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I'm currently working on a software solution that will wipe out the need for human labor in a certain industry. I wonder if I should just build it, put it onli

by TekMol 4y ago

I'm currently working on a software solution that will wipe out the need for human labor in a certain industry. I wonder if I should just build it, put it online with a "Buy" button and a statement "Here you can get the same as from the competition, but 10x cheaper". Then I would have to do marketing for it. Or should I reach out to some of the companies who already have the customers and currently fill the demand via human labor? And see if they want to outsource their work to me for 1/10 of the price? Even if they don't want to do business with me, I could probably learn a lot from them about the industry. But somehow, I'm a bit afraid the companies will hate me and the conversations will become unpleasant. I have nightmares of them sending a contract killer after me, lol!

leobg 4y ago
Have you already validated it with real customers? Most likely there are still problems that need to be ironed out.
- TekMol 4y ago
  That will indeed be interesting. The industry is very cliquey. I talked to two people from the industry and showed them what the software can already do. They agreed that it is as good as what humans do. But both also said they would not become customers. Because they like to mingle with people and support them. One of them said that is also the reason they don't try to outsource the work to lower wage countries. But I only need 0.01% of the industry as customers to have a great lifestyle business. So I will plow ahead and see what happens. Plus, with a 10x decrease in costs, the industry might actually grow. There might be new customers coming in that previously were not interested due to price. Think robotaxis: Not only would a robotaxi service get existing customers of old school taxis and Uber. They could offer a lower price and have people take a robotaxi who would otherwise have walked or stayed at home.
  - leobg 4y ago
    Can you not provide your service directly to the consumer?
    - TekMol 4y ago
      No, it's a B2B thing. Consumers don't pay for it. Think robopilot software. It needs to be put into a plane before consumers can use it.
      - leobg 4y ago
        Can you then not provide it as a service to businesses, just slightly below the usual market price? Selling the fish instead of teaching then your new way of fishing.
        TekMol 4y ago
        That is the plan. The "BUY" button would not be for buying the software, but for buying the service that they usually hire people for. It is not possible to "hide" the fact that it is done by software. As there are some differences. The software is stronger in some aspects of the tasks and weaker in other aspects. Overall, the software is superior. But it is noticeably different to work with the software than with a human. Think Robotaxis: Superhuman reaction time. Never sleepy. But bad at interpreting unusual situations. Overall, they will be 10x safer than human drivers at some point. But you will still notice if a human or a bot drives the car.
        leobg 4y ago
        In the realm of NLP, there are some companies that offer a human in the loop service. So to the outside, they offer human quality results. And on the inside, they use their machine learning technology, supervised by humans. One way to do it, I guess, is to especially watch the results where the model is least confident. And of course, you feed back all of these corrections back into the model, so it becomes better over time.
        leobg 4y ago
darkerside 4y ago
Based on your other post, you're in an industry that values relationships and trust. Sounds like the first strategy is a nonstarter. You'll need relationships to break in, which makes the latter your only choice, and probably means you continue to be a value added commodity. You won't own the relationship, at least, not without a LOT of work to learn the industry and its people. Total speculation, but do you have a strong understanding of what needs to happen when something goes wrong with the process you are automating? It's sometimes too easy to automate 99%, and think you've got it solved, when the last 1% is the actual hard part.
jrm4 4y ago
Note, I haven't actually poked around to see what your idea is, I'm going off of solely this comment, but...in my experience, the thing you're worrying about is the last thing you need to worry about. Here's the thing that I find happens more. I 100% believe that your solution could be as good as you think it is, but you're STILL going to have a hell of a time convincing people of it, and weird, seemingly goofy barriers, are going to come up. "Self-evidently" good software/solutions mostly don't exist, even when they are that good.
Jasper_ 4y ago
> I'm currently working on a software solution that will wipe out the need for human labor in a certain industry. lmao, when has this ever been true.
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  I don’t see a lot of telephone switchboard operators, do you?

by TekMol 4y ago

leobg 4y ago

Have you already validated it with real customers? Most likely there are still problems that need to be ironed out.

TekMol 4y ago
That will indeed be interesting. The industry is very cliquey. I talked to two people from the industry and showed them what the software can already do. They agreed that it is as good as what humans do. But both also said they would not become customers. Because they like to mingle with people and support them. One of them said that is also the reason they don't try to outsource the work to lower wage countries. But I only need 0.01% of the industry as customers to have a great lifestyle business. So I will plow ahead and see what happens. Plus, with a 10x decrease in costs, the industry might actually grow. There might be new customers coming in that previously were not interested due to price. Think robotaxis: Not only would a robotaxi service get existing customers of old school taxis and Uber. They could offer a lower price and have people take a robotaxi who would otherwise have walked or stayed at home.
- leobg 4y ago
  Can you not provide your service directly to the consumer?
  - TekMol 4y ago
    No, it's a B2B thing. Consumers don't pay for it. Think robopilot software. It needs to be put into a plane before consumers can use it.
    - leobg 4y ago
      Can you then not provide it as a service to businesses, just slightly below the usual market price? Selling the fish instead of teaching then your new way of fishing.
      - TekMol 4y ago
        That is the plan. The "BUY" button would not be for buying the software, but for buying the service that they usually hire people for. It is not possible to "hide" the fact that it is done by software. As there are some differences. The software is stronger in some aspects of the tasks and weaker in other aspects. Overall, the software is superior. But it is noticeably different to work with the software than with a human. Think Robotaxis: Superhuman reaction time. Never sleepy. But bad at interpreting unusual situations. Overall, they will be 10x safer than human drivers at some point. But you will still notice if a human or a bot drives the car.
        leobg 4y ago
        In the realm of NLP, there are some companies that offer a human in the loop service. So to the outside, they offer human quality results. And on the inside, they use their machine learning technology, supervised by humans. One way to do it, I guess, is to especially watch the results where the model is least confident. And of course, you feed back all of these corrections back into the model, so it becomes better over time.
        leobg 4y ago

darkerside 4y ago

Based on your other post, you're in an industry that values relationships and trust. Sounds like the first strategy is a nonstarter. You'll need relationships to break in, which makes the latter your only choice, and probably means you continue to be a value added commodity. You won't own the relationship, at least, not without a LOT of work to learn the industry and its people. Total speculation, but do you have a strong understanding of what needs to happen when something goes wrong with the process you are automating? It's sometimes too easy to automate 99%, and think you've got it solved, when the last 1% is the actual hard part.

jrm4 4y ago

Note, I haven't actually poked around to see what your idea is, I'm going off of solely this comment, but...in my experience, the thing you're worrying about is the last thing you need to worry about. Here's the thing that I find happens more. I 100% believe that your solution could be as good as you think it is, but you're STILL going to have a hell of a time convincing people of it, and weird, seemingly goofy barriers, are going to come up. "Self-evidently" good software/solutions mostly don't exist, even when they are that good.

Jasper_ 4y ago

> I'm currently working on a software solution that will wipe out the need for human labor in a certain industry. lmao, when has this ever been true.

ChadNauseam 4y ago
I don’t see a lot of telephone switchboard operators, do you?