Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption?
After seeing the ticketmaster/livenation merger post, there's probably a long list of industries ripe for disruption. ie- ticketing, riaa/music,etc. I'd love to start putting together a list of other industries, so hence the reason for this post.
Please post reasons and/or a piece of information that provides insight as to why that industry is ripe for disruption
102 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadThis may be one of the most obvious ones out there. Artists don't need the record labels anymore. The money is not purely in the music, but ticket sales, merchandise, extra content,etc.
I like what topspin media is doing. Myspace has made great strides, but it's just a start.
ebay sucks, for both the buyers and sellers. and ebay doesn't even like auctions anymore, they're moving towards the amazon-style marketplace model.
The best strategy for a startup to topple a massive corporation is to flank them. Hit them in their weak spots, grow, and eventually you might get enough resources to topple them.
http://www.dawdle.com
The self-pimping done, you're being too narrow in terming it "online auctions". Auctions don't make a ton of sense for the vast majority of items sold online - they're only really useful for unique stuff. That's why they're moving towards Amazon's fixed price model. The problem with fixed price is that it's a "take it or leave it" proposition. Well, Dawdle solves the "take it or leave it" issue by letting potential buyers name their own price with our StandingOffer technology.
First video games and gear, then the world! MWA HAHAHAH AHA !!!!!!1eleventy-seven
ebay/auction sites/local commerce can be done better.
Not to mention the fact that the market naturally segments into people of varying levels of interest. People who love music and people who just care about the Top40 can be catered towards by very different business models.
CraigsList is not the be-all end-all of buying/selling things locally online. It may be a tough nut to crack, but it won't be hard to radically improve upon their horrible user experience. I would love to see some competition in this space.
Just make sure that when you launch - that you're not targeting SF/NYC.
(I will admit - there is local competitors that you would have to beat in most markets - so it's still tough - but it's not always cl.)
Your new site would have to be pretty fickin' special for me to post my ad there instead of to a massively larger audience on craigslist
Also, you can't exactly undercut them -- Craigslist is free for most categories and pretty reasonable for the others
- ERP ssystems are impossible to understand for the people that work with them, and require an army of highly paid consultants just to get it up and running.
- financial software for large companies doesn't allow managers to see numbers in real-time, is difficult to get numbers in and out of, and hard to use.
- HR software for managing people, their interests, knowledge, track record, etc. in large companies.
These are just a few examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many more.
The advantage of B2B software is that you have a very good income model. A SAP ERP system for a company with 1000 employees runs into the millions. There are customers out there willing to pay you by the bucketload if you can make something that doesn't suck. And most of what is on the market today sucks badly.
This is an industry that has been resting on its laurels for many years, and is ready to be picked off by nimble competitors.
The other approach is to take on a narrow vertical and do a bangup job, Grow from there.
Part of the problem is that when things cost beyond a certain amount they need approval. With approval comes delays and red tape. You'll have to have some sort of pricing and buy-in strategy for you to be able to get the large company to buy your stuff if that's the case.
If you can manage that, then by all means, go kick ass.
But you're absolutely right - the sales cycle is very different. Not only do you have looong lead-times, but you also have to understand all the corporate bullshit, and weird decisions that get made based on the sometimes irrational behaviour of big corporations.
But if you do it right you can make big-corp pay for your development. If you sell it well some companies will give you the opportunity to sell them something you have yet to make, and that they full-well know will make your company very profitable. Nix the VC, go straight to the customer, and make them pay up front.
Who just can't afford/manage ERP but could use it? I think there are a bunch in this sphere.
However, all such products do require a systematic sales team/plan/process including inbound/outbound/inside sales kind of approaches to build revenue.
Summary: Fancy this: racetracks that keep 93% of your money and return only 5% in winning tickets. They wouldn't last long, not unless they could somehow rig the rules to both forbid price competition and make the purchase of race bets mandatory. That's more or less what the title insurance industry has done to American homeowners.
The current system is pretty inefficient. This probably differs from country to country. The current system here works like this:
The universities give lists of subjects and prescribed textbooks to brick-and-mortar bookstores. They then buy the books and sell them at a huge mark-up.
