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Startup Ideas

• kcorbitt 9y ago
  Hey HN! I'm a software developer at YC and the author of this post. This post is actually a bit of an experiment. We're trying to find better ways to get prospective startup founders (which includes many of us in the HN community) in contact with problems that really ought to be solved. We have lots of different ideas for ways to do that, but a list of ideas seemed like an easy one to try out first. Please let me know if you can think of a better/different way of accomplishing this goal! As to why we're doing this -- more great startups is good news for YC, even if they don't immediately apply to our program. We'd much rather spend our time trying to grow the ecosystem as a whole and maybe capture a small part of that than trying to immediately monetize everything we build.
  • raymondgh 9y ago
    Hi Kyle. I agree that startup ideas are not scarce. With this abundance, it would seem like the value of this post is more in the yc-founder endorsements than the actual ideas themselves. I, and I'm sure many others, have dozens of our own ideas which at this level of detail don't seem much worse or better than what you've posted. Maybe a vehicle for rapid, qualified endorsements on ideas would be more useful for would-be founders.
    • AndrewKemendo 9y ago
      This will fall prey to the fallacy of thinking that because someone is an expert in one area they will be an expert in other areas. Wish there was a formal name for it.
      • singold 9y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
        • rhizome 9y ago
          I think they're referring to: http://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineers-Disease http://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineer...
      • raymondgh 9y ago
        Agreed. The natural followup to the endorsement is the opportunity for advisement, and I would imagine working founders would only care to advise on startup ideas they themselves cared about, taking us back to the original post's strategy.
      • brunkotj 9y ago
        Shoe button complex - named for the condition of a family friend who spoke in oracular style on all subjects after becoming dominant in the shoe button business.
      • yesbabyyes 9y ago
        I don't know about a formal name, but there definitely is an XKCD :-) https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
  • AndrewKemendo 9y ago
    We're trying to find better ways to get prospective startup founders in contact with problems that really ought to be solved." Ought is a loaded term there in my opinion because it depends on who you ask and what your goals are. A VC and a philanthropist are going to have wildly different answers. 80000 hours [1] has the goal of identifying the most pressing problems in the world [2] and then connecting people with jobs around those. That should be your starting point. [1] https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/ [2] https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/
    • kcorbitt 9y ago
      80,000 hours is a great resource. My personal opinion is that the YC motto of "making something people want" (and will pay for) is mostly a subset of "making the world a better place." It's not a true subset -- there are obviously lots of products out there that people want that end up making the world worse -- but on average I think most good startup ideas end up making the world better. Of course, there are also lots of problems that need to be solved but that aren't a good fit for a for-profit business. Those ones can be harder to tackle, but we do try -- that's why YC also funds non-profits.
    • jsmthrowaway 9y ago
      > Ought is a loaded term there in my opinion because it depends on who you ask and what your goals are. A VC and a philanthropist are going to have wildly different answers. Justin Kan's idea for buyer's remorse insurance on fine art really drives home that you're on point. It should speak volumes that YC is publishing the idea that "fine art purchasing sure is a difficult problem" with a straight face. Let’s put half the valley on that pressing issue. Think about how that went down: oh, hey, Kyle. Great timing on your e-mail! I just bought a Manet and hate it on my wall; I have just the idea for your blog post.
      • thephyber 9y ago
        I noticed that, but instead of jumping straight to "why should I make a service for rich fools?" I thought to myself "what other similar use-cases are there?" If you buy an engagement ring and the proposal gets rejected, you get stuck with a depreciating asset which is hard to sell for anything, let alone for what you buy. Still too high-net-worth for you? Insurance for used-car problems that you don't have to buy from the used car dealer that sells you the car. There's an inherent conflict of interest in a dealer selling you a car and then selling you the hedge against problems with that car. I watched a Charlie Rose interview this week with a famous comic writer who was proud to work in comics, as opposed to painting. His logic was that average people feel dumb and that they are "missing something" if they look at a painting and "don't get it". When you look at a comic and you "don't get it", you are more likely to think the comic is trash and that there is nothing "to get". Similarly, I think the pretentiousness of art gallery sales people is a pressure tactic to get you to buy something you don't really value. I don't think insurance-after-the-fact solves the incentive mismatch for fine art.
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  • rsingla 9y ago
    Thanks for the post, it's refreshing to see some brainstorming being put out there! Along the lines of connecting ideas with prospective founders, I'd like your opinion on something. A common theme I hear when talking to end users or key opinion leaders is that they don't want to divulge their ideas at risk of it being poached. They may be excellent ideas, or forward thinking individuals, but grow concerned about IP/giving away ideas, etc. On the flip side, they often don't have the time or resources to tackle all their ideas (if any) so things don't get done. I speak in particular from a healthcare perspective. In your mind, how would you convince such users to participate in brainstorming more freely?
    • kcorbitt 9y ago
      For whatever reason, the culture in Silicon Valley has evolved to be relatively open about ideas and business plans. As you've discovered, this is a stark contrast with the norms in lots of other industries/parts of the world. This culture of course has a powerful pro-economic side effect -- ideas that are shared have a chance to grow, evolve, be challenged and fork, ultimately coming out stronger and better-developed. To answer your concrete question on how to persuade someone with a different background to open up about their ideas -- maybe share this blog post with them? A little bit of social validation that other successful people are willing to share their ideas can't hurt. :)
    • rficcaglia 9y ago
      Since I have personally received (unsolicited) confidential pitch decks from several first and second tier VCs who have taken a pitch from Company/Founder A, all the while entirely committed to funding Company/Founder B, ie sending the deck around to their network to gather feedback solely for the benefit of Founder B...I would say the concern is well founded. That said, I would also say that "ideas" never get funded...only teams/founders get funded. The idea you start with is rarely the idea that makes a business work. Meanwhile, a good founder/team can take practically any flawed idea ...within reason... and make it work as a business.
    • morgante 9y ago
      > A common theme I hear when talking to end users or key opinion leaders is that they don't want to divulge their ideas at risk of it being poached. That's definitely not my experience. "End users" and people without extensive startup expertise hold their ideas close, but the genuinely experienced founders and experts I know share freely.
  • bluetwo 9y ago
    Your approach flies in the face of the "scratch your own itch" piece of advice and I think it's time to move that advice to the trash can. There are lots of non-technical domains that could benefit from the application of technology and if we only going around fixing problems we run into, we are going to miss out on some great ideas. Might I suggest that rather than thinking about this as "I want to build a company that ___" and then trying to fill in the blank, it would be better to think about what inefficiencies exist in the world that could be improved or eliminated by the creation of a fresh solution. This is really what startups are doing. Without a core inefficiency, there is no need to build a startup.
    • ThomPete 9y ago
      I agree. I actually started an Ask: HN thread a while back asking. "What problems in your industry could be a potential startup?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 what I learned from it ended up in this essay: https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-47ee63bb3511 https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-4... One of the most interesting things is how hard it is for "us" to focus on the problem and not immediately jump to the solution. Today I always ask for problems rather than ideas it's much more useful and allow many more people to participate.
  • shafyy 9y ago
    Appreciate the effort. My feedback is that it seems super random. On the one hand, you say that there is an abundance of ideas, on the other hand, you add more ideas, with the goal that more startups are started. However, YC says that the idea doesn't really affect the outcome of a startup. It just is an indicator if the founders can have good ideas. In that case, giving out ideas and having people start companies based on that gives you zero information about if that startup is going to be successful.
  • cdiamand 9y ago
    Hey Kyle! I have some experience in this space. I run a startup idea repository and newsletter. In my experience, people really want to be put in touch with their first paying customer. As a rule, the more you can help assess the demand for each idea, the better. I have some ideas on how YCombinator could do this at scale, and start founders in a more advantageous position, if that's of interest.
  • thomasjudge 9y ago
    Is this a fake list? Several of these ideas sounded like clever attempts at jokes
  • kromem 9y ago
    Kyle, I applaud the concept of sharing ideas for entrepreneurs to tackle. However, this list of ideas is dangerously bad, with nearly all of them suffering from either monetization challenges or huge execution issues. Anyone that sets out to solve these as-is will end up wasting a great deal of time, effort, and resources. It's generally bad form to approach a startup idea from the perspective of "wouldn't it be great if XYZ existed?" Startup ideas aren't simply about identifying a problem to be solved - they are about identifying problems with achievable solutions that will make money. That's a lot harder to identify. Having founders or investors speculate about "what would be cool" in a problem domain that they don't have much experience in is inevitably going to result in ideas that underestimate transactional costs or the shape of the problem itself. A better approach might be to create a product similar to HN (or extension thereof), where users can post problems identified and/or solutions proposed, and discuss the issues thoroughly, as well as vote up problem/solution pairs that seem like good ideas. This communal discussion should, with a broad enough user base, quickly sieve the problem/solution pairs that are feasible from the ones that are not.
    • imhoguy 9y ago
      I find Ask HN good source of new ideas, sometimes Show HN comments too.
    • zilian 9y ago
      I agree and I've wanted to build a dashboard like this for a while. Matching problems & people looking for building business around real problems. I'm having issues about clarity and upvotes though : how do you favor people who know the domain ?
