.

hackerews 9y ago
https://www.demandrush.com/alerts https://www.demandrush.com/alerts
- TomK32 9y ago
  clearly not prominently enough placed.

mabynogy 9y ago

Same idea than Opps List with a different perspective: https://www.oppslist.com/ https://www.oppslist.com/ The idea is good but it's difficult to use because you can't reach the people.

skdotdan 9y ago

Awesome. Great idea, nice execution.

bluetwo 9y ago

I would be curious what the business plan for this site looked like.

pvsukale3 9y ago

shouldn't it be " Get paid to build someone else's project"?

cdiamand 9y ago

Very cool! Will be watching this to see how it evolves.

gricardo99 9y ago

>Monthly subscription for science fiction and fantasy books Isn't that the public library?

dragonwriter 9y ago
Or, http://www.booklender.com http://www.booklender.com for those who want delivery, a wider selection than many public libraries, etc.
civilian 9y ago
I think that the curation aspect of it is also a big thing. Think of this as a "loot crate" for but for books. I think the service should also have _two_ services. One is for great sci-fi fantasy books of all time-- obviously that's going to be cheaper. The more expensive service would be for books that have come out in the last 2 years. For myself, I often look at the winner & nominees for the Hugo and the Nebula for the last two years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winners_and_nominees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winn... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel#Winners_and_nominees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel#Wi... Keep in mind that media mail is like, $2.60? If I was making this service, I would want to ship 3 books quarterly, rather than 1 book monthly. There ought to be economies of scale by buying hundreds of books from a publisher. What do book retailers pay for books anyway? One benefit is that you also won't be returning books, like brick-and-mortar bookstores do. An additional awesome feature would be if it connected to your GoodReads account and never sent you duplicates.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  > I think that the curation aspect of it is also a big thing. The librarians at my public library are great at making suggestions. They also have themed book displays that they rotate every week (eg. physical fitness one week, high fantasy another etc.)
  - gricardo99 9y ago
    I agree curation is value-add. A good librarian is probably as good as it gets. Also, the internets are filled with curated lists. Book lists have come up here on HN a number of times [1][2][3], even Sci-fi specific[4]. But I get it, push button services are very appealing, and can save a lot of time. Just click subscribe and get a constant supply of books you'll love at a reasonable price. It's a business model that can work surprising well[5]. 1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229312 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556160 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9056319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9056319 5 - https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/ https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/

jmull 9y ago

I guess I get it (maybe ?): There are already many, many marketplaces for tech development of all shapes and forms. For this one I guess it's: Hey, people who want some tech developed: If you can formulate your problem as an interesting side project you will (1) be likely to find someone actually willing & able to do it cheaply; (2) you are likely to be able to aggregate your buying power with another buyer; (3) you pay a subscription so it isn't a large up-front cost. and; Hey, tech developers who like to do interesting side-projects: Here's a bunch of interesting side projects that you might have done them anyway, except here you will (might) get paid to do them! One way to look at it is in comparison to kickstarter. In kickstarter, a producer runs the campaign by championing an idea and setting a funding model and the consumer can choose to buy in by providing dollars. Here, the consumer champions the idea and sets the price, the funding model is a subscription, and producers can choose to buy in by providing work... and also more consumers can buy in by subscribing with dollars. I guess for this market to work, it has be be more efficient at satisfying the demand for X-aaS development than existing markets, though I don't know how it might be.

grogenaut 9y ago

A few of these can be solved other ways or need more deets. The Google doc one for instance really just should go to am esigner. Or if this is a more light weight internal thing then Google docs needs mutable git like tags. To me this is almost begging for a s/o style comment section.

demarq 9y ago

I think you might need to vet some of those customers for ethics. Some of the things being asked for are inherently illegal. On the other hand, it seems there is a ton of money to be made on the site!

conmarap 9y ago

This is pretty cool! I found myself reading through all of the entries I can see and even cook up some solutions on the spot. However, how do you make a profit off of it? Do you take a cut of the end cost?

