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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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. :)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is an idea that I disagree with so thoroughly that I'm having a hard time articulating why. Every angle I can think of presupposes a world view which would not admit this idea in the first place.
I'm sure you're joking, but in case you're not, an FYI: this fundamentally misunderstands the reason people use and abuse drugs, and especially why they don't get clean. It's definitely not that they don't have sufficient incentive.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> but I don't want to live/work in a society where you can use mental illness for excuses
Accommodation is often quite possible and is a net gain for everyone involved. Yes you don't want the guy piloting the airplane to have hallucinations, but forcing someone with social anxiety into a cramped loud office when there's no need should be doable.
> , but there are a lot of good reasons to not share with family/friends/coworkers about your mental illness.
The main reason for not sharing is because of the stigma involved. As for coworkers holding you to a different standard, well after any period of time, most coworkers know what you are like, despite any labels that are used.
My thought on the matter is to use the words Neuro-typical and ! neuro-typical.
I feel that a fair amount of what is called mental illness is actually just part of the spectrum of how a human mind can work. I think we lose a lot of human potential because most large organizations try to get all their "resources" to function together in pretty much the same way.
If the time was taken to understand the optimum conditions for individual types of mental functioning there would be a large increase of productivity and satisfaction in the workplace.
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.
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.
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.
The "use blockchain" people are missing it. This is for dealing with companies that handle purchases through the very traditional Quote -> Purchase Order -> Delivery -> Invoice -> Payment system.
it gets me paid in a timely fashion, without human emotion from either party mucking things up. isn't that the goal?
traditional: send PDF quote, go back and forth on quoted terms and cost 1..n times, wait for signed PO, call 1..n times reminding them to sign the PO, eventually get signed PO, do work, (at this point client is your BFF and calls you every 5 minutes asking if the work is done yet!), deliver product/service, get at least 100 bug reports on things that differ from the original approved spec/quote but should have been "implied", fix "bugs", send PDF invoice 1..n times, call buyer to remind them to pay invoice 1..n times, get runaround and sent to various accounting people most of whom are on vacation 1..n times, finally get told check is in mail 1..n times, wait 30 days per cycle, sacrifice chicken, call back and find that check was never sent and invoice is lost so repeat steps again, finally check arrives, deposit check in bank
eth: seller defines contract in solidity with various Oraclized callbacks for spec acceptance, delivery of work product(s), final acceptance test execution, and various failure modes that return eth back to the buyer's wallet if necessary, buyer funds contract with eth, acceptance events (e.g. signed PDFs in dropbox, or some git commit, etc) triggers payment to seller's eth wallet, OR on failure cases returns money back to the buyer's wallet
lots of hand wavy stuff here but since we're just discussing ideas...so, in all sincerity, what does this not get you that you are looking for?
That sounds like all the same problems with defining a "traditional" contract, except now when things go wrong you have to explain what ETH is in civil court, hope the volatility of ETH doesn't make things weird, and also hope your solidity contracts don't include bugs that let people steal your money (or if they do contain bugs, hope you have enough clout to cause a hard fork).
Well I would argue it has all the same goals and steps of a traditional contract, but automated and electronic. Your points are all valid today...but I recall similar points about e-commerce and e-banking circa 1999. I can hardly be considered a blockchain fanboy (I own precisely 1.0 ETH for experimentation only). But I do sense that the problems you mention can and will be solved by someone or several someones with enough time and money since there are real pain points here. Maybe 5 years, or 15. But I think our kids will find this post in the 2020s in their AR equipped Waymo and laugh at how we did things now.
And the lawyers I know personally love to litigate new things in civil court. Like robbing banks, that's where the money is!
I sell physical products, so an Etherium contract can't check that. Same with most non-computer services.
Still, I could see this working with custom software services if you were able to write a smart contract that can test every aspect of the software to the level of detail you need. Good luck.
Agreed, I feel your pain. I would think this is only initially a solution for specific use cases, SaaS being one of them...and luckily the one I do. And in a highly regulated, safety critical sector, where testing every aspect of the software to not only the level I need, but to the level the regulators demand, is what it takes.
That said, a contract doesn't necessarily imply perfect precision. You can still deliver to vague specs and ambiguous goals and still get paid, so long as you encode something that both parties agree to. I have signed many paper and e-sign contracts that resulted in money transfer the traditional way for software that never did exactly what I expected, but eventually everyone was happy. I paid or got paid.
As to your specific use case, sure, the customer has to be electronic enabled in some way. Lots of hand waving here in the spirit of ideation... but when I was in India last, for example, even in the villages outside the urban centers, most small shop owners and vendors had mobile phones. I presume similar in all corners of the world these days, but certainly wherever HN is read. So if I am selling a physical widget, why can't my smart eth app send you a smart contract quote/invoice, you approve the details and shipping, and then fund the eth contract. Payment proceeds based on 1) physical placement of the widget in the hands of my bicycle courier who also has a smart phone and snaps a photo of the widget that gets uploaded for to the "oracle" app, fulfilling my end of the bargain, and 2) the physical delivery of the widget to your chaat stand where you send a photo of the delivered widget to the app before the courier signs off.
>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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
> A smart contract that auto-pays upon (phased) delivery, etc.
That's a solid idea in theory. We tried something similar but had a tough time getting companies to be comfortable with the autopay feature (e.g. like your comcast or cell phone bill) because most people think that the role of accounts payable is to pay as slowly as possible without pissing off your vendors. That means that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but to nag politely is a nuanced art. The folks who do it the best manage the relationships with the people that actually cut the checks super carefully. They view it as the last step in their customer engagement cycle. Happy to chat more about what we've learned or how we're approaching this: carlos[at]tesorio.com
Totally agree that AP is designed as interest free financing in most companies, large and small. Though I don't know if a squeaky wheel solves that, even with AI or social engineering, etc., precisely because delay is explicitly incentivized.
I concede that you are in the "squeaky wheel" business, so you probably have data showing me it does solve that!
