Ask HN: Where can I find “unsolved problems” for various industries?
As a developer, I'm interested in working on a problem in my spare time. However, most of the problems I've thought of over the years have already been addressed in my field. I'd like to consider other fields that have problems needing solving, but I'm not really sure where to start other than doing pretty generic Google searches.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadSo just do something that interests you and let the problems emerge
If you show enough enthusiasm and curiosity to solve the things they mention, they can connect you to others in that industry that can open more doors for you.
I second not looking to Google to discover these problems. While you will see more bitching than praising on the internets, much of you see will be superficial symptoms of a more serious problem. To understand the true cause you need to talk to people directly and in a way where they can be vulnerable (managers may not say what unsolved problems their companies face if you’re just shopping around for solutions that could possibly benefit their competitors).
Only thing I would add is that don't just look for problems but for inefficient workflows as well. A person may have to do some same set of tasks everyday and not realise that they can do it faster or it is a problem at all.
Perhaps go to random meetups or business networking events etc
A better approach might be to find a slightly technically backward field, learn about it in detail, and then apply modern technology to improve performance or lower cost. I remember meeting a guy, years ago, who had made a fortune inventing a new high-tech way to remove the casings from hot dogs.
Finding an appropriate problem to solve is part of the problem.
Part of the art of being a successful solution provider is having the expertise to identify a problem in the first place. Usually that comes from having a lot of experience in that industry already.
I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but bear in mind that you have a bunch of saleable skills (otherwise you wouldn't have thought of this already) and you're willing to apply those skills in helping people who are willing to pay for them.
Also, we have a tendency to ignore the things we're already good at in favour of the things we've most recently become good at, so when you start narrowing your focus and zoning in on problems you want to solve, you might ignore some of the things people might find most valuable in your skillset, however long ago and intellectually uninteresting to you those skills are. Remember, solving business-level problems is more about your overall viewpoint of the industry and how its bits fit together, not about tickling your own brain with this month's interesting JS framework.
So, as a really bad example, you might have written a bunch of task scheduling/interleaving code to drive PLCs on a production line a few years back, and that might not be interesting to you anymore, and you might also have become really good at hooking Hibernate up to replace a bunch of badly-handwritten SQL after that, and again, that's not interesting anymore. But, if you really know automation and enterprise app ORM, you might suddenly find something that people are willing to pay for.
>Basically, it is a specialized method of learning faster and retaining knowledge more comprehensively. Think about it -- what percentage of what you learn do you retain? In all likelihood, you are losing information almost as fast as you are gaining. Second, assemble the information into a useful format within your mind. Then, find out where inventions emerge within the mind. Turns out, you won't like the answer. Your mind invents in a place you may not be able to access. Break into this space and you will be inventing quickly, methodically, and reliably. To solve the learning problem and the thinking problem will take some years.
>I invent using a specific system that was developed by myself and a colleague when we were in college. The system allows one to invent in whatever field you want and methodically (you will definitely solve the problem more effectively than even the practitioners within the field). However, there are specific limitations. However, it is one of the few "systems" that is methodical and that can be taught. It is not random. My colleague has something like 60-70 patents and is also a successful inventor and intrapreneur. He did not like being independent so he has stayed at a large company. I went solo.
Everyone wanted to know the details of these ideas, but the OP refused to provide any specifics, not even a very general overview.
Despite this, there were a few interesting tidbits concerning patents and about how he generally approaches his career and problem solving. I'd really like to know more about his process though.
The odd thing about people in other industries; they may be perfectly happy with the status quo. So asking industry insiders might not yield anything more than how to tweak current processes. As an outsider, you are the person most likely to find true breakthroughs. What space frustrates you the most?
The James Dyson story is instructive in this regard > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds
The odd thing about people in other industries; they may be perfectly happy with the status quo. So asking industry insiders might not yield anything more than improving on their current processes.
As an outsider, you are most likely to find the breakthrough. Look for problems from an end-user, client/customer perspective-- then reverse engineer the process.