      • kromem 9y ago
        You let the comments themselves have upvotes. Look at any of the technical subreddits - typically domain experts end up being near the top comments naturally, because they lay out substantive comments. Reddit "flair" is a solution as well. Ideally a platform like this would be able to connect to a LinkedIn profile, and display some relevant info from said profile.
  • elihu 9y ago
    Maybe we need something like a crowdfunding platform, but instead of the campaigns being organized by producers of products looking for customers, the campaigns could be organized by users who are looking for someone to solve a problem they have? The customers could give grants to developers/entrepreneurs to work on a solution to the problem, sort of like the SBIR process. You'd need some sort of grant proposal vetting system -- perhaps the donors could individually approve whichever grants they want their money going towards, and if multiple grants are approved by a sufficient quorum of donors to meet their minimum funding threshold, then you could have multiple teams working on the same problem. There would be a lot of details to work out, but this is starting to sound like yet another startup idea.
    • drdeca 9y ago
      So, would this be a modification of a bounty system?
  • dfps 9y ago
    How about giving us a short article on how to propose new ideas to you, and what happens if we do. Assuming a reader has a usable idea(s) - a best-case scenario but the only one worth providing information for - what would you like them to do to present it, how can they feel safe doing so, and what happens after they do and you like it.
    • username3 9y ago
      What will you do when you like an idea? Give it to someone you chose already in YC or work with the person that has the idea?
  • taurath 9y ago
    I am probably in the minority here, but it seems that the impetus of most of the problems on this list is what would possibly make the most money, written as if that is the measuring stick of the most societally useful startup. The top 5 problems in my city are more on the level of affordable housing, homelessness, drug use, over-incarceration and mental healthcare. I can't help but feel like we have enough gadgets and data, and there are enough products to buy out there for every single income level. As long as we are only solving small problems and doing arbitrage or rent-taking it feels like making a better society is the last thing on anyone's mind.
    • gnarbarian 9y ago
      The whole point of venture capital is to make money.
      • taurath 9y ago
        Whatever happened to changing the world :)
        • gnarbarian 9y ago
          Changing the world is great! Just don't expect to use someone else's money if it's not likely to be profitable.
    • kls 9y ago
      Drugs are easy, but you would have to be able to run books to fix it, maybe in Vegas. You set up a site where you post pictures and a bio of the drug addict. People then place wagers on how long you think they will stay clean and build odds based on that. Said drug abuser gets a cut of the house at 3 months, 6 months and a year and has to submit to drug tests during that period. This cut allows them to rebuild their life and gives them a hell of an incentive to get clean. If they relapse the remaining cut of the house goes into a pool and get's distributed to the rest of the drug addicts that are still on the road to recovery and ups their cuts. It's a win-win, you don't feel like you are gambling if you loose because at least your money is going to a good cause, and if you do win well you still put money towards a good cause. As well you are building an incentiveised safety net for some of the most at risk people.
  • codingdave 9y ago
    I think this list isn't the way to go -- some (not all) of these ideas seem frivolous to me... solving first world problems at best, and just bad ideas at worst. Judging from the comments, I am not alone. But I don't know if I am in the minority or majority in these opinions... therefore, I think a more productive approach would be a small app for people to vote on ideas, letting the best ones bubble to the top of an interactive list. If you really want to get crazy, the resulting list could be integrated into your application process -- "We're team A, with a proposal to solve Problem X, but also have ideas for problems Y and Z."
  • eli 9y ago
    You mentioned "problems that ought to be solved" but the list reads more like "ideas I think can make money". What is the problem that a "social network for kids" is solving, for example? I think it'd be much more useful to, frankly, disregard what other similar founders think might be a martketable idea and to instead find professionals in a variety of high capital spend industries and interview them about problems they face.
• sulam 9y ago
  That moment when someone reveals a lot about what itches they're currently scratching... > Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Money back guarantee for art buyers: Buying fine art has a steep learning curve.
  • giarc 9y ago
    I thought the same thing. I wonder if Justin just bought a $400 million Da Vinci only to find out it might not be real.... :)
  • 33W 9y ago
    I've been intrigued by the idea of establishing a blockchain for the sale and transfer of art. It has the similar characteristics of currency: several parties who do not have trust, a finite number of items (at any point in time). A challenge would be to devise how new items are added - are there a few nodes (trusted galleries) that can add new pieces. This would prevent a work that is in a private collection somewhere from being "discovered" by a forger. Anyone would be able to query the ledger and see that a different collector currently owns the piece.
• stevenj 9y ago
  I'd like to see the social stigma around mental health eliminated. It's commonly viewed as a positive thing to care about, and work toward, better physical health. I wish that were true for mental health. I wish improving your mental health was as normal as going to the gym.
  • zafka 9y ago
    I work for Big-Co, and that has become one of our goals.
  • opportune 9y ago
    Somewhat controversial opinion ahead: I wish the focus were on treatment and compassion rather than awareness. What I fear happening, and think we have already started taking steps towards, is normalizing mental illness to the point of carte blanche acceptance. I had depression for many years and still have my bad days, but I don't want to live/work in a society where you can use mental illness for excuses. The focus should always be on getting help and coping as best as you can. What should become destigmatized is saying "I have condition X" or "I'm getting treatment for condition X and it's really helping", not "I did Y because I have condition X, my b". I also think that while mental illness should be destigmatized, it's still ultimately a private matter. People should feel like they can get help and receive support, but there are a lot of good reasons to not share with family/friends/coworkers about your mental illness. If I had ever told my parents about being depressed they would have lost thousands of hours of sleep worrying about me, and would spend a lot of effort trying to help even though they really couldn't. I also don't want my boss or coworkers to know simply because I don't want to be held to a different standard / treated differently from others, nor do I want any failure of mine to perform or meet commitments to have the (implicit) excuse of mental illness.
    • stevenj 9y ago
      I understand what you're saying. I think focusing on treatment (especially making it more accessible) and compassion are good things, too. I think many people don't get the help they need partly because they feel embarrassed (as well as other reasons). I think that's what the stigma has caused. There's a negative connotation around talking to a professional about things going on in your life or mind. Often times, jokes are made about "shrinks" and such, which I think only exacerbate the situation. And I'd like to comment on your last paragraph. While I think it's fair and up to the individual to keep whatever they want in their life private, I also think in many cases talking about it out in the open, in environment that not only supports it, but where it also feels normal to discuss it, is the ultimate wish. I'm of the opinion that I think most everyone would benefit from talking to someone good* about things that are going on in their lives. While there's a spectrum to mental illness and health, I'd like for society to get to a place where discussing those kinds of things is as normal as discussing a movie you just saw. To get to that point, I think the stigma around mental health will need to change. Talking about something like a breakup with someone is a common experience. If you tell someone you've broken up with your partner, then people don't judge you in the way they judge you for improving your mental health by, say, seeking professional help. In fact, with regard to the breakup, many people offer to listen to you or to make time for you - to help you. That doesn't seem to normally be the case with mental illness or health (and yet I think it's all related). And I hope that changes. And I think one of the best ways for that to happen is to have more-and-more high-profile people talking about it out in the open - even just challenges they've faced personally - from something like a breakup to extreme mental illness. I wish for this partly because I think it will make people more empathetic and understanding toward each other, which I think will make the world a better place. *Like teachers, not everyone (professional or not) is good at it, nor the right fit.
• chromaton 9y ago
  AR as a service is something I've been thinking about for a while. I was thinking more "Stripe for Purchase Orders" though. I can definitely see my business using this. It's a billion dollar business if done correctly.
  • ryanworl 9y ago
    I want to build this. Can you send an email to the address in my profile? I would love to talk to you for 5 minutes about it if you have time.
    • gt_ 9y ago
      Having come into software from creative fields, I wonder how this could be done. Blockchain? I would talk/share my experiences with you. If you are asking enough questions, I might help.
      • rficcaglia 9y ago
        yes, I think this would be a good "smart contract" use case.
  • gt_ 9y ago
    Another comment mentioned invoice factoring, and this is different but I think we have to remember that the big companies are going to use invoice refactoring. This might be one for the blockchain. :O
    • rficcaglia 9y ago
      I think blockchain factoring is interesting, though in the US there are many tax and legal issues surrounding factoring [0]. So blockchain tech alone isn't a sufficient solution long term (as we've seen vis-a-vis ICOs.) I still think there is innovation to be had here, though. [0] https://www.amazon.com/American-Factoring-Law-David-Tatge/dp/1570187924 https://www.amazon.com/American-Factoring-Law-David-Tatge/dp...
  • 9y ago
• deyan 9y ago
  >As I’ve gotten a bit older and gained more experience, I’ve found that valuable startup ideas aren’t actually a scarce resource. In fact, they’re only becoming more abundant — as the world moves faster and more new businesses are created, more novel niches appear for profitable, productive companies. If we define valuable as "profitable, productive companies" then I very much agree that there are plenty of niches out there. However, if we are talking about startups that can actually grow big by Silicon Valley standards, I have personally come to the opposite conclusion. Ideas with the potential to become big are very much THE scarce resource. I used to think that things like capital and teams are scarce, but it turns out there are a lot of sharp hard-working people with access to cash. By contrast, ideas that can grow to a billion dollar outcome are very few. I remember Andy Rachleff saying a decade ago that each year 10-15 companies are started that will eventually grow to become billion-dollar outcomes. My impression is that this pattern has held. What does change all the time is where the opportunities are. Some industries mature, thus potentially closing for new opportunities, at least for a while, e.g. until a tech breakthrough. The good news is that new markets develop all the time, and the cycle repeats. P.S. Thanks for putting this together and sharing with the community. I hope some dots get connected meaningfully.