But I would argue in some/many cases, not your cases naturally, I think the squeaky wheel is a counterproductive social norm that actually signals I am OK not being paid. It tells the deadbeat customer, that 1) you haven't gone out of business yet so they can still delay and 2) when things get serious you will not be so subtle, and will start threatening real punitive action. Until then continue delaying.
That's why most companies insulate the AR from the actual people involved in negotiations and selling. You can always blame those "people in accounting" and over drinks promise to "look into it" when all the while you are telling that poor chap in accounting to sit on the invoice. Bad form I know, but happens all the time.
I agree that if you have a special "insider" relationship curated with the 1 person in accounting that cuts the checks, you can sometimes circumvent the accidental delays.
No one ever got a larger bonus for showing FASTER cash outflows in a given quarter. So as long as that is true, line managers with PO authority will not be squeaked into submission.
I think the trick to getting companies comfortable with "smart"-er autopay is to show them a compelling reason why it works for them on the other side of the equation. But since you are actually out there working hard in this space I'll definitely defer to your experience. Maybe it is impossible, at least in the short term. Being married to a PhD in psych, I know that changing human behavior is SUPER DUPER HARD...of course she'd say the same about my domestic behavior ;)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
Baby Bidet is interesting, and anyone who has changed a diaper is probably brainstorming as they read this.
I could see it being something at mounts over the top of a toilet and the baby is covered around their waist with something like a kayak skirt. You'd need a foolproof way to do temperature control, either requiring:
- a hot water line, usually not far from toilet but requires plumbing which is out for most people
- precision heater and needs to be plugged in and will probably make people unhappy with its heat up speed unless its 220v
Good place to start prototyping might be to get a bunch of bumbo seats and start cutting the seats out of them enough to allow water flow but still give support so the little one isn't falling into the bowl.
Thinking about it more, step one for newborns that can't sit up yet could just be a changing table with a nice padded surface that drains directly into a toilet.
That could really be a great product, hope someone makes a run at that.
> That could really be a great product, hope someone makes a run at that.
You better make sure your insurance is bought and your engineering is on point: the first time your product scalds a baby is the end of your incredible journey.
yeah, that and inadequate support that leads to a child falling in some way seems like biggest risks and would need to be heavily accounted for.
For safety of the child might want to make it human driven with having the caretaker adjust the temp with a standard shower valve configuration combined with a built in cut off for anything above 105 F (or whatever scald temperature is, but I recall it being somewhere around there when I went through all the safety research with my son)
As a parent of several kids, diaper changing really seems like a solved problem. With a little practice it takes literally seconds for a wet diaper and a couple minutes for poo.
The most time consuming part of it all is the clothing unsnapping, re-snapping with winter clothing on.
Finally, the hardest part about the washing is getting the baby dry after to prevent rashes, not getting them clean. A couple flushable, bio-degradable wipes.
The last thing I want as a parent is another gadget that needs maintenance and/or refills.
As someone with a third newborn in the house right now, I agree. I can't see how a "baby bidet" makes any sense. The stuff that comes out of a baby's butt isn't something that makes sense to wash down a sink, especially once they're on solids. No hose attachment would get one of my turds down a sink, and the kids are already giving me a good run for my money in that department. It sounds way more disgusting than just dealing with it how we do now.
Eh, most of the turds go into the diaper, only what you can't wipe into the diaper goes down the drain. Its a really good way to avoid diaper rash, at any rate.
Diaper rash is largely due to not changing diapers frequently enough and not just cleaning after soiling. It's just excessive moisture / chafing The best way to cure diaper rash is to expose the bottom to the air for a long period of time.
I agree. Before I had kids I thought changing dirty nappies would be horrible, but in reality it's just not a big deal.
The idea of holding a squirming, dirty baby, over a sink (no doubt while they decide they need to pee again) is just ludicrous - this can only have been conceived by someone without kids.
On the topic of the owlet - My twins were in the NICU for 4 and 7 weeks respectively. The nurses there spend the bulk of non-feeding time checking on and (almost always) turning off heart/respiration/pulse ox alerts. The alarms are not false positives, the values they are alerting are falling outside the norm range, but the nurses know that that _is_ normal. A number of new parents to the nicu would rush to get the nurses attention with every alert until the parents understood that the nurses are professionals and the alerts are, well, dumb.
Yeah owlet does seem like a strange product for most people. A cynic would say it's a money grab for anxious parents. You can get medical grade monitors for high risk kids where SIDs is likely. But hopefully they get their 510k and show clinical utility as well as help research SIDs in general with expanded access.
No offense, but as a father of an 11 month old, the baby bidet is a terrible idea. Causes of concern / thoughts:
1. Is the bidet going to hold the baby, suspended in place, with a water shield, so I can direct the water where it needs to clean? Because if not, their is no way I can hold said baby and spray / clean with one hand. As new parents know, the water will need to get in many, many places and needs to be direct-able.
2. As new parents know, the moment the diaper comes off, things go everywhere. So is this bidet going to strip my kids cloths and diaper before spraying? Or would I have to strip and then place the kid? To many logistical issues if the latter....
3. Safety. Temperature. Pressure. Direction. Spillage. DIY Plumping. Etc. To many hurdles.
Not all kids sit still, even when you are changing them. Using a bidet just seems one of those ideas that might appeal to the 1% with a team of nannies, but to us regular folk, I'll stick with a changing mat and wipes, it is just easier....
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.
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.
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.
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.
It turns out that doesn't solve the problem at all in my experience. This is because any interest, even if paid, doesn't come close to compensating the vendor for the pain of being paid late. And it doesn't seem to act as a deterrent since the kind of CFO who tells their AP staff to late pay doesn't give a crap about your interest charges.
(Disclosure: I’m the co-founder & CEO of Tesorio, YC S15)
Awesome discussion. Agreed that this is very tough to just outsource, paying you for your services is the final step in the customer experience. CFOs and even sales or customer success teams want to treat customers very carefully in a personalized way.
