8 ms·
Ask HN: What business would you start in 2018?
What business would you start in 2018?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sgtmas2006 8y agoA data firm within the US. (which is what i'm doing)
- plessthanpt05 8y agopretty vague there -- what do you mean data firm?...like a consultancy? I mean, OP didn't specify what type of business to start, but in some sense pretty much all tech start-ups are data firms.
- andridk 8y agoBitcoin VR vegan gluten free crossfit app
- onion2k 8y agoNative or PWA?
- murdockq 8y agoVue or React?
- mLuby 8y agoSo 2017. ReasonML and Serverless
- gremlinsinc 8y agoDefinitely Vue, React is so 2016, get with the times. Plus FB is evil, and FB owns react so that must make it 'toxic'.
- andrewbridges 8y agofor AI ML IoT
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pauljaworski 8y agoYou're stuck in the past, friend. 2018 is all about mushroom-tea-fueled, AI-powered, IOT devices on blockchain.
- kennxcl 8y agoVR bubble is going to burst pretty quick
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- niravs 8y agoSocial apps. Neglected. Especially voice + social.
- loandigger 8y agoA betting site offering over/under wagers on the number of people from the Trump administration who are indicted in the coming years.
- plessthanpt05 8y agoWould this be covered under the new sports betting legalization?
- loandigger 8y agoyes. It'll be like hsx.com, but for felons.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- asdsa5325 8y agoYou can find a few on PredictIt.
- briandear 8y agoIf Hillary is any indication, the real money is in starting foundations.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 7373737373 8y agoWebsite to collectively buy satellite pictures
- text_exch 8y agoWhat's wrong with the USGS or Landsat data portals?
- Faaak 8y agoResolution is the main factor. Landsat is ~15m, DigitalGlobe is ~0.5m
- zeptomu 8y agoLandsat is 30m. There is also Sentinel2 (which is 10m) that can be used commercially. Obviously DigitalGlobe (and recently Planet) do better with <1m resolution but it seems to be more expensive and (sub)licensing might be non-trivial (at least they are vague in pricing details).
- haxton 8y agoSort of like what https://www.skywatch.co/ https://www.skywatch.co/ is doing?
- digikata 8y agoIt's not a marketplace, but it seems to be a well performing source. https://www.planet.com/ https://www.planet.com/
- mabynogy 8y agoA good, simple and anonymous chat app.
- schnevets 8y agoCollaboration/Project software designed with distributed teams in mind first.
- finkin1 8y agoI'm curious what you think the shortfalls are of all the existing tools that attempt to do this. Basecamp, Trello, Asana, Jira, to name a few.
- schnevets 8y agoI was a little vague in my original statement because I think there's a lot of areas of improvement across the board, but I was specifically thinking of the virtual meeting when I wrote that answer. There's no denying that something gets lost on a Zoom/WebEx/other conference call - attendees are distracted, miscommunications happen, and people have to be assertive to get their message across. This can be overcome by a small team that is 110% driven in their goal, but it's a model that can't be adapted by all industries/sizes/cultures. I'm still not sure what the solution to this is, but I think there will be a dramatic paradigm shift. Maybe the trigger will be VR or some disruptor we already see coming, but it may be something more approachable. All of those tools you listed are CRUD-based. I think the space would benefit from something more reactive, where multiple people can "play" on the same screen.
- Jach 8y agoWithout going full VR I still think a dedicated piece of hardware might be the way to go to normalize across everyone's setups and preferences. Maybe a big ass tablet (or around the size of the Surface Studio) with networked persistent whiteboarding / kanban boarding / alert-messaging software could be an MVP. Those are the main things that I wish were improved after ~4 years working with distributed teams. Informational meetings per se I haven't really had problems with, google hangouts/meet or GoToMeeting have worked out well enough. I'm not sure how we'll ever solve the "conversations that only happen because your desk is next to mine" problem without VR though.
- igetspam 8y agoI don't know but I'd support companies working to improve privacy. It's a hard thing to monetize but there's a need and a market.
- kennxcl 8y agoReal time interactive NBA betting app. Try to get John Stewart to host. Squeeze HQ app out of business
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bobosha 8y agoA staircase bot to carry heavy objects. With an increasingly aging population, it is a literal pain to be lugging objects - especially heavy ones - up/down stairways.
- _csoz 8y agoI believe those are called elevators
- fossuser 8y agoSomething around video verification. Convincing fake video and audio is coming soon - it isn't a major problem yet, but it will be more challenging to determine if recorded evidence can actually be relied on. Some sort of service that signs and proves the authenticity of videos I think is a an idea that was until recently probably bad, but has now became good. It'd be similar to what digicert does for websites. You could then work with browsers to show verification for trusted videos.