hmhrex 9y ago

Surprisingly there's one in here that I'm already starting to work on. That at least confirms to me that I'm not THE sole person who wants this service. Applied. I'm interested to see how this process works.

iandanforth 9y ago

I would strongly suggest that there be an option to list existing solutions. A sustainable model means identifying real needs, not duplicating products that people are merely ignorant of.

hackerews 9y ago
Great idea.
pascalxus 9y ago
excellent suggestion. OP, please include this feature.

pkamb 9y ago

Does anything like this exist for putting bounties on small scripts / extensions? I just posted these questions yesterday, in the hope of finding solutions to a couple common annoyances I have with Google search: https://superuser.com/questions/1218986/keyboard-shortcut-to-toggle-between-google-search-type-tabs-images-maps-etc https://superuser.com/questions/1218986/keyboard-shortcut-to... https://superuser.com/questions/1218989/how-to-maintain-order-of-the-google-search-type-links-images-maps-etc-rath https://superuser.com/questions/1218989/how-to-maintain-orde... I don't want the overhead of "hiring a freelancer" to do the work. But I'd definitely pay a bounty if someone came in with the answer / script / extension / app that solved the problem.

slimsag 9y ago
I'm curious: In your mind, what is the difference between 'hiring a freelancer' and 'paying a bounty to someone who comes with the answer'? I'd suggest to you odesk.com, but that is a site for hiring freelancers. Although I've seen it used many times for 'here's what I want, deliver it and the money is yours' rather than a .. 'work for me at X/hr and I'll direct you' kind of thing.
- pkamb 9y ago
  - I don't want to own the resulting code. Open Source delivery, or a link to someone else's extension that accomplishes the goal. - Payment on the order of $10 for some simple script, not $300+. They can make up the difference via multiple bounties, selling to multiple people, etc. - Public question that can be found by others with the same problem (who can upvote or add to the bounty), as well as people who are able to deliver the solution. Stack Exchange, but with payment. - I don't want anything to do with reading resumes, selecting the worker, scheduling, payments, etc. This is what I think of when I hear "freelance".
  - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
    I understand what you're getting at, but the price is an issue. I do something similar: I write very small programs for embedded systems: simple timers, sequencers, alarms, etc. for around $100. In some cases, we're talking 15 minutes of work, tops. If I could charge just $30 and instead sell it to multiple people, I would, but the odds of that happening are so slim, I have to have a $100 minimum. The problem is that even for well-defined problems, what people need tends to be so different that the best you can do is have a common framework for similar problems. The code itself is rarely even close to identical

subhsandhu1 9y ago

<a href="http://www.desilyrics.in/2017/06/main-agar-lyrics-tubelight-atif-aslam.html">Main http://www.desilyrics.in/2017/06/main-agar-lyrics-tubelight-... Agar Lyrics Tubelight</a>: A new recently released Hindi Songs sung by Atif Aslam and composed by Pritam, while Main Agar lyrics penned by Kausar Munir. Featuring Salman Khan and Sohail Khan.

id122015 9y ago

So this is similar to crowdfunding except that we can ask what we want to be built ? What I'm willing to pay for but cant easily develop myself is to add features from OSX to linux. Not too many, I'd start with: - a graphical browser like Finder where I could color tag files. - UI/UX: do something about easier configuration of the trackpad. Even when I installed linux on Macbook the trackpad does not work the same or does not have all the tapping actions instead of clicking. I cant even drag files/links to file-browser-sidebar/dock or such things.

hackerews 9y ago
Add to https://www.demandrush.com https://www.demandrush.com!