Sending out automated reminder emails is called ‘dunning’ and most accounting tools will do this for you automatically. But as people mentioned, if you can’t really exert pressure, how do you get someone to pay? It’s similar to sending spammy sales emails vs. personalized messages that will get someone’s attention. Also, most big companies will just ignore your late fees.
We’ve found that the best teams at this manage their relationships and they know every last detail about the person who actually cuts the check at their client. We’re actually currently tackling collections from another perspective - we basically built a product that combines the best parts of sales CRM and customer engagement tools.
The way to get the CFOs to buy though is to help them with their cash forecasts. A good collections tool is an A/B testing machine that lets you capture information from the folks doing the collections so the CFO’s team can create more accurate forecasts.
Our website showcases our active products (Forecasting, Forex, & Analytics), but we’re currently in Beta with the Collections tool. Would love to show it to you and get your feedback. My email: carlos[at]tesorio.com
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).
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...?
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).
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.
That's great, but part of me thinks this should be a public service as well. Not everyone can afford a $60/year membership for a tool library, and there's probably an overlap with those that can't afford a $100 drill they are going to use 2x/year.
I believe most public libraries are free to join nowadays. It would be great for low SES people to have access to tools.
A lot of cities have tool libraries as well. I think the author hits the nail on the head though with "high-friction" being the problem.
When I rent a tool from the tool library, it puts me under a lot of stress to finish the job before I have to take the tool back. Furthermore, some tools are hard to pick up from the library without a truck.
If you don't have a car, forget it.
The other thing about tools as well is that in order to use them, you have to know how. If you don't own the tool, chances are pretty good you won't know what the heck you're doing.
After saying all that out loud your idea starts to sound pretty good. There needs to be a community center where you can learn how to use these tools, and borrow them when you need them. The library sounds like the perfect place. If only we could easily add low-friction on-demand services to that equation.
TechShop was addressing that issue about needing to learn how to use a tool that you don't own. Then you would use it on-premise, which seems like a better idea than borrowing it to use at home (for those projects that are portable anyway). Great concept, but turns out there wasn't a real business model there since they recently shut down.
Lending libraries are great but not every city commits resources to support them or they restrict access to the citizens (eg: Oakland,SF,Alameda,etc cannot borrow from Berkeley tool lending library).
We’re still very young but would love your support! ️
How long have you been at this? This is an idea that I've also heard thrown around. You guys will not be the first nor the last to play with the idea. Did you find any clues as to why others abandoned the idea? Good luck!
I agree that public libraries can help fill this role, especially as traditional book lending becomes more digital. I also live in Calgary so thanks for the tip!
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
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)
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.
Those big super tankers operate at like $1m a day.. drones seem like they would be mosquitos in comparison. Maybe useful for spotting fires but I think satellite are the best plus traditional look outs. AI for sat images to spot wildfires is probably already done. It could track storms (lightning etc..). A bigger issue for wildfires is removing fuel sources which nobody does. A wet winter and spring fuels fire season.
Improving fire code is more likely to have a bigger impact. This is basically all about money though.
Airborne drones can't carry enough water to be useful for extinguishment, but land-based drones could, and a swarm of mini-bulldozers to clear a fireline would be even better. Getting them to work reliably in rough terrain with lots of vegetation would be a big challenge though.
The problem isn't privatization, it's the payment structure. Crassus should have set up an insurance or subscription based system.
I imagine that a firefighting startup would not actually replace the operations of fire departments, they would simply sell products to fire departments.
One example of that is Active911: https://www.active911.com/ They sell a product that allows notifications to be pushed through multiple communication methods, and allows coordination of first response.
Crassus seems like he did just fine as it was. He was the richest man in Roman history (excepting Augustus) :) Then again, he was instrumental in turning the Republic into Empire, so he's a bit of a mixed bag.
Yeah, I think they want a 'greaser' company that will help smooth out governmental workings, FF deployments, and other stuff. Building drones is hardware, and hardware is bad at 'scaling.' Especially, since this kind of hardware is so 'critical' and probably need a lot of testing.
There's a startup in Germany that only has about 20 employees, yet they produce "professional" VTOL fixed-wing drones for businesses and such, and make churn one out every three minutes. https://www.quantum-systems.com/
(Not affiliated, just heard of them in the Omega Tau podcast, which by the way I strongly recommend!)
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.
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.
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
> 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.
I think that's fair. It's the same standard we set with alcohol and other intoxicants. I drink alcohol knowing that I can deal with its addictive properties. I don't think kids should be drinking alcohol not only because it could cause developmental problems, but because I don't think they can deal with something that addictive. I think social media is too addictive and otherwise psychologically harmful that we should keep children away.
> Social networks are addictive because if they aren't, they fail and cease to be adopted at scale
This makes it ok somehow?
> 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.
I think you're begging the question on the first point. As for the second, not only is there mounting evidence that giving kids smartphones and constant social network tools is having deleterious effects on their mental health, there are a whole slew of things that I'm ok with adults having a choice about that nobody should be ok with kids having access to.
Because children are extra gullible. Children will happily sing a catchy tune from a non-interactive, non-personalized TV or radio commercial, even repeating marketing slogans they don't understand. You can win a kid's trust by giving him a candy. Have you ever seen a kid that has to be dragged away from a shop display, kicking, screaming and crying ?
Commercial social media are refined to the equivalent of advertisement cocaine. They are also a con man's wet dream (I refer you to numerous articles about Facebook frauds). It's even more than that, because it's the only drug which changes shape to more effectively get you. You have to be constantly vigilant and watch for new manipulation methods.
Parents watch over children not just because they like them, but because children are not capable of consistently making informed, rational decisions and weighting pros and cons.
I think parents themselves are not adult enough to deal with Facebook and avoid being manipulated or cheated. I think the world hasn't caught up with addictiveness of social media yet. Other drugs are already limited, for example by age. Netherlands doesn't limit access to drugs very much, instead it focuses on informational campaigns and rehab centers, with pretty good results. FB gives people something core to human nature - social contact, so addicts will defend it to the death. Age requirement wouldn't fly, so Netherlands-style approach is the only option left. At least until FB successfully lobbies to ban them or sues for defamation.