Students generally do not order online because of the time delay/import BS and many do not have a fixed postal address. Secondhand book sales are a bit of mess because it is not centralised, etc...
There are possibly quite a few ideas on how to make this system more effective (esp. in countries in which the internet penetration is not that high but the cellphone penetration is).
I think they've saved me 60% or more in the past... over the used bookstore.
The lead time issue could be fixed simply by changing University policy, requiring professors to disclose required textbooks X weeks in advance of the first day of class.
One loophole I found near the end of undergrad was that the campus bookstore's website had the required books posted for each class well over a month ahead of time (so you could buy them online and swing by to pick them up). I just looked up all my classes there, copied down the ISBNs and hit up half.com or Amazon. Of course, this breaks down with last minute changes or additions made by professors.
8 Stupid Frat Boy Business Ideas http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-boy-...
"NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I HATE TO CRUSH DREAMS BUT PLEASE FORGET ABOUT THIS."
I do however not know of one central/large one. There are several reasons why in some cases it succeeds and in others not. In poorer regions/countries people would look for more ways to save money (the pressure isn't really on an Ivy League guy to buy a $50 book instead of a $100 one when his tuition is $40,000. In countries where students live on less than $3000 a year it is).
A solid business idea I have seen is a chinese copy center - you hand in a book and the next day get your book and copy for about $20 (this business is in operation more than 7 years without any uhm... legal problems).
I agree with you that technologies used by government are ripe for disruption -- and in my opinion the Senate and Geithner today pretty much guaranteed that 'back on track' will be years, if not decades, away. So this really is a good, maybe vital, area to create tools that improve efficiency.
A couple of ideas have popped into my head recently about ways to really shake this area up and to make it into a profitable business to start.
6-9 million uniques isn't really worth the funding any of them received, I don't think.
They didn't ask permission for the data any more than Google did. Scrape/index/refresh/repeat.
Hashjobs.com is a pretty cute rails app one guy threw together, I assume to show his Rails chops rather than as a startup. It's not mine, but was interesting enough to mention.
http://jobfeedr.com/ is another interesting one, I think I heard of it here. It's a modified WP blog...
For example, users interact with user interfaces, not messaging layers. If you can get people using your interface, you can switch the messaging layer where appropriate. Notice Google now sending IM to SMS?
At my startup, Borange, we send group SMS for free on the iPhone, and are working with metadata and a user interface to innovate around sharing social availability and impromptu invitations, one of SMS's big use cases. When the time is right (read PUSH for iPhone?), we'll migrate users to a modern mobile messaging layer, and keep our backwards compatibility with free SMS for interacting with the rest of the world.
Check us out, by the way. We just launched our iPhone app and are looking for investors and partners who believe in the Matrix and major change in the communications space. http://www.borange.com.
Jeez, I truly do wish you guys luck, but group/social SMS is a pretty tough nut to crack.
(I used to cover the mobile industry for a trade publication.)
Yeah, crazy dead heap there, though! How long until SMS joins it? :)
In Australia, the normal price for large scale wholesale electricity from the national grid is Aust $48 per Mw/hr. But several times a year the 'spot price' is over Aust $10,000 per Mw/hr.
This is the reason companies have 'peaking' plants that only operate 3-5 days a year.
There will be 2 main stratergies:
1. Owner / user generated power would be transferred back to the grid during high price periods.
2. Load shedding (automatic turn-off of power) would occur during high price period.
The primary requirement is a 'smarter grid'
The grid doesn't have to be all that smart. It just needs to tell folks when the peakers are being turned on and off.
And, folks need to be compensated for reacting to said on/off.
Things to look for in a disruptive market:
1) The presence of the 'Earlyvangelist'. It does not matter if you can disrupt an industry if no one will realize the value of the innovation. This means finding real people at real companies and gathering requirements for something they will buy.
2) An existing distribution channel that is available for the new product.
3) Existing product positioning that you can leverage. As a startup, its hard to disrupt when you have to spend all your money on advertising, branding, or explaining what your product is.
4) Large existing market.
The book has a helpful framework for analyzing markets base on some of these factors, maturity, etc. This identifies the primary constraints of market risk. From there you can work with the customer to build a better product, and if you are lucky the risk shifts towards execution.
