Solve your first world problems

http://www.firstworldproblems.biz/

by mhlakhani • 14 years ago

192 49 14 years ago

marquis• 14 years ago

Still no solution for ennui?

SeoxyS• 14 years ago

Soon, I don't think even Instacart will be able to help with my Twinkie cravings, considering Hostess just went bankrupt again, and stopped production.

chacha102• 14 years ago

In my case, they can't solve my problem because they are only in Northern California. :(

Dove• 14 years ago

We treated this as a quiz for how familiar we were with various startups. Got a good chunk of them right, too. I may need to spend more time working and less time on Hacker News.

omarchowdhury• 14 years ago

Here's another first world problem solved:

http://getcoldturkey.com/

Firehed• 14 years ago

Just added it, thanks!

hayksaakian2• 14 years ago

'I have $36' - my favorite

viraj_shah• 14 years ago

This is funny.

azatris• 14 years ago

I think this should be retitled to "Solve the problems you do not really have using a website that is as useless".

saraid2162• 14 years ago

Pretty sure that's what it says.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Don't be surprised, it's classic marketing. The easiest problems to solve are the problems your customer didn't know they had. The marketing pitches for such solutions always begin by introducing you to a problem you didn't know you had.

mahesh_rm• 14 years ago

I vote for this as best 2012 HN post.

StuieK4• 14 years ago

Hey guys Firehed and a bunch of us put this together. Feel free to submit a pull request if you want to add something :)

prostoalex3• 14 years ago

Tumblr is in NY!

StuieK4• 14 years ago

Ah you're right! Forgot about that, did I miss any others?

z-factor• 14 years ago

Did you consider just making it a list of links? If you want to hide the link targets you can do that with JS. Dropdown list is kind of unnecessary, I think.

StuieK4• 14 years ago

Yeah you're right, that would be a lot better. To be honest we kinda just threw it together in a couple hrs and forgot about it.

T-R• 14 years ago

If I recall, I think the over-styled but less-usable drop-down list was a deliberate decision, much like the call to setTimeout.

(I'm a housemate of StuieK and Firehed, and also contributed to the page)

D_Alex• 14 years ago

Mine is "I can't even be bothered to fill out the sign-up forms for all these web sites you redirect me to".

hayksaakian2• 14 years ago

i just went to the site to look for that option...

prostoalex3• 14 years ago

Launchrock needs to have a premium membership option.

VoiceOfWisdom• 14 years ago

The entry for app.net is glorious. I should have known what it was just from the title.

prostoalex3• 14 years ago

It's a play on http://www.ihave50dollars.com/

w3pm2• 14 years ago

I am very close to donating! This describes exactly how I feel about the Silicon Valley publicized on HN. Surely there are plenty of start-ups solving real problems, hard problems -- what can we do to make sure those make the front-page more often? I guess all of the Instagrams getting acquired for hundreds of millions doesn't help.

jaredsohn• 14 years ago

A good start would be to name some of them in posts like this -- both those that are being solved and those that should be solved.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Hmm,

Small business gets reamed on store fixtures and any sort of furniture.

Creating a market for piece work (people working at home doing small assembly / sewing / Etc functions) with folks who want to do small production runs.

Fasteners on demand, making the kinds of fasteners you want how you want them right now in reasonable quantities.

Inventory management for one/two person shops.

Phone customer support on demand.

Essential network service (DNS/Email/Web/File/Fax/Media) for small businesses. (I did this once before but its becoming more relevant, could be a 'software only' solution these days)

ivank• 14 years ago

Not startups, but SIAI and FHI are solving the "make sure we'll be around in 100 years" problem.

swlkr• 14 years ago

Selecting each one of those things and being redirected was killing me.

Here's a shortcut:

problems = document.getElementById('problems'); for(i = 1; i < problems.length; i++) { console.log(problems[i].innerHTML + ': ' + problems[i].value) }

bsandbox• 14 years ago

Or, Right Click > View Page Source

mahmud• 14 years ago

thank you for solving my most pressing 1st world problem.

Matt_Mickiewicz• 14 years ago

Too many smart people spending a whole lot of time, effort & cash solving frivolous problems.

sneak• 14 years ago

Rich people in the first world will pay a lot of money to have their trivial problems solved well.

All business are solving the problem of "we don't have enough revenue". That's the only metric, here.

greggman2• 14 years ago

Hilarious. Maybe we could add

* Entertain me because I actually have free time -> the movie industry

* Entertain me at home because I'm too tired to go out -> the game industry

* Make me dinner because I'm too lazy to cook -> the food service industry

* Help be get where someplace in comfort -> the auto industry

w3pm2• 14 years ago

I think you're missing the joke. Most of these apps are some nth-derivative of those industries. Instead of "make me dinner" it's "an app to aggregate apps that help me find someone to make me dinner, plus social networking." At some point the value-add is so small it's truly a "first-world problem."

Rinum2• 14 years ago

He definitely got the joke. The point is that you could apply this to anything. Most of what we have now went through some kind of value-add process. Isn't that how evolution works? That smallest "value-add" could make room for bigger change later.

greggman2• 14 years ago

I got the joke. I found it funny. I also found it thought provoking to examine how spoiled I am as a first world person. But that also got me thinking that to some level even basics are first world.

Movies: If your starving in some 3rd world country I doubt you care about when the next Hobbit comes out

Games: you'd have to be able to afford a game console before you care about games.

Cars: I lived in a 1st world city for 7 years where most people don't own a car which point out how much they are not really needed

emrekzd• 14 years ago

So this is seriously #1 on HN right now.

vojant• 14 years ago

Really funny

kevinconroy• 14 years ago

For everything else, there's www.globalgiving.org

joejohnson• 14 years ago

The "my high paying job makes it hard to find a girlfriend" one is broken. I think there is a typo in the link: "wwww.sparkology.com".

StuieK4• 14 years ago

Fixed. Thanks!

smcnally• 14 years ago

the option value for sparkology.com has one too many ws

<option value="http://wwww.sparkology.com>I graduated from a top university but my high paying job makes it hard to find a girlfriend</option>

zmonkeyz• 14 years ago

I love "I have 36 dollars".

jevin• 14 years ago

Hey, I think you forgot to remove Techcrunch's favicon.

Otherwise, I really love the concept. Good going!

gtirloni• 14 years ago

I would be interested in a third world version of this website.

Solve your first world problems

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