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Ask HN: How do you pick one idea to focus on?
I'm currently applying for Startup School, and I'm torn between two projects I've been working on.
The first is to build an early warning system for various diseases (malaria, dengue fever) and public health problems, something I've been working on in grad school and a few large orgs have shown interest in paying for.
The other is a personal preventative health dashboard that gives you dynamic predictive suggestions based on your diet, genetics, fitness and sleep data.
I have the experience and passion to build both, and they both actually slot into an ecosystem together, but one is b2b with long sales cycles and the other is b2c in a crowded health app market. One of the things I prioritize is maximizing the value I can deliver to the most people. What would you choose and why?
Also, if you'd like to hear my thoughts on these in more depth, I'd be happy to talk! I also wrote a short piece about it recently -> https://medium.com/technomancy/a-humble-proposal-the-human-healthcare-stack-e9e82eb8eff
- madeuptempacct 8y agoI have the same problem, especially in terms of being torn between something I believe in vs something that is likely to make money, and then things fall into "very feasible, not very scalable" vs "not feasible, scalable", etc. So, let me ask you some questions: "The first is to build an early warning system for various diseases (malaria, dengue fever) and public health problems, something I've been working on in grad school and a few large orgs have shown interest in paying for." How can you possibly do this? What is your expected funding need? Is it realistic? Are these outbreaks really a concern in the developed world? If not, is anyone willing to pay for systems for Africa? "The other is a personal preventative health dashboard that gives you dynamic predictive suggestions based on your diet, genetics, fitness and sleep data." It seems to me like these are a dime-a-dozen. How do you make a smooth experience? Can you really wrap it up? Or do I go get a blood pressure monitor from Walmart, ship off my saliva to Ancestry.com, and manually enter my data into your app so you could tell me my blood pressure is high? My FitBit, blood pressure monitor, and the aforementioned DNA sites already tell me what I am not doing and what I am at risk for. What's the selling point?