dsacco 9y ago

I wish these weren't all subscription-based, because this could work for the exact thing I want: I will pay $100 - $500 for an Arq Backup[1] clone on Linux, with the same UI polish as Arq for macOS or Windows, optional encryption, deduplication and supporting all the same backup locations, including: * AWS S3/Glacier * GCP Nearline/Coldline * Backblaze B2 * Dropbox * SFTP * NAS * Google Drive If you're absolutely going to force monthly subscription pricing down my throat, I guess I'll pay up to $20/month. I want this badly. I know about rclone, Duplicity, Duplicati, that awesome rsync/cron workflow you have, etc. I want Arq (or something just like it). Arq works flawlessly - it is absolutely superlative when it comes to backups on Windows and macOS. I use an Ubuntu workstation as my daily driver at home and I have a MacBook Pro. Through very careful configuration I have gradually made Ubuntu about as enjoyable to use as macOS (with the exception of 1Password, which has to run under Wine). But I don't want to use the command line, or handle an API myself, or keep track of cron. Duplicati was the closest thing to what I'm looking for, but it's cludgey and started not working for me recently. I know polished UI isn't exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Linux. But if you're the kind of person who makes "Ask HN: What is your pain point?" posts or who is looking for a problem to solve, this is a burning problem I am willing to throw money at. EDIT: I'm adding a bunch of HN comments to demonstrate the interest I've seen for this.[2][3][4][5][6][7] ____________ 1. https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/ 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14403321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14403321 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11742226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11742226 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185632 5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718015 6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13360604 7. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011339

hackerews 9y ago
Post it to https://www.demandrush.com https://www.demandrush.com! We're getting great feedback from folks needing products/services that don't yet fit into the initial structure we set up. Happy to help.
bertjk 9y ago

jeremiahwv 9y ago

Service that allows me to get paid for my next side project [451+ customers, each paying $XX per month]

kuldeep_kap 9y ago

It's interesting how there are more comments and votes here in HN post than the projects posted and voted on the app.

hackerews 9y ago
Good point. Right now we're making sure only vetted projects go up - eg we chat with each person to confirm it's real problem and they'd pay.
- kuldeep_kap 9y ago
  Interesting. I think it would be good to have just 'upvotes' so you can tell general interest with the idea. Its always good to know for creators whether there is interest from other users.

0verc00ked 9y ago

This is a great idea. I'm curious to see how it evolves.

hackerews 9y ago
Same here!

TekMol 9y ago

"Copyright 2017 DemandRush" - I'm always surprised when I see these types of statements on US based websites. In Europe, this would make no sense. A website is not a legal entity, so it can not be a copyright holder. Does the statement make more sense in the US, or is it just a common misconception among people who build websites? The terms page says "Welcome to DemandRush, a website and online service of Grafly, Inc". So I would expect the real copyright holder is Grafly Inc?

biztos 9y ago
IANAL etc. but I do think it's a common misunderstanding / wishful thinking in the US (where I'm from). In the US you can just "be a company" if you want (with no liability protection), that's between you and the tax man... but if you want to give the operation a name other than your own, you have to register that name (they call it "DBA" for "Doing Business As")[0]. But at least as far back as the early 90's it's been common to put "(c) MyCoolDomainName.com" on a web site, and I'm pretty sure most people mean "copyright ME until/unless I get around to making a business out of this, and if I do then copyright whatever business ends up owning the domain name." And I would assume, though again IANAL, that's not quite what it really means. Unlike, say, Germany, the US has no requirement for anything like an "Impressum" for a web site. Nor could it, really, due to the constitution. (But I Am also Not A Supreme Court Justice so my interpretation of the constitution may be less sticky than others'.) [0]: https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/choose-register-your-business/register-your-business-name https://www.sba.gov/starting-business/choose-register-your-b...
- polshaw 9y ago
  Copyright is an automatic right however, so AFAICT it makes no difference legally if you claim it or not or under what moniker. At best it serves as a reminder to the reader.

avip 9y ago

First I absolutely love the idea, and even more the execution, of this site. Several questions about where could this go post 1-day HN buzz: 1. How are existing solutions being presented to the ignorant "wannabuy"? 2. How is this list sorted? 3. How are duplicates managed? 4. Where is the "discussion" required to even minimally spec the ideas and bring them to a buildable form?

jclardy 9y ago

I like the idea, but I find the site a bit confusing. What is a "pre-subscription"? Are people paying their suggested monthly fee up front? It says that the site makes money from the first three months, so when you sign up are you already subscribing to a nonexistent service? And as for "solving", what if they fail? Is it no commitment? Is any of the funding up front, or is it just built on the promise of possible future subscriptions? I think the idea could work, but directing the balance between both sides is going to be the problem, a lot of the "buyers" are wanting to pay an amount that will work at scale (like $5/mo) but not really if someone is trying to bootstrap a solution.