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  • danieltillett 9y ago
    Yes this is the huge disconnect between the "ideas are worthless" and "ideas are everything" camps. Yes "ideas" are as common as muck (and worth as much), but ideas that will build a billion dollar company are as rare as billion dollar companies.
  • solatic 9y ago
    > Ideas with the potential to become big are very much THE scarce resource. They're also almost inherently unknowable. Look back at the history of almost any large, successful SV company. Google was a search company taking on AltaVista. Facebook let Harvard students put up personal pages, taking on MySpace. Amazon sold books, taking on Borders. All of their founders got negative responses at early attempts at VC funding from "experts" who had no idea of what they were looking at, because small companies, by definition, make small products, and usually in markets with some competition by strong incumbents. Would Google have become as big as they did without Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Android? Would Facebook have become as big as they did without Messenger, Events, public pages for businesses and celebrities? Would Amazon have become as big as they did without AWS and Marketplace/FBA? Execution, not the founding idea, is what turns start-ups into giants.
• martinni 9y ago
  I like the outdoor billboard idea. I'm actually surprised it doesn't exists already!
  • blairanderson 9y ago
    it does! https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/
• frankdenbow 9y ago
  > Accounts Receivables as a Service https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/kinder-gentler-debt-collector-trueaccord-raises-22-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/kinder-gentler-debt-collec... > Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising ADstruc, ADquick > Modern Firefighting Really intrigued by this one. I would go further and say disaster relief in general, as living in Puerto Rico showed me how ill-equipped we are to deal with finding the status of people with no communications, and getting aid to the right places.
  • thefahim 9y ago
    Hey, co-founder of AdQuick here. We're funded by Initialized Capital/Garry Tan and other YC partners. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/
  • mLuby 9y ago
    I want to see mecha firefighters with buzzsaws and these cannons for arms: https://twitter.com/MachinePix/status/928387852399865859 https://twitter.com/MachinePix/status/928387852399865859
  • rficcaglia 9y ago
    re: debt collection: just my experience in several small/startup companies... Sending your biggest (only) customer to a debt collector, no matter how gentle, might be counterproductive. We often get a PO from a reputable, but disorganized or bureaucratic BigCo. We want that to be a good relationship, and we want more business from BigCo. We want positive reviews and testimonials from them. BigCo. is good for the money...eventually... but like any BigCo. they have all the leverage and for many reasons can delay payment until it is convenient for them. Meanwhile we need to pay bills. As such, a gentler debt collector is not really what we want since the person we would nag (however gently) would likely be the person who needs to green light future projects and be a champion in future discussions throughout BigCo. What we typically do in the worst case is tell them that it's been great working with you, but we have employees and bills to pay, so if the invoice isn't paid, unfortunately we will have to disable their account in X days. 99% of the time we get paid the next day. The 1% we had to disable were likely never going to be good customers so I am glad we fired them. Granted, this only works in a SaaS like scenario, not in cases where the work is one-time and handed over to the customer. In those cases, I would recommend requiring pre-payment, at least partial pre-payment. I often pay programmers on fixed bid projects 33% up front, 33% on release for acceptance testing, and 33% when final bugs are fixed. We both take risks, but if we have both done due diligence, then there's rarely a problem. A smart contract that auto-pays upon (phased) delivery, etc. could be useful, and remove a lot of hassle/anxiety. From what I've seen, can't that be done "out of the box" today with an ethereum contract?
• rsingla 9y ago
  Smart bathrooms are an excellent idea, particularly in the case of seniors and the aging population. There's interesting research being done from University of Toronto [0]. For those suffering from Alzheimer's or challenges that impact their day-to-day, the smart bathroom may be a way to improve their quality of life and give them back some independence. [0] 2008 Toronto Star article on Prof. Alex Mihailidis - https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2008/09/01/u_of_ts_talking_washroom_guy.html https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2008/09/01/u_of...
  • bambax 9y ago
    That does sound like an excellent idea. Many many informations about one's health are found in feces, and yet collecting them to give them to a lab is, well, repugnant. If we could somehow have a sensor in the toilet that would scan them every day, that would be invaluable (and probably save lives).
    • danvoell 9y ago
      I was also intrigued by this.
    • jabretti 9y ago
      You could probably sell a lot in Germany too. Germans are crazy about analysing their own feces.
      • bambax 9y ago
        Yes! Their toilets have a special shape so that one can look at their own poo before flushing it.
        • giarc 9y ago
          I found that out the hard way when I went to the Czech Republic.
• richiverse 9y ago
  Like the firefighting idea. Might as well throw policing in there as well. An army of sufficiently smart drones should be enough to drastically reduced the size of those labor pools.
  • personlurking 9y ago
    Not too smart, hopefully (7-min video, AI Slaughterbots) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • atonse 9y ago
    Please, no. If we have learned anything from all this police violence, it's that police are not interacting with their communities enough, and seeing their fellow humans as even less human. Making policing even less personal gets us further from that goal. We need MORE community engagement, more handshakes, more of all that.
  • FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    Drone coverage isn't that hard of an idea to think about. I think autonomous logistics of this is much better though. A drone that can navigate itself to refuel at autonomous fueling facilities, and a system that manages and dispatches a drone fleet's coverage depending on the conditions: - less coverage in the wetter seasons - more coverage during dry seasons and droughts - biases for coverage areas that experts think might be more at risk, informed by an expert - biases for coverage when fire-prone weather patterns are expected, informed by NOAA weather data However, with SpaceX costs going down, small satellites might be more beneficial or cost-effective, and might have a different regulatory route than drones with the FAA. The satellite detects areas of cloud cover and helps coordinate the fleet to fly underneath the clouds for fire coverage. But navigating regulations is the biggest piece of lock-in value, and it's the FAA with drones and NASA with satellites. Otherwise you'd have to buy satellite time.
• indescions_2017 9y ago
  >>> The Baby Bidet Just wanted to say that I love this space. Smart products targeting ages 0-5. As well as smart business models to reduce waste. And promote recycling of baby products. One example: Owlet smart sock monitor https://owletcare.com/ https://owletcare.com/
  • kcorbitt 9y ago
    Totally. As the father of an 18-month-old, as soon as I saw the baby bidet idea I really wished it existed!
  • ynniv 9y ago
    Yes, but (1) our nursery doesn't have a sink and our sink doesn't have room for baby things, and (2) holding a squirming baby over a bidet doesn't sound less messy to me. There's a lot of potential in the space, but this particular one needs practical user testing.
  • dctoedt 9y ago
    A better idea would be to funnel the "rinse" water into some kind of container from which it could be disposed of in the toilet as opposed to the sink. I can just hear my wife saying "not in my [bathroom or, worse, kitchen] sink you're not going to do that!"
  • elechi 9y ago
    Wouldn't a hand-held faucet inside a farmer's sink basically be the same thing?
    • Nition 9y ago
      There are bidet-like sprayers for spraying poop off of cloth nappies into the toilet[1]. There are also similar actual bidet attachments for toilets for adults[2]. I was thinking you could almost do the same thing as those and just make it smaller and low pressure. [1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/SmarterFresh-Diaper-Sprayer-Premium-Stainless/dp/B014V793E6 https://www.amazon.com/SmarterFresh-Diaper-Sprayer-Premium-S... [2] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/RinseWorks-Certified-Warranty-Pressure-Controls/dp/B01CF51ZJ2 https://www.amazon.com/RinseWorks-Certified-Warranty-Pressur...
• dboreham 9y ago
  "Accounts Receivables as a Service" Interesting one since I a) worked at a startup in this area long ago (they ran out of money..for reasons see below) and b) I now run a company and have found customers dislike for paying on time to be a significant irritation. However, unless this proposed "AR Service" has a way to get a horse's head into the bed of the late payer's CFO, how are they going to achieve anything? In my experience simply asking for payment doesn't achieve much. They're paying late because they want to and unless you have a way to force them to pay (e.g. stop providing your services to them) and that seems hard to outsource.
  • pjc50 9y ago
    There are definitely outsourced debt collectors and bailiffs who will recover debts for you, up to and including getting court orders to seize property. Strangely this doesn't overlap with the "happy path" of normal AR processing.
    • dboreham 9y ago
      This only works if the debt value is such that the costs of legal recovery process are justified. It also only works if there is property to seize.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • yaseer 9y ago
    Agreed, without the ability to exert pressure, getting people to pay by asking is not meaningful. Otherwise, it's solved with a script that repeatedly emails escalating copy. I can only hope one day, horse heads will be available via Amazon Prime drone delivery, accessible through an API.
  • seibelj 9y ago
    Wouldn't a simple solution be to add high interest to unpaid invoices over a certain time? I've seen invoices with this clause. Of course, you can selectively enforce.
• giarc 9y ago
  >Low-Friction Lending Library I think public libraries should start to serve this role. My local library (Calgary) has started to build up a collection of musical instruments that can be borrowed [0]. I'm sure there are other examples out there. I can see libraries expanding into tool libraries (drill, saw, hammer etc). 0 - https://calgarylibrary.ca/borrow-a-musical-instrument/ https://calgarylibrary.ca/borrow-a-musical-instrument/
  • karmel 9y ago
    Berkeley has a tool-lending library which is useful for the once-in-three-years that you need a ladder or a belt sander: https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/locations/tool-lending-library https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/locations/tool-lending...