- elephant0xffff 8y ago> Some sort of service that signs and proves the authenticity of videos. I don't think that is even possible. You might want to succeed with amateur efforts, but I would guess there will be a point where it is impossible to tell if a video is fake or not.
- Ashcroft001 8y agoUse private-public key cryptography and just sign the video.
- fossuser 8y agoJust sign it after you verify the original person’s identity so you know if it’s been tampered with. Company would be responsible for effectively verifying identity - similar to how this is done for websites.
- diego_moita 8y agoI also believe so. In an age with surveillance everywhere and when video and audio are so important in litigation I would make a tamper-proof camera that would sign every video/audio it produces. Tricky part would be to keep the signing key away from bad hands.
- gbartz 8y agoApocryphal News Site - "News, just the way you want it."
- Faaak 8y agoBe careful not to fall into an echo chamber
- codegeek 8y agoIn the US, I will start a company that would partner with Doctors/Clinics/Hospitals where they would agree to transparent pricing for simple and routine services (like wellness checkup, simple procedure etc.). In return, the consumers will purchase a service from us (sort of insurance but I hate that word) for a much lower premium/fee per year (say something like 500 a year) where they pay the routine services out of pocket but we cover them for major procedures or catastrophic stuff (like cancer treatment). Each Participating doctor/clinic/hospital gets a cut of the premium that the consumer pays us. This creates a win-win for all 3 parties. Consumers don't have to pay crazy health insurance premiums (which can be 15K easily for a family of 4 per year), pricing is transparent and even though they pay out of pocket for general services, the total they will spend per year will be MUCH less than average insurance premiums we pay today in the United States. Not to mention that insurance companies don't get to butt in every decision about which service should have been covered and which one not. Doctor gives a bill, patient pays it and all done. Probably will put some medical billing companies out of business too ? Doctors/clinics/hospitals get a cut of the premium from every consumer who participates effectively creating a huge pool/network. Bonus feature: Our company will create a centralized platform where consumers can login and see their doctor visits and billing all in one place. No more individual health insurance websites or doctor billing websites. I can get a simple statement at the end of the year even if I visited 20 different doctors. How we make money though with those lower yearly premiums will be a challenge. Btw, this was just a joke and a wishlist. I wish someone would do this.
- briandear 8y agoThat’s what “insurance” actually is— protection against unforeseen financial loses. The current idea of “insurance” is more of a health plan than a financial protection scheme. Car insurance doesn’t pay oil changes because that’s a normal part of owning a car and thus should be budgeted for, but a crash isn’t — this insurance exists to make someone whole after a covered loss.
- eldavido 8y agoThere's a really great writeup on this in "catastrophic care", a book I'd recommend on this topic. Rather than "insurance", a better model is that "you'll need to spend a lot with p approaching 1, for some years of your life". So allocating each person a lifetime fixed pool of money (through the tax system) might be a good way to force some cost discipline onto the system, while still ensuring coverage and access are widespread. What I like about this is that it makes explicit, society's commitment to sharing some of the burden of care. I have a close friend whose wife has Crohn's. It's a real bitch of a disease, essentially no known cure, chronic, you just try to get it "managed" as well as possible. We could probably spend an infinite amount of money trying to improve her quality of life, but that's not fair to society at large. So if we said, here, you get $x, that would encourage the medical system to provide cost-effective management options that would be within some bounded price range everyone agrees would be reasonable. I think there's a real reluctance to put a precise dollar figure on how far we'll go per person toward "universal coverage of everything", but that's precisely the conversation we need to be having.
- joseakle 8y agoA not for profit ride sharing platform, in the spirit of ghost.org . Self driving cars are still years ahead, besides that, humans will still be needed for other kinds of gigs for some time.
- throwaway413 8y agoSee Waze Carpool. AFAIK not (as much) for profit. https://www.waze.com/carpool https://www.waze.com/carpool
- pimmen 8y agoSomething to do with transportation and logistics really. Free trade is just not going away despite populists doing their dardnest to make it more difficult and free trade runs on transporting stuff from A to B easily. If you could innovate something minor in that field, I'm talking something that impacts maybe 5% of the shipping process, that's an absurdly big market. However, don't do like the airlines and build your business plan on having exclusive agreements with nice and naive governments. Once that special treatment stops and they let smaller players in party's over.
- pcunite 8y ago#1 Imagine you have a fleet of vehicles and one of your drivers just had a fender-bender or seen one occur. One or both of the involved parties will call the police and notify insurance agencies. Sometimes the evidence, as deemed by you to favor your situation can get moved around or shuffled by local authorities. With my service, you'll be able to post as many pictures or videos as you like of the actual event. Our in-vehicle dash-cams will also collaborate the information you're uploading. The complete offering and system helps you secure a better insurance rate saving you millions. I just need $4.5MM to get started. #2 This one has an even greater return. Imagine REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED. It will do really well!