darepublic 9y ago

You're dangling 100 dollars for problems that is solved could be million dollar solutions. Come on.

civilian 9y ago

For "Automated time tracking from Google Apps/Slack": Toggl is a great service, works in the web or as a desktop app, and has slack integration: https://toggl.com/slack-time-tracking https://toggl.com/slack-time-tracking

nonconvergent 9y ago

A few of these can be solved with a comment. "Need to see revision history for View-Only Google Docs" - Don't use a shared Google Doc as the agent of record. Email it to each other as an agreed contract. "Can't find good replacement for expensive accounting/bookkeeper service" Have you tried literally anything else? You're paying $500/month for this solution, have considered just getting an accountant and emailing him spreadsheets? "Monthly subscription for science fiction and fantasy books" "Subscribe to news without paying $30/month per website" - Existing solutions already exist and require a supply chain and distribution rights negotiation more than they do a developer to slap it into a webapp.

ahmetkun 9y ago
actually they still could use google docs, as it keeps revision history for every document automatically.
dzenos 9y ago
"Email it to each other as an agreed contract." - But this makes it super hard to find the particular version and to be on the same page. This really leads to multiple versions of the same document and thus it is easy to lose work and information; common to work on an outdated version; difficult to know who did what and when; hard to track comments and versions. Just signed up with our solution on demandrush: Tuiqo, simple document versioning - https://tuiqo.com https://tuiqo.com. We just graduated from YC Startup School Founders track.

nonconvergent 9y ago

kirillzubovsky 9y ago

I find it a little funny how unrealistic people can be when evaluating the cost of their problem. Take this one for example: "We have hundreds of images uploaded to our app each day. The issue is some of these images have text that we want cropped out." -- willing to pay? $75/month. Baller! Chances are this is a problem for a data-mining / ai-training platform that wants to create a better image set. They are charging clients tens of thousands of dollars, and yet willing to pay $100/month to improve the data. lol

coss 9y ago
It's just 1's and 0's, how hard can it be?
shams93 9y ago
Yeah like replace Quicken for $500 a month, maybe if I was living in a place with no infrastructure I could pull that but then I would never see the site or the post.
giarc 9y ago
Sounds like a project for Mechanical Turk.
duskwuff 9y ago
My guess was actually that this would be for some sort of image site, to crop attribution information out of images. :/
iamwil 9y ago
On the other hand, it can also go the other way. Non-technical customers don't actually care how hard something is to build, as long as it solves their problem. So it often surprises engineers how a 1 day script can make lots of money for them. Freelancers often make the same mistake--charging by what it costs to them, plus a little bit more. You should charge how much value it brings to the customer, not how much it costs you to make. Easy to say, hard to do.

mgkimsal 9y ago

Wish there was a way to ask people for clarification. > https://www.demandrush.com/problems/fantasy-scifi-subscription https://www.demandrush.com/problems/fantasy-scifi-subscripti... > I'd love a Netflix-style platform, website or app that, where I'd have a selection of high quality books to choose from. Amazon has a 'unlimited book rental' subscription model (I know not all books are in there). "What systems has this person already looked at, and why were they rejected?" That probably needs to be a base question.

rkeene2 9y ago

Feature request: RSS feed, so I can see when new projects are added

hackerews 9y ago
Try this https://www.demandrush.com/alerts https://www.demandrush.com/alerts
- rkeene2 9y ago
  This wants to send me email, which I then have to aggregate myself whenever I want to look at that type of information. An RSS feed would be much more beneficial since I could subscribe to it, let the aggregator take care of it and when I want to look at that type of data I'll see a global view of those feeds over time.
  - manquer 9y ago
    Not a exactly a solution... you can use iftt or zapier kind of services to easily convert the email to rss

RandyRanderson 9y ago

This is a really good idea! You need to force ppl to upload some graphics, though.