  • bambax 9y ago
    Maybe. But when I need a hammer or drill or saw, I need it now. If I have to go to the library, which may be closed, or may be out of what I need, that won't do it for me. Libraries work for books because they offer a large selection of items you may only use once, or just browse over. But (inexpensive) tools? You wouldn't rent a dictionary for example...?
    • giarc 9y ago
      Perhaps hammer and drill were a bad example. Think more of things like a ladder. Ladders are expensive and likely won't be used that frequently. You usually know ahead of time when you need it (going to wash windows on the weekend, put up Christmas lights, paint your house).
      • always_good 9y ago
        It's a fine example. I was a poor student and now I'm a minimalist. I can't imagine owning tools when I can borrow them. I've also never had a tool emergency that couldn't wait until the morning -- or maybe just a couple times in my life. Tools aren't like a dictionary because there is no digital/online replacement for a saw.
• onewland 9y ago
  Smart Pipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
• personlurking 9y ago
  A side-story related to firefighting, from Wikipedia's History of firefighting: "The first ever Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius Crassus. He was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) "fire and rapine." One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value." Also, as this was featured as a Reddit TIL, here are a few interesting comments: https://imgur.com/a/Fhuc5 https://imgur.com/a/Fhuc5
  • Balgair 9y ago
    Maybe this could work as a B2G route, like the guys making the firefighting helicopters selling to CalFire. But yeah, this smells like they are trying to find a way to privatize firefighting, which is not cool (pardon the pun)
    • jabretti 9y ago
      It seems to me more like they're just trying to build firefighting drones. It's not clear to me that they have any actual insight into how said drones might help, or how firefighting is done at the moment.
      • twic 9y ago
        Surely it's simply a question of putting fire on the blockchain?
      • giarc 9y ago
        I volunteered for a search and rescue organization for awhile. There was some interest in drones simply to get overhead video of a collapsed building etc. Currently you are limited to walking over the rubble. If you could have a drone fly overhead and identify victims or unsafe areas, it could really help.
• mark242 9y ago
  > Social Network for Children Counterpoint-- this should not be built. Kids already have a social network, it's called the playground at school. Having children engage with their friends outside of school time is a fine goal, but there are plenty of existing after-school activities that encourage this interaction. These activities also don't put the undue stress of having to decipher typed language, nuance, and other online-only pressures that adults can barely deal with, much less children. Get your kids into scouts. Get them into a team sport. Get them into dance. Get them into after-school STEAM activities. Whatever those activities are, that's up to their preferences, but most importantly they are out and engaging with their peers face to face. That "3pm - 6pm" window of time is important for children to play, and having them spend even a portion of that time hitting a like button or whatever other social network validation activities seems extremely disingenuous to me.
  • paulryanrogers 9y ago
    ^STEM ? EDIT: ah, now I see (A)rt
  • bambax 9y ago
    Yes. What a horrible idea. I re-read the paragraph to see if by "Social Network" they meant something else, or it was tongue-in-cheek, but no, it seems they meant exactly that: "Facebook for preschoolers, with parental supervision". That should never be built... and yet, somehow, we just know it will.
  • opportune 9y ago
    Couldn't agree more. Social networks are deliberately designed to be addictive and can definitely cause problems with self esteem - doesn't seem like something kids should be engaged in at all. Additionally, if anything we should be exposing children to less advertisement, not more. This almost sounds like some sick "hook em while they're young" scheme
    • kordlessagain 9y ago
      > Social networks are deliberately designed to be addictive Social networks are addictive because if they aren't, they fail and cease to be adopted at scale. Somehow we seem to be OK with this happening to ourselves. It is only when it happens to our innocent children that we start to revolt.
• adamonkey 9y ago
  Smart Bathroom These bathrooms don't necessarily need to be targeted at households. It could make sense for office buildings, so that: -costs/person can be kept low -it is easier for the employer to handle connecting measurements to medical IDs (scan an app/employee ID) -it is easier for employers to negotiate directly with providers to lower health insurance (I believe some companies already do this with Fitbits, e.g. John Hancock)
  • chmike 9y ago
    I bet companies would want that. They could detect if employee use drugs, etc. But this might become a privacy problem if it goes too far.
• ianstormtaylor 9y ago
  > Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising > Billboards are still sold manually by sales teams. You literally cannot buy a billboard online. If people could buy them as easily as you buy an Adwords ad, maybe many more small companies would. It's interesting how these ideas continually arise. And as described it seems like a virtuous idea. By solving the scaling issues of the marketplace, smaller and smaller companies can buy ads. Which is good because it evens the playing field and reduces monopolistic behaviors, making the market more free. But by solving those scaling issues, you'd also be making it easier for bad actors to buy advertisements. (In this case huge billboards.) And without collecting a _lot_ more data, or allowing a company to policy free speech, there would end up being much less accountability for who is buying the advertisements, and who is seeing them. You end up with the same situation Facebook, Google and Twitter are answering for in Congress right now. [0] I don't have a solution, other than to stop building these types of marketplaces, but it is disconcerting. We keep creating systems that have positive benefits, but at the expense of rarer-but-huge negative consequences, that are often "solved" by infringing more and more on our privacy to prevent the black-swan events from occurring. PS. If anyone has interesting reading along these lines, I'd love to hear it. [0]: https://stratechery.com/2017/tech-goes-to-washington/ https://stratechery.com/2017/tech-goes-to-washington/
  • cma 9y ago
    Other countries have sane campaign finance and campaign advertising laws. I think it is outside of their scope in posting this idea to try and make up their own internal ones and enforce them (and enforcement would inevitably colored by their own political bias).
  • calbear81 9y ago
    I think the comparison to Adwords is misleading about what this idea really is. This is just a self-serve and automated marketplace for billboard ads. Adwords is much more specific to the combination of targeting intent through search terms or content on a page (adsense)and then delivering relevant ads in an open auction. The type of targeting for these billboards will be closer to display advertising targeting based on demographics (who drives along this freeway, who rides this bus), seasonality, etc.
• pjc50 9y ago
  > Renewable Energy from Engineered Microbes This has been one of those things that's 5 years away for decades. Great if you can make it happen. > Social Network for Children Club Penguin was quite successful for a while.
  • Uhhrrr 9y ago
    Club Penguin was indeed successful, until Disney bought it and killed it. I suppose you could say that means it has a proven business model.
• yvsong 9y ago
  Is startup limited to technology or business? The most urgent needs of the world are political or social. Generally, promoting logical reasoning and emotional control.
  • elechi 9y ago
    Business.
• blang 9y ago
  > Low-Friction Lending Library I've thought about this one on and off for many years. I still think it's a great idea, but whenever I get to the liability part (both damage to person using a lended drill or hey you broke my drill) I get discouraged and stop thinking about it.
  • ccozan 9y ago
    You need to partner with an insurer and add a small amount on top of the price. However still not sure, since someone wanted to have the tool _now_ , if a such shop would be open 24/7, in contrast of a library.
    • 33W 9y ago
      For the 24/7 aspect, some version of an automat, perhaps with an amazon now or uber eats delivery model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
• sidcool 9y ago
  No one here seems excited about the Dr Dolittle tech. I would love to get one.
• jansho 9y ago
  Hmm it’s true that we’re mostly familiar with what problems need to be solved. And yet it’s either high failure rate or too little effort to address them. So I see the key being the founding team. I know that that is repeated ad nauseum, but it’s often as an instruction and no more (”Find a great cofounder!”) Well, in real life, it’s hard to find a truly complementary cofounder - let alone a team - even if one has a great network. It’s not just talent, it’s other things like personality traits and leadership styles. The greatest ones like Jobs/Wozniak only comes once in a while, and that’s thanks to luck. So why not frame this as an actual problem statement? For example, for problem x, what’s the ideal makeup of the team to solve it? How do we find brilliant and passionate individuals and bring them together? How do we sustain that team energy and commitment to the vision? So maybe, that’s something for startup incubators to think about. Basically a sort of recruitment, Avengers style.
• Finbarr 9y ago
  There are hundreds of startup ideas in the Yellow Pages trending section: https://www.yellowpages.com/san-francisco-ca/trends/1 https://www.yellowpages.com/san-francisco-ca/trends/1
  • austenallred 9y ago
    That's a fascinating way to think about it
  • arkitaip 9y ago
    See, I think this comment is far more interesting than the article itself. I'm certain there is a method of finding high value-low effort startup ideas digging thru unconventional data like the link you provided.
    • Finbarr 9y ago
      I think it’s hard to find startup ideas by reading the tech press and HN. It’s easy if you just look around you as you go about your daily life, then research anything you don’t understand. A few industries I’ve researched this way: * Porta potties * Dumpster rental * Bail bonds * Funerals There are millions of legitimate businesses out there that have hardly been touched by tech.
      • swendoog 9y ago
        And what's hilarious is that the top comment in this thread is about starting yet another social network. Myopic to say the least.
        • Retra 9y ago
          Sure, but if you're willing to do anything to make a buck, that isn't any less myopic.