The dangers posed by social media are not inherently new, but fraudsters in meatspace have a harder time being completely anonymous, there are witnesses everywhere, your personal profile is not written on your back, and offenders risk local ostracism. FB is more like a private nightclub than real world with laws, courts and police. FB makes it easy to be a creep remotely and anonymously.
> I think parents themselves are not adult enough to deal with Facebook and avoid being manipulated or cheated. I think the world hasn't caught up with addictiveness of social media yet.
I hear this criticism a lot and to me it strikes a similar tone as the 1972 documentary Future Shock. Effectively that the pace of change is too rapid and humans cannot adjust. Its a compelling argument on its face, but its been falsified over much of history.
Some online games-for-kids don't allow freeform text, so the game can control what kind of communication is allowed. Others are very heavily moderated.
You could also require parents to identify themselves, I guess, similar to how some financial/banking apps do? Not fool proof, but would raise the barrier for predators to enter.
I mostly agree with you. (I have 4 kids ages 9, 11, 13, and 23)
My Counter-Counterpoint is to first consider the following: (a) most kids are using normal social networks like Snapchat and Instagram in jr. high school (age 12+ in the US), (b) children see their parents and older kids using social networks and want to emulate them, (c) a lot of parents are either too busy or too lazy to do what you suggest and that's why so many children are handed a device at way too young an age, (d) helicopter parenting makes c. even worse.
So, given that, I say this should be built–if, for no other reason, than to encourage responsible and empathetic use of social media. Maybe it has time limits and is purposely non-addictive. Maybe it encourages IRL interactions at the park and helps parents coordinate that. Maybe it detects cruel comments and teaches them why its not ok. Maybe it guides kids through outdoor games and educational activities.
I like what you're suggesting but I'm more of the mindset "this is inevitable so i hope someone takes the moral/responsible route with it"
Also, a side note for those that don't have kids and aren't aware, a very large swath of elementary school children in the US already have Google accounts through their school or school district.
Why not effective Internet safety education and a bunch of apps that block NSFW, set time limit etc? (An AI bot that hovers in one corner and highlights and teaches not-OK content, maybe ..?)
IMO a safe children’s social network is a bit of an oxymoron. You’re never going to make something safe, unless it’s a closed system!
I don't agree with your oxymoron statement. First, social networks aren't inherently unsafe. Plus, I don't think they are "open" or "closed" in a binary sense. Every system–real or online–with humans is going to have bad actors. You just need varying levels of ID, auth, filtering, etc.
I wasn't really involved with Club Penguin because I didn't have kids using it during the heyday, but my understanding is that they grew it to be pretty big without any major safety issues [0].
I think this whole notion of "completely closed and safe" is what gave rise to the helicopter parenting I mentioned above. That's not a good thing.
> I'm more of the mindset "this is inevitable so i hope someone takes the moral/responsible route with it"
I might have misunderstood but you’re suggesting an actually safe, well-designed social network for kids right?
Agreed, systems aren’t open and closed in a binary sense. But social networks only thrive when the channels for self-expression are flexible, available and lots of people are using them. With kids however, safety is No.1 and as long as the channels are open, it’s impossible to safeguard against dodgy content and (worse) users. Really determined people will always find ways to get around a system, and the more ‘open’ the system is (for example private messages and chat functionalities) the higher the risks. That’s what I meant by “oxymoron.”
Club Penguin is interesting, because imo it’s an example of a fairly closed social network. Kids can only interact via the available set of responses, like emoticons and coins. (At least that’s what it was like more than five years ago when I watched my younger siblings play.) So there’s no way to type in anything, all profiles are avatar-based and they have pretty fierce moderators. It’s very well designed actually. But to use it as a way to educate kids of social media in general, maybe not, just because the major social networks like Facebook etc are designed too differently (i.e. more open.) That’s why I’m an advocate of internet safety education - because you’re right, it’s impossible to shield them!
The only way I can think of implementing a safe social network for kids is within the school itself. Okay you’re with your classmates all the time, but the social network can be more of a democratic educational platform, where kids can access content and discuss topics anytime. In the U.K., there’s a few like that already, though it’s still a bit primitive (Frog I hear is quite buggy.)
I think local social networks are the path forward here. Things similar to mastodon - albeit with some specific additions - because they are already local oriented, just prevent children from having any "federated" interactions (e.g. outside the local instance). In addition ways for parents to observe the follow/messaging behavior of their children, and how their messages are federated (e.g. keeping the data private to the local instance unless otherwise approved). This also works well because it means only the local community will be on the app, and children can only interact with locals. And they could theoretically still be allowed to retweet or discuss federated content in a sort of read-only manner; and the content they are allowed to reach could be on a white list decided upon by the intersection of the community via the school (e.g. a conservative list of content the school will choose for educational resources) and parents (e.g. a more liberal list parents will vet for their children).
Many ideas in the list sound pointless, to be polite, but that one is downright depressing. The word "social" got abused to basically mean its opposite.
Social Media sites ironically isolate humans and the needed natural interactions. Bad Idea! This will indoctrinate children at a very early stage. The social medium for children should be schools, playgrounds, community events, and other collective activities etc.
So legitimate question. If the social medium of children should be physical, why should adults be virtual? Or more generally why are adults who are supposed to be mature and capable of rational decision abandoning physical interaction for addictive social media?
Part of it is that children are highly suggestible. They're also still mentally developing and learning. Therefore, they are at risk of not developing proper social skills and are more likely to get addicted (possibly at the expense of physical activities). But your point is still valid and both of those things are, for sure, problems for adults too. One would hope that adults are, at least, less suggestible (hope, but in reality, it seems lots of adults are pretty gullible and suggestible too, at least in some things).
Social media is to socialization what candy is to food: It's enjoyable and healthy in moderation, but it is amazingly bad for anyone, especially kids, in large quantities. It also doesn't fulfill any fundamental human need that can't be satisfied in better ways.