sjbase 9y ago

Super cool idea, but there's a ton of potential for misunderstanding. Example: User: "I want {A}." Winning developer: builds {a} User: "This is useless to me. I wanted {A}, not {a}" Developer: "But you never said you were case-sensitive!" It can easily go the other way, with the user saying "Well i said {a}, but I meant {A}. {a} is useless to me." Who pays when nobody is clearly in the wrong about some ambiguity? The FAQ hints at an "initial 3 month subscription." Am I missing more info on the process?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

enknamel 9y ago

The site is down right now for me. Is this like Patreon but for open source projects? If so, I would love that.

chmod775 9y ago
It's reverse patreon.

Sindrome 9y ago

Adblocker for podcasts - HEARTLESS

mdaniel 9y ago
In this specific case, they might be "attacking" the wrong side of the equation. For example, KQED offers a pledge-free stream for donors, because they know the subscriber and are the origin of the content (or at least a gateway to it, for upstream NPR content). I think it would be absolutely magical if I could get an ad-free feed from the podcasts I donate to already. That said, there is no way that ads in podcasts inflict $15/mo worth of suffering upon me. The "skip ahead 30 seconds" button is absolutely perfect for not hearing yet another Squarespace ad

DesiLurker 9y ago

why is there no search feature on this site? perhaps they should start a bounty for that first before submitting to HN .. smh

hackerews 9y ago
not enough problems yet for search. hopefully soon!

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

What about intellectual property? Can the kind sponsors of a side project get to claim the result?

hackerews 9y ago
No - the developer/startup that builds each project owns the product they build. Good question.

hackerews 9y ago

Awesome. Over $1k MRR of opportunities up in last few hours. Looking forward to see these products built!

ceejayoz 9y ago
The amount of dev needed to get that $1k MRR is probably in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. I wouldn't get too excited yet.

quadrangle 9y ago

For reference, the site CoFundOS.org (which is now something TOTALLY unrelated) used to be a bounty service just like this where people all added their pledge to fund the start of some new project if someone came along and accepted the task. Not sure if there's any reference available anymore. They focused on Open Source, whereas DemandRush seems to focus on services, many of which could qualify as SaaSS even, see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... Anyway, the big issues here are those all bounty-type sites face (which seems, for some reason, to be the thing everyone keeps trying over and over and keeps thinking is a new idea). See for reference, https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software#bounties https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software...

quadrangle 9y ago
Too late to edit, but it might be worth adding that while CoFundOS got a good handful of projects listed and handfuls of people pledging, my memory is that none of the projects ever amounted to anything. There's a lot of reasons why this sort of approach may seem promising but never really take off. It's also possible (though I'm skeptical) that it just takes a certain amount of design, promotion, and right-place-right-time…

adv0r 9y ago

rename "get paid to build THEIR side project"

greatNespresso 9y ago

Just thinking, but it could be cool to add a comment feature, in order to discuss publicly about implementation details, constraints and quick solutions.

hackerews 9y ago
On the way!
- greatNespresso 9y ago
  Awesome !

intrasight 9y ago

The title is misleading. In none of the listed projects do you "get paid". I often do "glue things together with APIs" types of projects (you could argue that all software is basically that) using modern cloud services which make it relatively easy. But doing anything takes several days and therefore costs a couple thousand dollars - the activation energy for a project. I'll always do the projects where a client is willing to pay that activation energy before doing something which is "speculative". Having said that, I think the idea of doing something like "Upwork" but with client aggregation and monthly pricing is a great idea - but still speculative, so a great idea for somebody else to pursue.

FollowSteph3 9y ago

The devil is in the details. The items are so open ended that they could just about anything...

mvindahl 9y ago

Nice idea. A bit simplistic in its current form, though. One thing that would be really nice would be some kind of discussion thread for each topic. What does the customer really need? If there are ten interested customers, do they want the same thing? Which alternatives were considered? Which tradeoffs would be acceptable? Also, IMHO, it would be cool if the site could handle the mundane details of hosting and billing. But I guess that there are probably other sites that do that kind of thing already?