  • jptoor 9y ago
    Interesting to look at differences by city: https://www.yellowpages.com/new-york-ny/trends/ https://www.yellowpages.com/new-york-ny/trends/ Highlights - Jetskis in SF, Escorts in NY
• Torai 9y ago
  "Ideas" is a broad concept. Those are not product definitions explaining it's characteristics, what problem they solve and how the are bein monetized in detail. Those are just paragraphs talking about markets with potential money. I have a really great concept I had a week ago, and I'm now writing a detailed document about it. I'm currently employed and I plan to kickstart it by means of some contact in a group chat that is going to Thailand and there she has a domestic friend who is successful at coding (I think) and is launching an startup/product. I saw his product, the concept fails. I have a $Billion+ idea, and I'm not exagerating. This is my realist side talking about it. I already had been too optimistic about my ideas in the past. What I want to say is I would love to start working about it with an elite tech team and some money behind it... But there is no way I'm posting it here, explaining it as best as I can (the vision, the why's...) for the public. No f*g way. Do you really think ideas are worth nothing? All the first intuition about a problem you are trying to solve, that depends on parameters like motivation, experience and (abstract-visual like) intelligence. All the market analysis you can make about it. The detailing and identifying the core elements that make your service great. And so on. All of that is inside the definition of idea. So no, I don't think they are worthless.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • heartbreak 9y ago
    I have a multi billion dollar idea where everyone in the world gives me a dollar for no reason. Want to invest?
    • Torai 9y ago
      No, cause: - The concept fails. People is not giving you money for no service. - Your answer lacks the creativity required for a person with good ideas.
      • akawry 9y ago
        whoosh
• blizkreeg 9y ago
  I've thought about the firefighting idea as well, especially after the recent Sonoma and Napa fire. Sprinkler systems for indoor fires are not that uncommon now. Why aren't there sprinkler/fire retardant systems for the perimeter/external part of a house? In a wildfire, I can't imagine a better way to fight the fire from spreading through a neighborhood than a system that auto-deploys when it senses smoke on the periphery of a house/neighborhood, instantly killing the flames. A top-down approach to fire-fighting is expensive and in a raging fire, not so effective from what we've seen so far. Perhaps, we need to adopt a more distributed approach (ie individual homes and localities protect themselves). Of course, it would have to have broad adoption, but I bet if it's proven to work well, some homeowners would just install it on their property, especially if the property is close to areas more prone to wildfires. You could probably even get a discount on your homeowners policy. If anyone wants to brainstorm this, do email me at vintya9@gmail.com.
  • jabretti 9y ago
    This is naive. A bushfire is huge, hot, and fast-moving, consuming entire trees in seconds. Your mains-pressure water sprinkler will not deter an onrushing wall of flame in the least... and worse, an automated system would take water away from where it's needed.
    • blizkreeg 9y ago
      Perhaps. But does it have to be water? How do you know something won't work until you try it? Even with all the fire retardant sprayed onto massive wildfires from the sky, we're unable to stop them. Why wouldn't a different approach work? If you read about the Napa fires, some neighborhoods in Santa Rosa were entirely burned to the ground not because of a wall of gushing fire, but because some embers from further away landed on dried up brush and leaves and started the fire in that area.
      • dreamcompiler 9y ago
        For low, slow fires like grass fires, it does not have to be water. Watery foam with bubbles of CO2 or another fire-inert gas can work well for smothering the fire. But the equipment to make foam properly is expensive and finicky and not all fire departments have it. And foam won't help much as a heat sink which is where water really shines. Heat sinks are what you need for big fires. Lots and lots of water. Forest fires are never put out with water--you just can't get enough water where it's needed. Instead, you use small amounts of air-dropped water and fire breaks to steer the fire where you want it to go and let it run out of fuel.
• regularfry 9y ago
  `Accounts Receivables as a Service` Does invoice factoring not exist in the US? It's a fairly run of the mill concept in the UK, and it's nothing like debt collection.
  • clavalle 9y ago
    Yes. It is a multibillion dollar industry. Also a relatively quiet one so I understand the confusion.
  • brianbreslin 9y ago
    I know at least one company offering this in a modern package.
    • iforiq 9y ago
      Which one? Paid labs? This is a big problem we've faced too, currently our bookkeeper does it for us, which can get expensive as they charge by the hour.
      • brianbreslin 9y ago
        Tesorio
        • rficcaglia 9y ago
          I looked at them [0] but I don't see anything to do with "get me paid faster" (aka collections or factoring) but they seem to have a "demo wall" to get any meaningful info. I assume what they do is show you data you already have but maybe don't appreciate fully, e.g. if BigCo pays you on average 30 days late you can see that before you embark on some new project. Cool, but not necessarily getting me paid faster. Helping me avoid risk perhaps. Maybe I missed it but if you know more, maybe you can give some examples of how they solve this? Genuinely interested since I too have this problem on occasion. [0] https://www.tesorio.com/ https://www.tesorio.com/
• ukulele 9y ago
  > AI for communicating with dogs This is borderline satire. You don't need some crazy new idea to do a startup. You need to execute well on something people want, and if you're out looking for ideas, your best bet is probably to enter an existing market and cater to a subset of it better than others are doing.
  • wonderous 9y ago
    Most animals are way more expressive that the average person is able to easily understand and pet tech would easily be a billion dollar market. EDIT: I would also be happy to do this startup if YC adds me to the next batch; already offered to do one for the “Social Network for Children”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15715865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15715865
    • wanderingjew 9y ago
      Real life is not a Pixar movie.
    • marcosdumay 9y ago
      > more expressive that the average person is able to easily understand The average person can understand way more than you are giving credit. And anyway, if the average person can't understand some communication, than it's something completely out the league of current AIs. It's the one thing we are good at.
      • wonderous 9y ago
        There’s a long list of AI that now outperforms humans both at the per task level and at scale. Beyond that, as defined by the spec for the startup, I have no reason to believe AI built for this would not be able to do the same for this task.
      • thephyber 9y ago
        > than it's something completely out the league of current AIs I beg to differ[1]. The average human isn't autistic, but there is still significant value in using AI to tell us what we are doing wrong (and wrap the product up so it doesn't make us fell like crap while we are doing it). Behavior modification bots would be incredibly useful for helping people see their own shortcomings (cognitive science research shows us that we frequently see the flaws in others but are systematically blind to our own). [1] http://autismglass.stanford.edu/ http://autismglass.stanford.edu/ [2] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609142/andrew-ng-has-a-chatbot-that-can-help-with-depression/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609142/andrew-ng-has-a-ch...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jfarlow 9y ago
  > Renewable Energy from Engineered Microbes This has been done. Amyris [1], among those that survived the effort, and JBEI from a quasi-academic approach [2]. From first principles, it just is not a good business proposition to compete to synthesize from scratch one of the very cheapest of commodities. Fuels, by volume, are one of the least expensive chemicals one can buy. The biological technology exists, but competing against a few hundred million year's energetic headstart is just not economically viable (unless oil goes above a few hundred a barrel). The same technology can produce fragrances, medicines, dyes, etc, all which go for hundreds of dollars a liter, or one could produce ethanol which goes for less than a hundred dollars a barrel. And so that's why companies like Zymergen tend to not produce fuels, even though they easily could. [1] https://amyris.com/products/fuels/ https://amyris.com/products/fuels/ [2] https://www.jbei.org/ https://www.jbei.org/
• wonderous 9y ago
  I will commit to doing the “Social Network for Children” if YC puts me in the next batch; this is not a random offer, I have thought about this before and have a solid idea of how to merge the parent’s role in oversight and the child’s right to privacy. If YC has a baseline to reach before considering an app for this topic, please let me know. Thanks!
  • neogodless 9y ago
    I've thought about it a lot. For a while, I had a somewhat social, mostly private family and friends web site, and then everyone had all these kids, and the ideas started to percolate. I never took the time to think through all the implications of safely granting access, giving the children some room to breathe, while keeping the parents at arm's length. Definitely an interesting challenge. I think of the fun post-pal relationships I had growing up, and I think there's room for something like that in the online world.
    • wonderous 9y ago
      Reason I thought about it was a reasoning for more privacy within social networks and the average person would often not get the demand for this, but would quickly agree that kids need it; basically, to me this is a door to more meaningful private social networks.
  • lytol 9y ago
    I was a senior engineer at a startup that evolved into this space – basically, we started as a browser for kids and slowly started adding more "social" features. I thought I'd add a few notes in case you (or someone else) goes down this road: - Monetization is hard. As much as parents vocally _desire_ a safe space for their kids online, it doesn't translate to their wallet. If you end up going for more indirect revenue (ads, branded experience, etc), you'll find yourself in ethical gray areas quickly. - Read up heavily on COPPA. It is by no means insurmountable, but it adds more work and restricts what you can/can't do. - Social interaction needs to either be severely limited or heavily moderated, both of which have serious problems. You can't just throw a kid into peer-to-peer chat rooms or private chat for obvious reasons. Likewise, a kid gets bored quickly with a pre-determined set of "emotes" or canned text. Finding a balance between the two is very difficult. - Parents care less than they think they do. Every parent, from casual conversation to focus groups, will light up at the idea of a kid-safe internet/social network. However, we found parent engagement to severely drop after initial sign up, despite how active the kid might be. We did weekly reports on kid activity and interests, ways to share content and engage with your kid, etc – all of which was rarely used. Granted, it's quite possible (probable) that we missed the mark, and that we just didn't have the right timing/vision/execution, but there was enough friction that I came out the other end with a strong bias against working in the kids' space again.