It's ironic: Most of you desperately want to unseat Facebook, and this is a strategy toward that end. What do you think will happen when those children grow into teens?
If Facebook seems draconian, this would be an opportunity to build something better from first principles. It's a positive plan, not malicious.
I'm not sure Facebook has the ability to pursue this even if they tried. They have too much political inertia for people to trust them with a kids-focused Facebook. That means all someone needs to do is build this, then refuse to sell. Checkmate.
It won't be easy, but two decades is a long time. And that's the timeline to slay a giant.
> for people to trust them with a kids-focused Facebook.
Most non-techie people I ask have no idea that Instagram and WhatsApp are Facebook properties. Even Messenger is being disassociated from the Facebook brand. I don't know if it's a deliberate strattegy to keep the bad reputation contained but I don't see a reason they couldn't attempt that if they were to ever build a kids network.
Aren't Club Penguin, Animal Jam, etc. social networks for children? You can't collect real info about children or have real photos of them, so giving them a fun avatar and persona to hang out with other anonymous friends seems like the best way of handling the big problem with social networks for kids without getting into trouble.
It's sad but predictable that the same people who are suggesting ideas like a "Social Network for Children", are often the ones who send their own children to "tech-free" private schools to prevent them from being exposed to the products that pay their parents' bills.
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)
> 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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It won't save the house if everything around is afire, but pictures like the burnt-down HP historical archive building[1] look like it could have been saved with a sprinkler wall. (For god's sake, the trees next to it are perfectly OK.)
Indeed, some people in the recent fires were able to save their homes with a garden hose (!) depending on the intensity of the fire in their area, particularly when the fire was spread by flying embers. That's not unusual in wildfires, though only some fraction of buildings can be saved this way.
> only some fraction of buildings can be saved this way
In Australia, ember attack is responsible for 90% of the houses lost to bushfires. If you can prevent flying embers from igniting a house, you eliminate most of the risk to the building.
Embers are a big problem, and another one is vegetation near your house. If you have a big dry bush just outside your patio door and it starts to burn, the infrared coming off it can go right through the glass and catch the inside of the house on fire before the outside starts to burn. This is why we preach defensible space (no vegetation within 30-50 feet of the structure).
Here in Australia, external bushfire sprinkler systems are becoming more common. Their main purpose is to defend a house against flying embers, which are the most common way that homes ignite during a bushfire.
They are pressurised using a diesel generator, and each sprinkler head consumes 6 to 20 litres per minute (a typical installation will include 20-30 sprinkler heads) from an independent water supply (not mains - you can rely on that failing in a fire).
A bushfire front will typically pass within five to ten minutes, because as you pointed out, they are fast-moving. This limits the amount of radiant heat a sprinkler system has to cope with.
While fire suppression systems don't seem to me like a good startup model (more of a small-to-medium business), there are good software opportunities for automated and remote-triggered sprinkler activation (because people still evacuate hours earlier, and need a way to turn on the sprinkler system remotely).
I've thought about this as well. My idea was to bury a 10k gallon tank in the yard along with a compressed air tank. Run sprinklers around the perimeter of your house and drip lines across the eves of your roof. When a fire is near you turn a valve that pressurizes the tank and pushes water out to the sprinklers for ~8 hours.
Most houses burn down due to embers igniting in the roof, subfloor or against the side of the house. You need to actively protect the roof with sprayers. There are systems that already do this, as well as ember-proof subfloor vents.
The city of Oakland has not only has a wildfire problem, but an arsonist problem. This summer a construction site with a 7-story structure (196 new apartments) was burned to the ground in just a few hours allegedly by one person. I didn't think that was possible in 2017.
Is the issue with fire-retardant wood/framing materials that it is too expensive, toxic, or doesn't help once a certain temperature is reached ?
You may be coming at this from the wrong direction. A really effective way to fight fire is, ironically, with fire. Controlled burns used to be a big part of the national park service's budget, but has since dwindled (perhaps because it's hard to measure performance?).
Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, and by controlling when and how it burns, we help keep it in check instead of it turning into mega fires.
> Why aren't there sprinkler/fire retardant systems for the perimeter/external part of a house?
There are. Google "external bushfire sprinkler systems" and look at anything from a .com.au domain. These systems are as much a startup as HVAC (i.e. not really), but they still rely on software control, because owners need reassurance that the sprinklers will activate automatically even if they have already evacuated.
Detecting the appropriate activation circumstances is a high-stakes decision to hand off to a machine, and thus a potential goldmine for anybody who gets it right.
It's complicated too. For reliability, you need an independent cache of water that can last X hours (like a swimming pool), and an independent energy source to pump it.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 285 ms ] threadThis 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.
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/
[2] https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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
what I learned from it ended up in this essay:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
> Buyer’s Remorse Insurance Money back guarantee for art buyers: Buying fine art has a steep learning curve.
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.
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.
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.
Accommodation is often quite possible and is a net gain for everyone involved. Yes you don't want the guy piloting the airplane to have hallucinations, but forcing someone with social anxiety into a cramped loud office when there's no need should be doable.
The main reason for not sharing is because of the stigma involved. As for coworkers holding you to a different standard, well after any period of time, most coworkers know what you are like, despite any labels that are used. My thought on the matter is to use the words Neuro-typical and ! neuro-typical. I feel that a fair amount of what is called mental illness is actually just part of the spectrum of how a human mind can work. I think we lose a lot of human potential because most large organizations try to get all their "resources" to function together in pretty much the same way. If the time was taken to understand the optimum conditions for individual types of mental functioning there would be a large increase of productivity and satisfaction in the workplace.
Blockchain?
I would talk/share my experiences with you. If you are asking enough questions, I might help.