I suspect over the next 5-10 years we will see major changes in this industry. Huge savings to home buyers & sellers are available if the bureaucracy and traditions can be broken and replaced with a more consumer friendly system.
A consumer friendly solution is needed - when we purchased our home last year, the amount of times I needed to initial and sign documents and then sign again after changes and again when the conditions were met, and again when we removed the contingencies, etc - and each time Scan & Email or Fax it back to the sellers or a third party; it was just annoying. With all of the e-sign technologies and document collaboration, there has got to be a way to make this process easier, smoother and less archaic.
We got our home for a great price, and used a real estate agent, I could care less whether or not the realtor was removed from the process. What I want removed from the process is the pain.
Methinks boat left the dock on this one.
But even before that, we might see a lot more authors going online and developing new patterns of writing that are based on shorter publishing cycles and still lower revenue expectations.
I don't know how this will play out, but I'd bet that the RIAA/audio industry would make an embarassingly good model of what this very conservative industry will go through.
corporate setup & startup paperwork of all sorts. also housing rental contracts, contractor... contracts. etc.
patent applications. it's so hard to find good examples and templates. i'd pay to have something that said "type your overview here", "upload a picture here", etc.
college applications. they charge what, $50 per application they look at? save them time, save applicants money. and how many colleges would perfectly suit you that you never heard about?
make school scholarships more transparent and ease the application process.
keeping up with relatives. i feel a little dirty about this one, but i'd love to have a helper manage my familial relationships in a behind-the-scenes fashion. birthday email templates, friendly hellos, status updates, etc. although deciding to pay for a service of that sort would mean acknowledging that you're a terrible grandson/husband/etc.
warranties & mail in rebates. they all turn straight into money and dealing with them is total bs.
i'm going back to work...
I've needed something for keeping up with friends, since I don't have many relatives. While fb news feeds tell me what's going on with my friends ON fb, the only out-of-band reminder I have is just birthdays.
I thought about this for a long time, and I need it. Problem is, I'm not sure if anyone else really does. And even if they do, people might not admit to using it, which makes for a distribution problem.
Thoughts?
Back in the dot-com boom, the startup I worked for built a similar service. It was very popular. In fact, it was so popular we... shut it down to work on a sort of web-based ERP framework. WHOOPS!
But yeah, there's probably room for another birthday reminder service.
http://www.birthdayalarm.com
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/11/whats-next-for-bebos-fo...
The perceived value of immigrating is high enough that the price is not objectionable to many clients. They just want to make sure it is done right. In a market I used to work, by far the most successful immigration lawyer was regarded as a sleazy guy by most of the other immigration lawyers. But he projected WEALTH, and that was perceived by clients as the ability to succeed with a case. So he had plenty of income to maintain the trappings of wealth, and the cycle continued. Most immigration lawyers have enough technique to do most cases, yes, and many clients (if they are good at reading English, which is not a given) could look up laws and forms on the Web and do their own cases themselves, but immigration lawyers trade partly in peace of mind.
Lawyers are there to do 2 things, spot anything which might become a problem before it does, when it becomes a problem get your back. No 100% automated online system could do that.
However an automated system could probably reduce costs a lot.
http://mfeldstein.com/all-44-blackboard-patent-claims-invali...
Absolutely. My son is a student in an online high school and has taken online classes from other providers. All the competitors in that space are abominably user-unfriendly.
Screenshot of general page:
http://screenshots.markbao.com/bbcd72149092d041f5aa310f2f2d3...
http://screenshots.markbao.com/c637d2dc73f4b51c5e74111b86d7e...
One of the biggest problems with LMS (USPTO Blackboard patent 6,988,138) is that they're often hard to use, so teachers don't use them. I'm trying to change this by making things mindlessly simple, and using words they're already familiar with (Attachments, like with email):
http://screenshots.markbao.com/cecd9f592564abe2cd5cac2ae8060...
It's certainly not to the caliber of Blackboard, but I'm trying to target the long tail who just want websites and not huge, bloated LMSs, and scale up from there. Release early iterate often! It's going to be charged on a yearly basis by school, which includes unlimited teachers, file storage included.