• cubecul 9y ago
  > Low-Friction Lending Library https://www.beomni.com/ https://www.beomni.com/ is tackling this I think!
• gowld 9y ago
  > Lending Library https://myturn.com https://myturn.com
• mceoin 9y ago
  > Billboard Advertising. Adquick is a startup attacking this. Huge space though. > Low-Friction Lending Library. My friends use Omni for this, works out great actually, $5 for a delivery.
• nasirmaziz 9y ago
  Meh
• brianbreslin 9y ago
  I think the old request for startups post were more "impactful" and more in line with the direction that I would hope Silicon Valley was heading. Buyers remorse for art to me isn't a world changing idea. https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/
• jsonne 9y ago
  No offense to Mr Friedman, but almost everyone that works in marketing and tech has had the adwords for billboards idea, or tv or radio for that matter. I once upon a time played with an adwords for trade magazines idea that went nowhere. This is one of those things where almost every single entrenched player has incentives to keep this from becoming the reality, and outside owning the inventory outright I don't think its possible to change this system. (As a note someone please prove me wrong)
  • hpvic03 9y ago
    We're working on it for billboards: https://www.adquick.com https://www.adquick.com https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/ We still have a long ways to go, but I think there's a good chance we'll prove you wrong :)
    • jsonne 9y ago
      Do it. I want it badly. How are you getting around the problem of sales people guarding their inventory so closely? In addition, how are you coordinating with media companies to make sure that the brands advertising are within their guidelines?
      • thefahim 9y ago
        Also co-founder at AdQuick here. We work with sales people daily and getting their inventory to our customers. They love that we are bringing them new business. As for brand guidelines, we're in constant communication so this isn't much of an issue.
        • jsonne 9y ago
          > They love that we are bringing them new business If that's true that's great but it's the opposite experience of what I've experienced with large media companies. They pretty jealously guard their inventory and hate the idea of transparent pricing. That's great if you haven't experienced it yet, but I suspect you will at some point. Best of luck to you regardless. I'm rooting for you.
• plehoux 9y ago
  > With the arrival of autonomous drones, industrial drones, better sensors and better prediction we should be able do a better job saving our forests, cities and firefighters. My wife is a forest engineer and a good friend of her works at detecting fire at the Sopfeu http://www.sopfeu.qc.ca/en http://www.sopfeu.qc.ca/en. Sopfeu moto: > Optimize forest fire protection to ensure the sustainability of the forest environment for the good of the community, and to do so at the lowest possible cost. Obviously, Quebec territory is massive, and most of it is forest land with no inhabitant. So protection goals are not the same as in let's say California. But one thing my girlfriend always tells me (and her friend) is that forest fires are part of the natural cycle of all forest ecosystem (at least the Boreal one). You cannot prevent/fight fires in a natural ecosystem, you can only control them to some extent. To prevent fires, you need to actively manage a forest. Create natural barrier (cut trees), remove combustible (death wood), etc. Without those heavy interventions, there will be fire at some point. So detection is only part of the solution.
• yters 9y ago
  The animal communication AI sounds really interesting. With enough video and audio recording seems pretty doable, too. Imagine being able to interpret all the bird tweets in the area.
• bdz 9y ago
  >Social Network for Children rip Club Penguin
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• sexydefinesher 9y ago
  Its like Über, but for elevators.
• austenallred 9y ago
  Nobody cares about my asset securitization on the blockchain idea :(
  • wonderous 9y ago
    Possible that I’m misunderstand your model, but I’ve thought about the topic before, mainly for art and to give artist a means of profiting off the future demand for an orginal work, add in tracking the province, etc. Exactly what are the assets you want to use the blockchain to market as securities and why? Happy to talk with you more about it, very interested in being in a YC batch too.
  • louprado 9y ago
    > not only tokens but anything else that can be bought or sold. Ownership is a combination of possession, control, and enforcement. Blockchain solves the issue with tokens, maybe helps with digital assets, but anything ? I own my house, for example, because the county records show I own it. But more importantly the county will enforce my ownership and also enforce any related contracts using an armed sheriff. All that said, I often find myself thinking about this quixotic problem.
    • austenallred 9y ago
      Yeah, don't take it too literally. I'm thinking equities, assets, debt obligations, etc.
• 659087 9y ago
  > Smart Bathroom I'm just going to try to give them the benefit of the doubt here and assume this was meant as a joke. > Baby Bidet Better make it "smart" too... because what could possibly go wrong? Maybe have Google provide a wireless camera that "uses AI to verify cleanliness". > Social Network for Children Because it's best to start collecting data on them before they're old enough to understand what they're giving up and make an informed choice about whether or not they want advertising corporations to have an archive of their entire life. Maybe we can even incorporate the data from the "Smart Baby Bidet" and "Smart Bathroom" into the network!
• clydethefrog 9y ago
  The Smart Bathroom idea seems beyond parody. See the Smart Pipe satire infomercial comedy channel Adult Swim produced in 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
• foxhedgehog 9y ago
  what if there was an ML to generate startup ideas and then you securitized that on the blockchain
• arkades 9y ago
  Re Smart Bathroom: Every time I hear about all-knowing toilets, I continue to feel it’s putting the cart way ahead of the horse. There’s a rule in medicine: don’t order a test whose outcome doesn’t change your decision. That’s not about cost-savings, it’s about avoiding false positives that make no sense in clinical context but raise flags that must be chased down. This sort of thing is literally promising to just continually run un-merited urinalysis left and right. “More data” is not inherently good. Without a framework of information for interpretation of that data, it will do far more harm than good. Honestly, the reason so little tech disruption keeps happening in the provision of medical services: no one trying to “disrupt” bothers asking what is or is not useful. There are just some ideas completely out of touch with what people need or want or have friction over, and they just refuse to die because they’re the most obvious ideas to have if you’re unfamiliar with the territory.
  • wonderous 9y ago
    Generally speaking the topic falls into the desire to have real-time/always-on data feeds that magically produce value just because they’re always producing data. That said, beyond asking the obvious, why do you need the data real-time and how much value does this produce, I do not know a better filter or means to guide a startup covering this ground.
    • arkades 9y ago
      There is no easy guide. Speak to the people doing the work, and target your innovation to the existing revenue streams (that is, if your product benefits an insurer, why are you pitching it to the patients?). As someone in the industry I do of course have a wishlist, but, you know. As to clean: a self cleaning toilet and a roomba living in the corner is a huge step away from treating your toilet as an always-on medical lab.
  • mynegation 9y ago
    There is (pretty horrible) joke: "If violence does not solve the problem, you are not using enough of it". It may be the case with data. Put another way, we may be in the uncanny valley of data. There is definitely an issue of under-diagnosis for many diseases. More data may not help initially but once we are over the critical mass in the amount of data and sophistication of ML algorithms trained on it, it will get over the hump.
• pascalxus 9y ago
  Getting good ideas/big problems is VERY important, so I applaud that. But, the more important question we should be asking is, are these problems of customers who "have their hair on fire?". If not, then it'll probably go nowhere. How much are customers willing to spend to have these problems solved? This reminds of that Website that answered just that question. I just can't remember what it was. does anyone else remember the name of that site? It was on HN about 3 to 8 months ago, if i remember correctly.
  • wonderous 9y ago
    Are you talking about this website: https://nugget.one https://nugget.one
    • pascalxus 9y ago
      no, there was another one, where people post problems along with a dollar amount that they would pay for to have the problem solved.
      • ssijak 9y ago
        Ops daily
• taurath 9y ago
  Re: dog detection - please don't train your neural networks by poking dogs with sticks.
• j_m_b 9y ago
  I've had this idea to find a way to connect landscapers and homeowners to people seeking to buy yard waste for use in various composts and mulches. What gave me this idea was that I had a tree cut down and chipped in my neighborhood. By simply asking, the guys gave me a huge pile of wood mulch! I gave them $50 as a tip. Had I gone through a mulching company, I would have paid closer to $300. I feel like there are lots of opportunities like this that exist. Drawbacks: Very seasonal in temperate climates. Getting initial providers. Fluctuations in supply/demand. Some communities process yard waste for free.
  • 33W 9y ago
    I think I found this through HN a while back: https://getchipdrop.com/ https://getchipdrop.com/
    • j_m_b 9y ago
      Hah awesome... idea has existed for years!
• ahussain 9y ago
  I honestly cannot tell if some of these ideas are real or just parodies of silicon valley, "avocado toast" tech culture: - AI for Communicating with Dogs - Baby Bidet - AR Debt Collector - Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Are these really the most pressing problems start-ups could be solving right now? What about issues like cost of housing in cities, urban transport, infrastructure in the developing world, fixing 'fake news', new (non-ads) business models for the web, modern banking, helping refugees and displaced persons, more energy efficient air-conditioning, voice-to-voice language translation, collective decision making tools, reducing air pollution...
  • Waterluvian 9y ago
    Those problems aren't sexy and can't get anyone rich quick.
