Ask HN: Imagine you can solve one of your own problems today – what would it be?

5 points by gregmuender ↗ HN
There have been so many startups lately that seem to resonate with a very painful problem. Dropbox with file sharing. Uber with hailing a cab. Airbnb with finding lodging.

What's the next behemoth?

13 comments

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International payments. Anybody? Please?
Home Ec
Home Ec, what's that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_economics

Basically, "stuff to help me keep my household clean and organized and running well."

I associate Home Ec (from Middle School) with cooking lol. I know thats not probably the only focus of it but thats what comes to mind.

What about stuff like http://www.handybook.com/?

"I associate Home Ec (from Middle School) with cooking lol. I know thats not probably the only focus of it but thats what comes to mind."

That's falls in the category, certainly (well, "cooking for the home", which differs somewhat from "cooking for a restaurant", which wouldn't really be Home Ec), but it stretches much further.

"What about stuff like http://www.handybook.com/? "

Falls in the broader space, and might be part of a broader solution, but probably most people aren't going to outsource most tasks so there's still a lot that doesn't cover.

Education (I'm working on it right now)
Email.

Every inbound message will fall into one of the following categories:

1. Something that I need to remember. This could be some information that will be of future value in a project, or it could be the contact information of the sender. (Help me store it efficiently).

2. Something I need to do. (Help me track what I'm supposed to do so I don't forget).

3. I don't need this. (The delete button works well here, as do filters).

This may be easy (though I doubt it) for rugged individualists, but for those of us who work with a group of people, it's extraordinarily difficult.

I guess I am not really whining about email. I am whining about the interaction of email with project management, task management, calendars, and archives.

And how have I solved this? With a human being. Can your software compete with the $50,000/year price of a person? I'm interested.

(In writing this I realize that I am now advocating the hollowing-out of American civilization by making white-collar workers obsolete, replacing perfectly nice people with machines. Sorry, America.)