It's mostly going to be a sales and marketing learning experience for myself.
Let me know if you think there is a market for this in middle schools/high schools/college... contact email/AIM is in profile.
My university currently uses Blackboard. Some of the computing subjects are trialling moodle to see whether the whole university could switch from Blackboard.
Moodle is simpler to use and less buggy.
Here are a few thoughts: - information and analysis. It's still too hard for consumers and too expensive for professionals to get access to reliable and usable information on the state of companies, economies, etc. - sources of capital for individuals and businesses. New ways will emerge of providing good ideas and reliable individuals with cheap access to the capital they need to build businesses, buy homes, etc. Prosper and kiva hopefully are just the beginning. - payments and micropayments. Does anyone out there love paypal? Or credit card companies, for that matter? Should it really cost several percent to handle every small and large transaction that takes place in the world? And several percent isn't all that bad compared to transaction costs in some industries, like healthcare. Should it really take 10 minutes and require complete trust in the waitstaff to not steal my information every time I use a credit card at a restaurant?
Let me store multiple currencies. dont convert currencies but actually let me hold whatever currencies I regularly deal with ie Euros, US dollars, Australian dollars and Thai baht but it would vary customer to customer.
Let me make and receive payments over the net similar to PayPal (act as a payment processor).
Also give me a bank account number for people who want to pay via what they think is an old fashioned bank transfer. If you could provide me with whatever numbers I need so I can receive bank transfers in every country I do business that would be ideal.
I dont need any physical shop fronts. less real estate and staff should keep costs down.
Provide a net based interface and a card that works over the visa network and Im happy.
Do NOT send me paper statements and ads for your latest attempt to take my money under the guise of being my best friend.
The world could use a net-centric bank that assumes you are not limited to whatever country you happen to be physically located in right now. With its lack of physical storefronts this bank wouldnt be for everyone but thats fine. It would be a a bank for tech savy, international business people.
Online learning: Large edu and enterprise players like Blackboard and Saba are due for a disruption IMO (I think the ball is already rolling on this). Schools and enterprises don't want to keep paying huge licensing and infrastructure fees, and students should be able earn an online degree from a combination of online courses (from multiple schools).
Online classifieds: I know this has been discussed here before, but I'm of the opinion that craigslist is due for a disruption of some sort.
Car buying and financing: I just bought a car for my wife. Even though you can apply for financing online, the entire process was a total pain. There needs to be a "TicketStumbler for cars" that includes a financing and insurance option. I should be able to apply for traditional financing as well as peer-to-peer (ala prosper.com) financing all in one swoop. It should pull listings from classifieds, dealer inventories, auto trader, etc.
-automobile disrupted by cars from asia - oh shit happened!
-book industry disrupted by self published electronic books
-shipping industry disrupted by automation - happening
-pcs industry by netbooks with no moving parts/cellphones
-Windows/Office by Ubuntu/Openoffice (outside of USA)
-power industry by cheap solar cells - pipedream
-housing industry by prefab homes - pipedream
-newspapers by online media - happening
-drug industry by Indian made generic drugs - legislation won't let it happen
-all driving trades (taxis, truck driver etc) by automated DARPA style cars - pipedream
-most manufacturing jobs by cheap chinese/korean robots - happening
-most farming jobs by automation (eg AutoFarm - gps/AI driven tractors) - happening
-Californian/Arizona farming by cheaper farms in Mexico, Guatamala etc - happening
-drive through order takers by voice recognition -Long distance by skype, calling card & SIP providers - happening
-Business travel by HD Video conferencing systems - happening (Cisco + HP)
-Telecom equipment by Huawei
-Oil furnaces by alternative pellet combustion system (see Jon Udell) -??
-Military soldiers by remote controlled robots - happening
-billboards by gps aware ads
-interbroker dealers by cheaper competitors (ITG - etc) - happening
- speeding ticket writing by RFID tag reading systems (UK) -various industries by the rental business (Netflicks, Zipcar etc)
Candidates that will not be disrupted
- Governments - always political and loath change
- Unions
- Near monopolies (Heathcare, Cell phone)
- Religion to an extent