- gorbachev 8y agoGDPR consultancy
- Stanleyc23 8y agoshould have started that 2 years ago
- drspacemonkey 8y agoTrue, but the number of executives and managers that are just starting to ask "what's this GDPR thing I keep hearing about?" tells me that it's about to be a growth industry. IME, there's also a significant overlap between the execs that insist "2 years isn't enough time to get compliant" and execs that ignored it for the last 2 years. Not sure what that means, but it's at the point where I write off timeline complaints as whining and lack of forethought.
- monk_e_boy 8y agoTeacher collaboration tool to open source lesson plans. Create a platform like facebook or github for teachers to collaborate on planning an entire unit. At the moment each teacher does it alone or maybe a department may get together and create some content. But there are thousands of schools tens of thousands of teachers, all of them building lessons and delivering them. Build in testing. assignments. progress. etc.
- tommerbomb 8y agoI've actually thought that something like this could be a fairly useful product. May I ask what your inspiration for such an idea was? Perhaps personal or anecdotal experience? Genuinely curious.
- monk_e_boy 8y agoI am a cover teacher, I travel to schools when teachers are sick.
- edimaudo 8y agoTake a look at - https://www.chalk.com https://www.chalk.com
- poulsbohemian 8y agoI'm curious to know if you are the US. The scenario you describe was very much that of the past here, but since "No child left behind" and "Core Curriculum," the lessons and content has become homogenous. Leaving out my opinion of this, just noting that was the goal from Congress, and my own observations across my three kids and within my pool of parent friends in other states indicates the same.
- digikata 8y agoI actually don't think I'd start this one personally, but given the recent supreme court ruling, I would expect that a sports betting site/app would likely get traction pretty quickly.
- thatsnotmyusern 8y agoI intend to retire from my current successful company (founded in 2011) and design a range of personal health & wellbeing items for people on the Autism spectrum (more for people with mild-to-moderate ASD, Aspergers, or other similar disability, as opposed to for severe cases - i.e. this isn't a medtech company but a health and wellbeing product line). I stumbled on this by creating a few prototypes at home for my personal use that really contribute to my quality of life as someone with mild ASD traits. Also, a social enterprise-based reforestation project – I'll be using same savings to buy a piece of deforested ex-farmland (one in particular) and working with friends and local community to return it to its former forested glory. The goal is really to give back but also to learn a heap about land management and permaculture. For-profit and non-profit, respectively. So it's really businesses that scratch my own itch.
- mamcx 8y agoA relational/lang mixed access/excel platform. Looking for enough funding to work on this (just to cover life expenses US1000/month)
- edimaudo 8y agomight be worth taking a look at - http://blog.querystorm.com/index.php/2018/04/04/whynow/ http://blog.querystorm.com/index.php/2018/04/04/whynow/
- Robin_Message 8y agoCheck out airtable.io; they are the closest I've seen to achieving this and I've been watching this space for a decade. (It's my dream to build something here too.)
- Jach 8y agoPrediction market + cryptocurrency ICO. How can I lose?
- aryamaan 8y agoA personalized learning program. I really think education is a very inefficient process currently. Not that it doesn't allow growth of other traits which it doesn't value but also the virtues which it does see fit remain undeveloped. For starters, I will begin with a program like 'Computer science/ concepts for developers' which will go far further than Networking, OS, DB... The most important part of it would be that it will specifically crafted for the individual- it will start with the level of expertise the learner is at and incrementally go up. Secondly, it will be focusing on virtues which imo makes learning efficient and enjoyable- like pressure free learning but getting sense of accomplishment by doing stuff. The best reason one would be learning for would be for themselves.
- gremlinsinc 8y agoA not-for-profit company that builds an AI based identification and reputation (drivers license meets credit score meets ebay ratings) system on the block chain (perhaps using voice + location + image to imprint a person as being who they say they are. Then use this identification system to create a crypto-currency that has guaranteed basic income built in, and the person would need to re-verify every 6 months to keep their account. The not-for-profit company would also start it's own businesses that provide products/services to consumers and use only local fiat + the ubi-coin for payment with maybe benefits for using crypto over fiat (to increase adoption). Execs for all businesses would be capped at 125x average worker salary. All left over money at end of fiscal year would be divided up evenly and 30% would go to workers as a bonus, 70% would be dispersed to ubi coin holders evenly. Businesses the co-op could start could be grocers, mail-order pharmacy, insurance companies, cell phone providers, the goal being --be self-sufficient but not make a profit except enough to pay all workers, and reward the community as a whole and also make services people use everyday cheaper and more affordable.