This might be one for the blockchain. :O
[0] https://www.amazon.com/American-Factoring-Law-David-Tatge/dp...
traditional: send PDF quote, go back and forth on quoted terms and cost 1..n times, wait for signed PO, call 1..n times reminding them to sign the PO, eventually get signed PO, do work, (at this point client is your BFF and calls you every 5 minutes asking if the work is done yet!), deliver product/service, get at least 100 bug reports on things that differ from the original approved spec/quote but should have been "implied", fix "bugs", send PDF invoice 1..n times, call buyer to remind them to pay invoice 1..n times, get runaround and sent to various accounting people most of whom are on vacation 1..n times, finally get told check is in mail 1..n times, wait 30 days per cycle, sacrifice chicken, call back and find that check was never sent and invoice is lost so repeat steps again, finally check arrives, deposit check in bank
eth: seller defines contract in solidity with various Oraclized callbacks for spec acceptance, delivery of work product(s), final acceptance test execution, and various failure modes that return eth back to the buyer's wallet if necessary, buyer funds contract with eth, acceptance events (e.g. signed PDFs in dropbox, or some git commit, etc) triggers payment to seller's eth wallet, OR on failure cases returns money back to the buyer's wallet
lots of hand wavy stuff here but since we're just discussing ideas...so, in all sincerity, what does this not get you that you are looking for?
EDIT: fix typo
And the lawyers I know personally love to litigate new things in civil court. Like robbing banks, that's where the money is!
Still, I could see this working with custom software services if you were able to write a smart contract that can test every aspect of the software to the level of detail you need. Good luck.
Agreed, I feel your pain. I would think this is only initially a solution for specific use cases, SaaS being one of them...and luckily the one I do. And in a highly regulated, safety critical sector, where testing every aspect of the software to not only the level I need, but to the level the regulators demand, is what it takes.
That said, a contract doesn't necessarily imply perfect precision. You can still deliver to vague specs and ambiguous goals and still get paid, so long as you encode something that both parties agree to. I have signed many paper and e-sign contracts that resulted in money transfer the traditional way for software that never did exactly what I expected, but eventually everyone was happy. I paid or got paid.
As to your specific use case, sure, the customer has to be electronic enabled in some way. Lots of hand waving here in the spirit of ideation... but when I was in India last, for example, even in the villages outside the urban centers, most small shop owners and vendors had mobile phones. I presume similar in all corners of the world these days, but certainly wherever HN is read. So if I am selling a physical widget, why can't my smart eth app send you a smart contract quote/invoice, you approve the details and shipping, and then fund the eth contract. Payment proceeds based on 1) physical placement of the widget in the hands of my bicycle courier who also has a smart phone and snaps a photo of the widget that gets uploaded for to the "oracle" app, fulfilling my end of the bargain, and 2) the physical delivery of the widget to your chaat stand where you send a photo of the delivered widget to the app before the courier signs off.
Would that not work, even for a physical good?
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.
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.
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.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/
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?
That's a solid idea in theory. We tried something similar but had a tough time getting companies to be comfortable with the autopay feature (e.g. like your comcast or cell phone bill) because most people think that the role of accounts payable is to pay as slowly as possible without pissing off your vendors. That means that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but to nag politely is a nuanced art. The folks who do it the best manage the relationships with the people that actually cut the checks super carefully. They view it as the last step in their customer engagement cycle. Happy to chat more about what we've learned or how we're approaching this: carlos[at]tesorio.com
I concede that you are in the "squeaky wheel" business, so you probably have data showing me it does solve that!
But I would argue in some/many cases, not your cases naturally, I think the squeaky wheel is a counterproductive social norm that actually signals I am OK not being paid. It tells the deadbeat customer, that 1) you haven't gone out of business yet so they can still delay and 2) when things get serious you will not be so subtle, and will start threatening real punitive action. Until then continue delaying.
That's why most companies insulate the AR from the actual people involved in negotiations and selling. You can always blame those "people in accounting" and over drinks promise to "look into it" when all the while you are telling that poor chap in accounting to sit on the invoice. Bad form I know, but happens all the time.
I agree that if you have a special "insider" relationship curated with the 1 person in accounting that cuts the checks, you can sometimes circumvent the accidental delays.
No one ever got a larger bonus for showing FASTER cash outflows in a given quarter. So as long as that is true, line managers with PO authority will not be squeaked into submission.
I think the trick to getting companies comfortable with "smart"-er autopay is to show them a compelling reason why it works for them on the other side of the equation. But since you are actually out there working hard in this space I'll definitely defer to your experience. Maybe it is impossible, at least in the short term. Being married to a PhD in psych, I know that changing human behavior is SUPER DUPER HARD...of course she'd say the same about my domestic behavior ;)
[0] 2008 Toronto Star article on Prof. Alex Mihailidis - https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2008/09/01/u_of...
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).
Making policing even less personal gets us further from that goal. We need MORE community engagement, more handshakes, more of all that.
- 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.
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/
[1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/SmarterFresh-Diaper-Sprayer-Premium-S...
[2] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/RinseWorks-Certified-Warranty-Pressur...
I could see it being something at mounts over the top of a toilet and the baby is covered around their waist with something like a kayak skirt. You'd need a foolproof way to do temperature control, either requiring: - a hot water line, usually not far from toilet but requires plumbing which is out for most people - precision heater and needs to be plugged in and will probably make people unhappy with its heat up speed unless its 220v
Good place to start prototyping might be to get a bunch of bumbo seats and start cutting the seats out of them enough to allow water flow but still give support so the little one isn't falling into the bowl.
Thinking about it more, step one for newborns that can't sit up yet could just be a changing table with a nice padded surface that drains directly into a toilet.
That could really be a great product, hope someone makes a run at that.
You better make sure your insurance is bought and your engineering is on point: the first time your product scalds a baby is the end of your incredible journey.
For safety of the child might want to make it human driven with having the caretaker adjust the temp with a standard shower valve configuration combined with a built in cut off for anything above 105 F (or whatever scald temperature is, but I recall it being somewhere around there when I went through all the safety research with my son)
The most time consuming part of it all is the clothing unsnapping, re-snapping with winter clothing on.
