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Ask HN: Validate this startup idea

3 points by dcpdx ↗ HN
The idea is to create a "Wikipedia for statistics", pulling a ton of statistics about everything and putting them in one place where they're easily searchable and filtered by tags/keywords. Content would be spidered as well as user-submitted, with sources needed to guarantee accuracy.

Is this a good idea? Who would be the main users? How could it be monetized? It seems like a pretty obvious product so the lack of existing alternatives concerns me.

I appreciate the input from the HN community!

3 comments

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badmash69
There are already several stats sites , especially for economics. I recall using those sites when I was in B-School.

Now, http://www.wolframalpha.com/ is my go to site for all my stats related searches.

You should talk to B-School students and find out what they need to change their search habits.

dcpdx
Our initial thought was to focus on consumer demographic statistics for small/med size companies to use when evaluating consumer habits and trends. Currently, that information is all over the place in different reports costing up to $5K a piece. We were thinking about a freemium/subscription model and open the market to businesses that don't necessarily want to spend $5K on one report; statistics like "29% of college students in the U.S. own smartphones".

Wolfram Alpha is more of a computational search engine than a stat search engine, so IMO the overlap is minimal.

Good idea to talk to B-School students; that's definitely a segment of the market that might be interested in something like this.

salman89
I like the idea - I myself run into lots of times where I am looking for random statistics that I need for a presentation, report, etc. Few things to consider:

- I like a freemium/subscription model. Even if the freemium model only allows the user to find such statistic. Ex show the user "X% of mobile users use their phone in the bathroom".

- I'm more worried from a profitability standpoint. Can you procure licenses for the data (remember that if you just buy the report, you don't have the license to sell it again) and still turn a profit?

- Maybe you can follow a more affiliate model. Often times, I find it difficult to just find which reports can give me the data I need. Perhaps some sort of indexing service for reports - ala Google Book/Scholar search.

Good luck!