    • Kalium 9y ago
      You're right, a lot of those problems aren't sexy. Yet, they're all critical problems that must be solved. That said, some of them are sexy. Voice-to-voice translation, for example, is already being worked on substantially. Most of those problems, though, seem to me to be more political problems than technological ones. The cost of housing in cities, the failure to help refugees and displaced persons, tools for collective decision-making, and infrastructure in the developing world are not problems that can be solved by throwing technology at them. These are political problems. In technological senses, every single one of these items is known, understood, and holds few mysteries for execution. In every single one of these cases, there are real obstacles that generally cannot be removed by technology. Maybe someone wants to launch a startup to convince cities to permit housing to be built? Of course, I'm pretty sure that would be a lobbying group or advocacy non-profit... things that already exist and work very differently. People do very often just grab for the sexiest problem at hand. There are always other problems that could be solved. Yet, it's perhaps possible that the startup model isn't the right tool for every problem
      • ahussain 9y ago
        I agree with you, but if we think that many of our most pressing problems are political/governmental at their core, then doesn't that mean tech is a little impotent? - maybe we ought to be more careful about using "change the world" narratives, and maybe we should be encouraging more of our brightest minds to go into politics and government, if that's where the really interesting problems are. * I am being a little facetious here, but only because I don't think I don't think tech has nothing left to offer in these, more challenging, problems.
• thisrod 9y ago
  > Make Technology Relatable and Accessible I've considered drawing up a directed acyclic graph of fault propagation in Linux. E.g., an incorrect WPA key causes WiFi to be misconfigured causes the physical network layer to be unavailable causes ... big tangled DAG ... causes the web to be inaccessible causes Facebook to fail. This might be stored as a bunch of files in /usr/consequences. Software packages would come with extra files to model their usual failure modes. The error message in the web browser would refer you to the "web inacessible" node in the DAG. You would input that into a program that automatically tested for faults and walked back though the causal links to find the mistyped WPA key. The leaf node for a simple fault like that would suggest ways to fix it (keys are printed on modems, take care with O and 0, etc.) and would link to the relevant man pages. I think that a tool like this would encourage people to start learning about software. At least it would show them which small part of the big system they needed to learn right now.
  • mikevin 9y ago
    That's brilliant. I guess you'd need a Wikipedia-like user community to manage all the likely scenarios.
• HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  My startup ideas are all much, much duller than these. Usually they're inspired by existing products made by small teams that I feel fall short in a few areas. They're more novel than a clone, but they certainly don't reach the lofty heights of a canine AI. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing. Am I realistic or just boring?
• idlewords 9y ago
  This list is simply impossible to parody. There is way too much easy money in this industry, chasing stupid ideas.
  • mino 9y ago
    Looking forward to see this thread here next week: http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ http://n-gate.com/hackernews/
    • aptwebapps 9y ago
      This is really strange, but on Chrome, and only on Chrome and not in incognito mode, that redirects to https://www.apple.com/ https://www.apple.com/ . I wonder if it returned a 301 at one time.
      • spatulon 9y ago
        It's nothing to do with the browser — the same thing happens in Firefox. The site redirects to Apple when the referrer is HN.
        • aptwebapps 9y ago
          Hah, nothing to see here. ;)
          • mino 9y ago
            That's a nice Easter egg!
• maliker 9y ago
  There is a pretty cool startup going after the smart bathroom idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
• davidivadavid 9y ago
  Wouldn't it be helpful if those were reformulated in terms of the real "problem" being solved, or at least the benificial outcome that they're aiming for? As a marketer who's always been interested in tech startups and that has dealt with many engineers, those ideas scream "engineering." The problem is finding startup ideas from an engineering point of view has in my experience been the best way to find a solution in search of a problem. "AI for Communicating with Dogs": sounds like a "hop on the AI bandwagon idea". I don't believe the idea in itself is silly at all (getting people to empathise with animals is probably a net good), but presenting it that way is a guaranteed way of not being taken seriously, and, more importantly, a guaranteed way of limiting your options when trying to solve the actual problem. Why does it HAVE TO be done with AI? "Smart Bathroom": Why? Why not start from the desired outcome? We're going to collect more data to do what? Etc. etc. Most of those ideas (there are a few exceptions) are driven by a product/widget-centric vision that doesn't seem to have any deeper justification.
  • jansho 9y ago
    Huh, I half-agree with other commentators that the list is almost like a joke. On the other hand, it’s starting the startup conversation here again. The startup world is not exactly at its peak now; less rags-to-riches save-the-world stories, and more like scandals and housing crises and Juicero-dumbo moments. At least, it’s making me think about what AI can actually be useful for, even though I’m mostly not a fan of it and most certainly don’t see its worth in pet interactions. OP did say it’s an experiment :x
    • davidivadavid 9y ago
      In my view, it's not at its peak partly because startups have drunk a bit too much of the "Startups are all about execution" Kool Aid and forgot that executing on crappy ideas just produced crap. To the average marketer, some HN threads are absolutely mind-boggling. Not too long ago, someone posted a thread essentially saying that he had freshly graduated from a top school and assembled a team of brilliant people, but they couldn't find anything to do with all their talent. How is that possible? Y Combinator's motto is "Make something people want." Well? What are startups waiting for? Mostly, they've again drunk a bit too much Kool Aid here — the "get out of the building" and "customer development" type. These are both good things to do — but if your original impetus is stupid (business-wise), you'll only converge towards mediocre outcomes. In fact, it's very easy to come up with things that people want. Because people have always wanted the same things, and probably always will. Everything the market provides is there to satisfy basic, universal human needs [1]. Fundamental needs and desires are the magma on which the tectonic plates that define product categories and product are moving. They're the deepest drivers of product adoption. Current product categories and products are just a byproduct of those needs meeting technological and economic limitations. Find out how you can satisfy some fundamental need better by leveraging technological changes, and you'll have a good startup idea. Or so I believe. [1] http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/needs.htm http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/needs.htm
• Hasz 9y ago
  Want a good idea? Go talk to people. Figure out what their pain points are -- chances are, there are other people like them, and if it's enough of a pain, they'll pay for it. That being said, people are acutely aware of what pains them. They are not, in general, able to come up with what they want (in terms of a solution). That's your job. So ask people what their pain points are; don't ask people what they want.
• baxtr 9y ago
  This list is so Silicon Valley cliche. I wish they started addressing the real problems of this planet, like overpopulation, climate change, droughts, you name it. But hey, why not help dogs talk
  • SamReidHughes 9y ago
    I'm waiting for your list of startup ideas to address these issues.
• crispytx 9y ago
  The "Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising" is a good idea. I once looked into how much it would cost to buy some billboard space, and it looked like it would be a pain in the ass (talking to sales people and whatnot).
• bguillet 9y ago
  Can't believe no one has cited Omni for "Low-Friction Lending Library". This is exactly what they are doing. I have no relationships or interests whatsoever with them, apart from being a happy customer.
• karmapolic 9y ago
  Shipping Locker as a Service. Amazon already provides locker services for products sold on the amazon market place. How about one for thousands of other companies. add ML on top of it.
• perpetualcrayon 9y ago
  re: the "Modern Firefighting" idea. I wonder if anyone has ever analyzed the cost / benefit of preventative fire fighting. ie. deploying moisture to dry areas. You wouldn't need to dump buckets at a time. Instead more like a mist you get at those water parks in Orlando FL. Something like this, but attached to a helicopter / airplane flying over dry areas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpSMRVngiQI In a lot of cases you probably could source the water from wells you would dig on an ad-hoc basis on those dry lands instead of from nearby water sources.
• segmondy 9y ago
  I was going to post when I saw this hours earlier but decided not to because of the down-votes but fuck it. I know for certain that I'm not the only one that applied to YC that got rejected that's really ticked off at this list of @#$#$#$. But whatever.
• b1gnasty 9y ago
  This list sucks
• ehnto 9y ago
  A social network for kids has such high risk and such a low reward. For one, children need to be interacting in person and having real friendships in the real world. By the time it makes sense for kids to be using social networks at all they may as well be using the real thing. Once it makes sense for them to use social networks they definitely aren't going to use the one Mom or Dad can peer into (and everyone else's mom or dad in the group). If you are worried about the implications of social networks for your child then don't let them use them at all, because it is next to impossible to create a safe space online. Being safe online is more of a learned skill, than an environment you can create, and by the time you should be let to wander the web at all you should probably be old enough to be taught those skills anyway.
• xyclos 9y ago
  On the topic of "Social Network for Children": I worked for a while on something like this, although it was more of "Linkedin for Children". It's stempremier.com. Our big idea was that there are tons of kids being recruited (sometimes for somewhat early ages) for college and professional sports. However, there aren't a huge number of kids being recruited who aren't talented athletes. An example is a kid who doesn't necessarily have stellar grades, but loves the outdoor and possibly has an interest in electronics. These students are very sought after by telecom companies as linemen, but it is exceptionally difficult to make the connection. One of the big obstacles we ran into was how to monetize. While I was there, our approach was to have schools pay for per user licenses for students. It was a hard sell. I think there is potential if an app like this aims to help kids pursue a quality education and find what they are passionate about. I however, am skeptical about a kind of facebook just for kids that would likely seek to exploit the kids to sell their data to advertisers and would be at best a detractor from a child's education.
• smoyer 9y ago
  "Social Network for Children" - Not touching this one with a ten-foot pole!