Finally, the hardest part about the washing is getting the baby dry after to prevent rashes, not getting them clean. A couple flushable, bio-degradable wipes.
The last thing I want as a parent is another gadget that needs maintenance and/or refills.
The idea of holding a squirming, dirty baby, over a sink (no doubt while they decide they need to pee again) is just ludicrous - this can only have been conceived by someone without kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
1. Is the bidet going to hold the baby, suspended in place, with a water shield, so I can direct the water where it needs to clean? Because if not, their is no way I can hold said baby and spray / clean with one hand. As new parents know, the water will need to get in many, many places and needs to be direct-able.
2. As new parents know, the moment the diaper comes off, things go everywhere. So is this bidet going to strip my kids cloths and diaper before spraying? Or would I have to strip and then place the kid? To many logistical issues if the latter....
3. Safety. Temperature. Pressure. Direction. Spillage. DIY Plumping. Etc. To many hurdles.
Not all kids sit still, even when you are changing them. Using a bidet just seems one of those ideas that might appeal to the 1% with a team of nannies, but to us regular folk, I'll stick with a changing mat and wipes, it is just easier....
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.
Strangely this doesn't overlap with the "happy path" of normal AR processing.
I can only hope one day, horse heads will be available via Amazon Prime drone delivery, accessible through an API.
Awesome discussion. Agreed that this is very tough to just outsource, paying you for your services is the final step in the customer experience. CFOs and even sales or customer success teams want to treat customers very carefully in a personalized way.
Sending out automated reminder emails is called ‘dunning’ and most accounting tools will do this for you automatically. But as people mentioned, if you can’t really exert pressure, how do you get someone to pay? It’s similar to sending spammy sales emails vs. personalized messages that will get someone’s attention. Also, most big companies will just ignore your late fees.
We’ve found that the best teams at this manage their relationships and they know every last detail about the person who actually cuts the check at their client. We’re actually currently tackling collections from another perspective - we basically built a product that combines the best parts of sales CRM and customer engagement tools.
The way to get the CFOs to buy though is to help them with their cash forecasts. A good collections tool is an A/B testing machine that lets you capture information from the folks doing the collections so the CFO’s team can create more accurate forecasts.
Our website showcases our active products (Forecasting, Forex, & Analytics), but we’re currently in Beta with the Collections tool. Would love to show it to you and get your feedback. My email: carlos[at]tesorio.com
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/
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...?
Tools aren't like a dictionary because there is no digital/online replacement for a saw.
https://torontotoollibrary.com/
I believe most public libraries are free to join nowadays. It would be great for low SES people to have access to tools.
When I rent a tool from the tool library, it puts me under a lot of stress to finish the job before I have to take the tool back. Furthermore, some tools are hard to pick up from the library without a truck.
If you don't have a car, forget it.
The other thing about tools as well is that in order to use them, you have to know how. If you don't own the tool, chances are pretty good you won't know what the heck you're doing.
After saying all that out loud your idea starts to sound pretty good. There needs to be a community center where you can learn how to use these tools, and borrow them when you need them. The library sounds like the perfect place. If only we could easily add low-friction on-demand services to that equation.
Lend/borrow from people around you.
Lending libraries are great but not every city commits resources to support them or they restrict access to the citizens (eg: Oakland,SF,Alameda,etc cannot borrow from Berkeley tool lending library).
We’re still very young but would love your support! ️
Web — https://selfless.io
iOS — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/selfless-love-something.-giv...
Android — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.selfless
Your contact link doesn't seem to work
"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
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_RQ-11_Raven
Improving fire code is more likely to have a bigger impact. This is basically all about money though.
I imagine that a firefighting startup would not actually replace the operations of fire departments, they would simply sell products to fire departments.
One example of that is Active911: https://www.active911.com/ They sell a product that allows notifications to be pushed through multiple communication methods, and allows coordination of first response.
Yeah, I think they want a 'greaser' company that will help smooth out governmental workings, FF deployments, and other stuff. Building drones is hardware, and hardware is bad at 'scaling.' Especially, since this kind of hardware is so 'critical' and probably need a lot of testing.
(Not affiliated, just heard of them in the Omega Tau podcast, which by the way I strongly recommend!)
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.
EDIT: ah, now I see (A)rt
That should never be built... and yet, somehow, we just know it will.
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.
This makes it ok somehow?
> 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.
I think you're begging the question on the first point. As for the second, not only is there mounting evidence that giving kids smartphones and constant social network tools is having deleterious effects on their mental health, there are a whole slew of things that I'm ok with adults having a choice about that nobody should be ok with kids having access to.
Commercial social media are refined to the equivalent of advertisement cocaine. They are also a con man's wet dream (I refer you to numerous articles about Facebook frauds). It's even more than that, because it's the only drug which changes shape to more effectively get you. You have to be constantly vigilant and watch for new manipulation methods.
Parents watch over children not just because they like them, but because children are not capable of consistently making informed, rational decisions and weighting pros and cons.
I think parents themselves are not adult enough to deal with Facebook and avoid being manipulated or cheated. I think the world hasn't caught up with addictiveness of social media yet. Other drugs are already limited, for example by age. Netherlands doesn't limit access to drugs very much, instead it focuses on informational campaigns and rehab centers, with pretty good results. FB gives people something core to human nature - social contact, so addicts will defend it to the death. Age requirement wouldn't fly, so Netherlands-style approach is the only option left. At least until FB successfully lobbies to ban them or sues for defamation.
The dangers posed by social media are not inherently new, but fraudsters in meatspace have a harder time being completely anonymous, there are witnesses everywhere, your personal profile is not written on your back, and offenders risk local ostracism. FB is more like a private nightclub than real world with laws, courts and police. FB makes it easy to be a creep remotely and anonymously.
I hear this criticism a lot and to me it strikes a similar tone as the 1972 documentary Future Shock. Effectively that the pace of change is too rapid and humans cannot adjust. Its a compelling argument on its face, but its been falsified over much of history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU
How Lego Built a Social Network for Kids That's Not Creepy
You could also require parents to identify themselves, I guess, similar to how some financial/banking apps do? Not fool proof, but would raise the barrier for predators to enter.