The James Dyson story is instructive in this regard > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds
Just to give you an idea from the area you know well: programming. It is not a secret that a lot of programming these days boils down to searching stackoverflow and copy pasting the code fragments. You switch from an editor to SO, do a search browse from comments, pick one, copy paste the answer, format it.
As a developer you usually have a large monitor or dual monitors. What if you had an editor plugin that on a shortcut would open SO in the browser, searching on the question that you already typed in. Few other shortcuts give you the movement across answers, another shortcut copies nicely formatted code from the currently selected comment. Bonus points for automatic renaming of variables according to the type information if you have it.
It shaves only seconds to minutes from the workflow, but imagine how many people are doing it how many times a day, and this might be an example of the problem totally worth solving.
I'd give myself a week, including the time to search Stack Overflow :)
https://github.com/vermiculus/sx.el
Your job is to identify and abstract domain problems into models that can be solved using your technical expertise.
I think an interesting direction is figuring out how to leverage web tech (or just code in general) to interact with the real world. Consider companies like Uber and AirBNB. They've identified a real-world problem and set out to solve it using technology. A lot of the cutting edge stuff these days is figuring out how to take a real-world problem (genetics, taxis, mail), and writing some code to make it accessible, cheap, and easy to do.
IMO to find interesting projects, a better idea is to look backward: what industries are still in the 20th century, and how can you help bring them into the 21st with modern technological advancements?
What about farmers, truck drivers, construction workers? Why are they still driving tractors, trucks and bulldozers? Why aren't robots doing those things more widely?
What about real estate agents and their legalese? Why are real estate agents still handing me stacks of paperwork? Can't you Zenefits the crap out of that process?
What about community outreach programs and community centers? Why are community outreach programs still accosting me on the street and handing out fliers? Can't they do outreach digitally? Can't we automate scheduling basketball games and pick-up kickball games?
What about having to fill out paper applications or stand in line at the DMV? (Shouldn't all that crap be automated by now?)
What about having to actually hand your credit card to the cashier at the drive-thru at McDonald's? (Can't they just magically detect who I am somehow and charge me accordingly? Why do I have to hand some punk ass kid my card or cash?)
What about planning weddings or raising kids? (Haven't enough people gotten married that planning a wedding should be as simple as browsing Amazon for a few hours? Haven't enough people had kids that we should have some solid data about what works and doesn't work?) (These two things aren't really tech-related, but man, if you could figure those out...)
The best part about this approach is that pretty much any idea you come up with will be an improvement over the status quo. These are the things we're still doing the same way we did 50 years ago, before computers were even a thing. Can't we do better?
Nah, he's just sensitive to things that waste a lot of time.
His friends say he's a real whiner. No, that's a joke. I don't know him or his friends.
These are mostly sorted by academic fields, but it's a good place to start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies
10+ years ago you could maybe just google around and find a niche business problem with a simple software solution in a wide open market. This is not the case today.
As a developer your experience of the world typically overlaps with every other developer, so anything you can relate to by a few degrees of separation is pretty picked over and likely very competitive. Ditto for anything in a cash-rich industry.
So really anything that's easy to solve with an MVP product that wouldn't require clawing for attention, is lurking deep in the trenches of an industry or hobby you've never heard of and wouldn't be exposed to without being embedded in that world for a long time. There may be some sort of very valuable software solution for a problem with wool production in patagonia but you'd never know if you weren't a patagonian wool producer.
I think the best approach these days is pick out a very programmer un-sexy field, study it intensely and chat with as many people in that field as possible until something shakes out. Or just bite the bullet and go head first into a competitive market and try to make something that outshines the competition...
I guess you could also say that this is arguing semantics, but they may also have places where things could be better using some new technology, but they don't think of it as a problem, since they don't know the technology exists, and therefore don't even think in terms of applying it to their "problem".