• tootie 9y ago
  Design on Demand has been attempted. West Elm will match a Pinterest board to products. Something more general purpose should be very achievable. https://pinterest-style-finder.westelm.com https://pinterest-style-finder.westelm.com
• sjg007 9y ago
  Baby Bidet already exists if you have a pull out faucet on your sink.. That being said, wipes are pretty much standard here and if a baby has a full on blow out they are usually going in the bath.
• psergeant 9y ago
  > Accounts Receivables as a > Service This is called invoice factoring, and it’s a competitive and mature market at least in the UK.
• elwell 9y ago
  Re "Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising" I thought Vistar Media (some of the Invite Media co-founders) was doing that several years ago. It appears they pivoted, which might be a bad signal.
  • sjg007 9y ago
    My guess is the cost is too high. First Adwords is an auction. Then you have to deploy to the billboard which requires an ad of suitable format and then someone to design and put it up. Maybe electronic billboards would work? I would think adwords inside video games would be good.. or live tv events (e.g. soccer matches).
• kareemsabri 9y ago
  In the case of the AI for dogs, I wonder if the person who suggested this owns a dog. If so, it seems rather bizarre. Dogs are not particularly cryptic. They're relatively easy to read if you put your phone down and pay attention to them. Humans and dogs have been communicating for thousands of years. The idea that an AI would have greater canine emotional intelligence than a human is dubious.
  • joseakle 9y ago
    Having it plugged into a security camera would be amazing though. It could alert you when your dog is bored and wants to go out to play for example :) or if it's feeling sick and needs to go to the vet :(
• echan00 9y ago
  While many comments ridicule the ideas in Kyle's post, I actually think it has generated great discussion and inspiration for some others. As a serial entrepreneur, I would very much be interested in seeing more of these 'Startup Ideas' posts to sharpen my skills in identifying/weighing an opportunity through a discussion with others.
• leot 9y ago
  Want to join a team with founded by neuroscience PhDs that has already had considerable success developing technology for intelligently interacting with dogs (and many other animals)? Send email to leo@clever.pet :)
• jeremysalwen 9y ago
  Low-Friction Lending Library Most people end up accumulating dozens or hundreds of items that they only need a few times a year. In my case these are things like camping equipment, a soldering iron, an electric drill, paper cutter, etc. — but everybody has their own unique list. I’d much rather not have to keep track of all this infrequently-used inventory and instead rent it on demand, especially since I have limited storage space. Lending libraries for this type of stuff exist but are too high-friction to be popular today — it’s substantially easier to just buy something on Amazon than rent it from a local depot. I think with automated inventory management and (potentially) sidewalk delivery bots the cost and friction can be brought low enough to turn this into a popular and defensible subscription business. I know that my sentiment isn't original, but I can't help but feel sad that this is essentially a startup idea that is only viable because it fills a hole created by the atomization of American society. What happened to borrowing a tool from your neighbor? This is not to say that this is a bad idea, or that nobody needs this, or that people who prefer not to borrow tools from their neighbors are bad people, but it just feels like something is being lost.
  • jigginsNOW 9y ago
    Check out Selfless! We created it to serve just that need: lend/borrow from people around you. We’re still very young but would love your support! ️ Web — https://selfless.io https://selfless.io iOS — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/selfless-love-something.-give/id1140329334?ls=1&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/selfless-love-something.-giv... Android — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.selfless https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.selfless
• echan00 9y ago
  Re Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising While not the same exact idea, I have been kicking around an idea about creating a marketplace for ad inventory consumers can offer. A marketplace where businesses can connect with airbnb hosts, uber drivers, college students, etc.. to place advertising in guest rooms, as bumper stickers or on t-shirts. It's not completely thought out yet. But I'd welcome discussion.
• simplicitea 9y ago
  The only important idea in that list is the last, firefighting tools
• Ice_cream_suit 9y ago
  Japan became the first country to mandate urine screening all infants for neuroblastoma, a cancer of the nervous system primarily found in children younger than age 5 The result was overdiagnosis, unnecessary treatment inflicted on infants, infant deaths due to side-effects of treatment and no improvement in outcome. A Halt to Neuroblastoma Screening in Japan http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200405063501922#t=article http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200405063501922#t=a...
• rubberbandtight 9y ago
  Which of these ideas is good?
• thecupisblue 9y ago
  Suddenly I don't really wanna be a part of YCombinator anymore.
• Darthy 9y ago
  Regarding the firefighting idea: why can't evacuate everybody, then have drones hold up a temporary "tent" around a building, then fill the whole space with a non-reactive gas? Such a system could be set up and work in minutes, and also prevent the usual huge water damages.
  • neolefty 9y ago
    Prototype it? That sounds crazy enough to test out.
    • Darthy 9y ago
      Thanks :-) I've got another 500+ of similar ideas. If you need one, just contact me :-)
• zapperdapper 9y ago
  Oh dear, the secret of Y-Combinator's success is finally revealed - blind luck! ;) Real ideas start with real problems. Just off the top of my head... 1) Have you ever tried to debug an HPC program running on 700,000 cores? You are probably using a patched version of GDB and it's darn painful! 2) Why are we still using a 1970s designed programming language in embedded systems that almost guarantees baked in bugs around memory management and multi-threading? 3) What do we do about data strangulation by the big players that is going on in the web right now? 4) Why are we using presentational markup for the web rather than semantic? 5) How to bust up a travel industry that is basically a brutal cartel of the big players? 6) And it would be really, really nice if I could get my repeat prescription without having to phone both the surgery and the pharmacist, then drive to town, pay for parking, find they can't issue my meds because the pharmacist went off to do his xmas shopping, and wait for an hour until he gets back, and then have to repeat these shenanigans the following month... 7) Why do so many applications, especially those in Python, fail to take advantage of multiple cores, and what can be done about it? We live in a multi-core world now folks...even embedded ARM chips are multi-core. Related: how to solve the conflict between CPU-bound and I/O bound threads? 8) Why is there no really clean, simple way to write decent, scalable web applications? Fotango tried this many years ago with Zimki and they were on to something until Canon closed them down. There choice of JavaScript was not ideal but the best choice at the time. 9) Why, when I am planning my next trip to Philippines can't I put in my start point, and an end point and have the system generate a sample itinerary for me? If I say "yes" my accommodation should be booked automagically for me according to my budget preferences. As well as a web app there could be a mobile app that points me to my next port of call on my journey. 10) Why oh why do we insist on using a general purpose, multi-tasking, multi-user desktop operating system in applications it was never designed for - and where a single user, single process, text-mode, lightweight, multi-thread OS would be far superior? 11) Why is it when I book a flight online I feel like I'm being sneakily ripped off? I would love to see more transparent pricing of flights, and legitimate regulated price comparison. 12) Why is it that when you see a speaker give a presentation at a conference they almost always have to struggle with the presentation system for five minutes before starting? 13) Why is the US system of skilled migrant visas in such a sorry-arsed state - and why aren't tech companies working together to get this sorted? Even a basic site listing which companies would actually be prepared to fill out the relevant form to sponsor you for would be a good start. Many big companies are very vague on this point (I won't name and shame). 14) Why is the teaching of practical philosophy so shockingly bad? Book of Life is one of the best sites out there on this, but could do with some stiffer competition. 15) The baby bidet idea I liked - what comes out in the first few weeks after birth can only be described as "alien toxic goo". To go with it, a mobile app that, by emitting a cunning and mysterious range of coloured lights, weird music, and bird-like tweets sends them off to sleep - I'd have bought it - AI be damned! ... etc etc etc Do any of these suggest possible solutions that solve problems? I'm not saying the above are in any way potential business success stories, but hopefully they point towards real-world problems. I have a notebook filled with hundreds of such problems... (p.s. finally, why is it easier for me, and more satisfying, to keep a paper notebook of this stuff rather than electronically?)
• amgin3 9y ago
  ...These are all shitty ideas.
• bschne 9y ago
  >Adwords for Outdoor and Transit Advertising The Swiss outdoor advertising provider APG actually provides an online tool for that [1] (link in German). As far as I know, you can also upload your ads and let them handle printing. 1. http://www.posterdirect.ch/de/ http://www.posterdirect.ch/de/
• Tomis02 9y ago
  This is what happens when you'd like to save the world (and earn the big money and fame) but you unfortunately took the path of a CS degree (or worse, just software/business school) and are incapable of solving real hard problems, so you bet on the unlikely success of an useless startup. People have been sharing visions and ideas of the future for at least one hundred years, such as infinite lifespans, telepathy, artificial food, searching for life throughout the galaxy, time travel, neural implants, artificial limbs and organs, and so on. Unfortunately, since all that has been done already, the only way a new startup can succeed is by inventing a (semi-)automatic baby bidet or having adwords for outdoors. Call me cynical but I believe that 99.999% of the startups are huge waste of time (probably their only benefit is siphoning some money from the financial industry and redistributing it to the rest of society) and a vast proportion of software developers (maybe even the majority) would be much better suited working in a different scientific field where they could actually help do something useful for humanity.
  • a1exyz 9y ago
    I think you're right but at least startups incentivize trying really really hard - as opposed to joining some big R&D firm. It challenges people to wrestle again and again with the ideas of value and what we want this world to be. Trying and suffering leads to learning and progress.
• eshlomo 9y ago
  https://outsense.co.il https://outsense.co.il