My Counter-Counterpoint is to first consider the following: (a) most kids are using normal social networks like Snapchat and Instagram in jr. high school (age 12+ in the US), (b) children see their parents and older kids using social networks and want to emulate them, (c) a lot of parents are either too busy or too lazy to do what you suggest and that's why so many children are handed a device at way too young an age, (d) helicopter parenting makes c. even worse.
So, given that, I say this should be built–if, for no other reason, than to encourage responsible and empathetic use of social media. Maybe it has time limits and is purposely non-addictive. Maybe it encourages IRL interactions at the park and helps parents coordinate that. Maybe it detects cruel comments and teaches them why its not ok. Maybe it guides kids through outdoor games and educational activities.
I like what you're suggesting but I'm more of the mindset "this is inevitable so i hope someone takes the moral/responsible route with it"
Also, a side note for those that don't have kids and aren't aware, a very large swath of elementary school children in the US already have Google accounts through their school or school district.
Edit: some words
IMO a safe children’s social network is a bit of an oxymoron. You’re never going to make something safe, unless it’s a closed system!
I don't agree with your oxymoron statement. First, social networks aren't inherently unsafe. Plus, I don't think they are "open" or "closed" in a binary sense. Every system–real or online–with humans is going to have bad actors. You just need varying levels of ID, auth, filtering, etc.
I wasn't really involved with Club Penguin because I didn't have kids using it during the heyday, but my understanding is that they grew it to be pretty big without any major safety issues [0].
I think this whole notion of "completely closed and safe" is what gave rise to the helicopter parenting I mentioned above. That's not a good thing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Penguin#Child_safety
1: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/purple-republicclub-pen...
I might have misunderstood but you’re suggesting an actually safe, well-designed social network for kids right?
Agreed, systems aren’t open and closed in a binary sense. But social networks only thrive when the channels for self-expression are flexible, available and lots of people are using them. With kids however, safety is No.1 and as long as the channels are open, it’s impossible to safeguard against dodgy content and (worse) users. Really determined people will always find ways to get around a system, and the more ‘open’ the system is (for example private messages and chat functionalities) the higher the risks. That’s what I meant by “oxymoron.”
Club Penguin is interesting, because imo it’s an example of a fairly closed social network. Kids can only interact via the available set of responses, like emoticons and coins. (At least that’s what it was like more than five years ago when I watched my younger siblings play.) So there’s no way to type in anything, all profiles are avatar-based and they have pretty fierce moderators. It’s very well designed actually. But to use it as a way to educate kids of social media in general, maybe not, just because the major social networks like Facebook etc are designed too differently (i.e. more open.) That’s why I’m an advocate of internet safety education - because you’re right, it’s impossible to shield them!
The only way I can think of implementing a safe social network for kids is within the school itself. Okay you’re with your classmates all the time, but the social network can be more of a democratic educational platform, where kids can access content and discuss topics anytime. In the U.K., there’s a few like that already, though it’s still a bit primitive (Frog I hear is quite buggy.)
Why is it important? I hated all those things as a kid.
If Facebook seems draconian, this would be an opportunity to build something better from first principles. It's a positive plan, not malicious.
I'm not sure Facebook has the ability to pursue this even if they tried. They have too much political inertia for people to trust them with a kids-focused Facebook. That means all someone needs to do is build this, then refuse to sell. Checkmate.
It won't be easy, but two decades is a long time. And that's the timeline to slay a giant.
Most non-techie people I ask have no idea that Instagram and WhatsApp are Facebook properties. Even Messenger is being disassociated from the Facebook brand. I don't know if it's a deliberate strattegy to keep the bad reputation contained but I don't see a reason they couldn't attempt that if they were to ever build a kids network.
Cerebral monitoring devices implanted at birth would be a much more effective solution.
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)
> 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/
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.
I'm co-founder of a company building exactly this – AdQuick.com. We're funded by Initialized Capital/Garry Tan and other YC partners. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/adquick-seed-funding/
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.
I suppose you could say that means it has a proven business model.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
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.
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.
Myopic to say the least.
Highlights - Jetskis in SF, Escorts in NY
YC, here I come!
Our team at LampLampshadeRepair.io will see you there!
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.
- The concept fails. People is not giving you money for no service.
- Your answer lacks the creativity required for a person with good ideas.
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.
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.
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.
[1] http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7559762-181/hewlett-pa... (see picture 3)
In Australia, ember attack is responsible for 90% of the houses lost to bushfires. If you can prevent flying embers from igniting a house, you eliminate most of the risk to the building.
They are pressurised using a diesel generator, and each sprinkler head consumes 6 to 20 litres per minute (a typical installation will include 20-30 sprinkler heads) from an independent water supply (not mains - you can rely on that failing in a fire).
A bushfire front will typically pass within five to ten minutes, because as you pointed out, they are fast-moving. This limits the amount of radiant heat a sprinkler system has to cope with.
While fire suppression systems don't seem to me like a good startup model (more of a small-to-medium business), there are good software opportunities for automated and remote-triggered sprinkler activation (because people still evacuate hours earlier, and need a way to turn on the sprinkler system remotely).
Is the issue with fire-retardant wood/framing materials that it is too expensive, toxic, or doesn't help once a certain temperature is reached ?
Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, and by controlling when and how it burns, we help keep it in check instead of it turning into mega fires.
Here is an article to get you started, https://www.npca.org/articles/819-fight-fire-with-funding-an...
There are. Google "external bushfire sprinkler systems" and look at anything from a .com.au domain. These systems are as much a startup as HVAC (i.e. not really), but they still rely on software control, because owners need reassurance that the sprinklers will activate automatically even if they have already evacuated.
Detecting the appropriate activation circumstances is a high-stakes decision to hand off to a machine, and thus a potential goldmine for anybody who gets it right.