Also, as somebody else mentioned, people tend to "normalize pain" over time, to the point that something can be painful but yet if you ask them "tell me about your pain points so I can help you", they don't even think of $WHATEVER (because it's become "normalized pain").
My point is, it's hard to just ask around for "unsolved problems" and find good stuff, even if you called up people in various companies and asked them flat out. And that's simply because they may not know what to tell you.
I think the best way to really identify areas for improvement is to have a deep knowledge of how a particular company (or at least, companies in a given industry in general operate) and identify the problems spots based on your own knowledge. That, of course, is difficult for domains that you don't know much about. Unfortunately I don't think there are any easy answers to this. Probably the best answer I can offer is to say, build relationships with people in a given company / industry, spend as much time talking to them as you can, and bounce ideas back and forth until something seems to resonate. IF you can find a company that has "business process analysts" on staff, some of those people may be able to help you, since they spend all their time looking at business processes and trying to find ways to improve them.
I discovered this by getting a contract (few days a month) doing onsite work for a small/medium size organization. I asked lots of questions about things that I perceived as broken and found out what processes and software they hated. Then I worked on a prototype (evenings, for fun) and showed it to them. Now a year or so later that organization is my first customer for a SaaS I saw that they needed.
Also, make friends with other vendors while you're there. A company that already serves that industry can give valuable feedback and even market your app to their other clients if it integrates well with their solution.
It basically means hosting an application that users can subscribe to.
In Pizza as a service terms: you dine out.
Great analogy though!
http://www.ektron.com/assets/0/75/132/2147483682/2b35a8f4-f2...
1. Take your closest circle of friends and family. Cross off anyone who is also a developer. Among the rest, look at people who are professionals or small business owners. Take them to lunch. Ask if you can shadow them at work a bit. Take copious notes. Find out what the most annoying/tedious part of their business is. Also, if they rely on clerical/support staff, talk to those people too.
2. Pick an industry that you have an interest or curiosity in. Put a job posting in your local Craigslist for people in this industry (ex: mortgage brokers or elementary school teachers). Say you are looking for an advisor to discuss some startup ideas. You will get several responses. Have lunch with a couple people. You don't have to have ideas up front. Just ask them the same questions as option 1 above. Ask them if they'd be willing to beta test something you built.
Protip: there are some industries I'd suggest avoiding. For example, restaurant owners are extremely busy and working in a very low-margin industry. They generally don't have time to meet or test things.
Disclaimer: these are mainly B2B strategies. Most B2B problems really boil down to saving money, making more money, or saving time (time is money). If you can do any of those things for someone, they will pay you.
Keep in mind, I don't live in a large city or CL market–so, if you're in a metro, you'll probably get a lot of responses.
A couple years back, I had an idea and wanted to understand the business/industry a bit deeper first. I got an intro to a friend of a friend, asked to shadow him for the day, added a $100 Ruth Chris gift card to sweeten it, and then spent the day wit him.
Here are some of my questions: - What keeps you up at night? - What drives you nuts? - Where do you lose the most money? - Where do you make the most money? (careful with this one, might be considered suspicious) - When he took a call and ended up chewing out the other end, I asked what the guy should have done instead, how much that might cost him, whether that would risk customers, projects, etc, and some related things.
I ended up trying some basic ideas in the space - none worked out - but I learned a ton about an industry, a business, and a genuinely good guy. It was well worth $100.
I'm interested in learning more. What do you do in the restaurant side? I've been showing a prototype of an app to GMs but open to solving real issues.
https://www.reddit.com/r/somebodycodethis/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/
...who knows, you might find something interesting to spark your imagination.
If the answer is yes, and the spreadsheet is connected to a problem with currency attached, you've got a decent shot at building a better mousetrap, because the mousetrap they're using now sucks.
If the answer is no, then its probably not a hard enough problem that people are willing to pay for it, or their current solutions aren't a pain point.
What kind of problems are you interested in? What kind of skills do you practice on a regular basis?