Ask HN: What is the problem you try to solve?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935161

by acemtp • 13 years ago

55 116 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We see everyday startups/projects pitches that explain what they do. There're often on hackernews lists the describe what the startups do.

But can you, in less than 140 characters, describe the PROBLEM your project/startup tries to resolve?

kfk• 13 years ago

I'll describe you my latest project.

Paying outdoor writers and photographers competitive prices for their works and delivering users amazing stories in well designed, modern, web pages, only online, no print.

Link to a sample article ("real" ones will have better writing then this): http://acivitillo.com/articles/2013/vistula

canvsly• 13 years ago

Canvsly helps parents everyday go clutter free and guilt free by helping them save their kids artwork

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

140 characters? Probably not, but this is a relatively concise summary of the problem we're working on:

Knowledge workers spend too much time looking for information and knowledge[1] instead of, you know, thinking about problems. Organizations can be more effective when they provide tooling and processes to encourage and support knowledge sharing and transfer, and more efficient information retrieval.

---

[1]: according to some research, up to 50% of knowledge workers' time is spent just looking for stuff. But to be fair, other research puts the number as low as 17%. Still, we believe that facilitating more efficient knowledge use, transfer and creation, will benefit all organizations.

adamzerner3• 13 years ago

More concise summary:

Give workers the information they need so they could spend more time thinking/building.

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

It's interesting, actually... that's definitely more concise, but I find myself wondering if it's better. What I mean is - I don't argue against being concise, but wonder "is there a point where you're so concise that you've reduced your message to a platitude that doesn't actually say anything"?

For example, we could reduce it further by saying:

"Make things better".

But I don't think that would be a very useful message.

So this, to me, is the struggle... to figure out how to be as concise as possible, while not being overly concise.

I freely admit that I'm not great at this, but it is something I hope to get better at - distilling the message to its essence, without losing the essence.

In this particular case, I will say that "Give workers the information they need so they could spend more time thinking/building" probably does strike that balance fairly well. I may have to crib that from you. :-)

Anyway, the point in saying all this was just to point out that while conciseness is a virtue, it can - I think - be taken too far if one isn't careful.

markrickert2• 13 years ago

Problem I'm currently working on: How to make a long tail of passive income.

jbrooksuk• 13 years ago

Me too. I've got ideas, but nothing with a real market.

abraininavat5• 13 years ago

Forgive the ignorance, but what does this mean?

girvo5• 13 years ago

Think affiliate marketing, or niche product creation (targeted ebooks and the like), that require a bit of upfront effort, but little ongoing maintenance, and can scale out to many of these products/revenue streams. Lots of ongoing small hits, rather than one big payoff for one big product :)

antocv• 13 years ago

Should I stay or should I go

Nah but really, I try to solve the music listening and artist compensation problem on my spare time. Without regard for copyright since Im not doing it to make money.

adrianh2• 13 years ago

Amateur guitarists can't read sheet music, so they use tablature. But online tablature sucks.

Soundslice: http://www.soundslice.com/

dougk16• 13 years ago

I love your effort here, and have been meaning to ask...are you working on some means to parse old-school TXT tabs from other tab sites into your format? I always thought that would be a really interesting problem to solve, especially trying to detect alternate tunings and tempos and such. You would probably need a human to come in to do a polish pass afterwards most of the time, but still might be a net win.

adrianh2• 13 years ago

Hey, thanks! We'll likely eventually do that, but it's low on the priority list. There are some more structured formats (e.g., Guitar Pro) that we're doing first.

EthanHeilman• 13 years ago

How to ensure that the RPKI[1], which is designed to prevent BGP hijacks[2], can not be abused by trusted parties[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Public_Key_Infrastruct...

[2] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/bgp-hijacking-belar...

[3] http://ethanheilman.tumblr.com/post/64208098281/on-trusting-...

kirualex• 13 years ago

I want a quick feeling for today's weather. But a pictogram is not enough.

Nice Weather : http://alexiscreuzot.com/apps/nice-weather-2/

massarog• 13 years ago

Building a promotion isn't easy. ViralSweep helps businesses quickly and easily launch a giveaway to grow their audience: http://www.viralsweep.com

davidw• 13 years ago

Not having as much money/control over my life as I want.

ew• 13 years ago

Data has gravity, and too much of it makes migrating or backing up cloud storage very hard. Mover (https://mover.io) helps SMEs move their data.

huntaub• 13 years ago

Linking the decentralization of Email with the convenience of Social Networking in an extremely flexible package.

http://www.airdispat.ch

mcintyre19943• 13 years ago

People use Email as a todo list, which sucks. Nobody wants to swap from email, and converting emails into a list of tasks is lame.

czbond• 13 years ago

Agreed. How are you attempting to solve. This is my big bad habit.

mcintyre19943• 13 years ago

The focus is on time based tasks right now, my idea is automatically building tasks by finding and extracting times. At launch it'll probably be a case of copy/paste emails in and get tasks added; the obvious next step being adding by forwarding an email. I'd almost be in a position to get a demo working if it weren't for exams :)

23andwalnut2• 13 years ago

Almost all project management apps have a monthly fee and are SaaS apps. This isn’t appropriate for all businesses.

Duet has a one time fee and is hosted on your own server.

http://duetapp.com

girvo5• 13 years ago

Oh wow. I've been looking for something like this. Amazing :)

MWil• 13 years ago

I sent you an email just now about updates to duet and activating since it doesn't seem to be on Envato's site any longer

OafTobark• 13 years ago

It sounds like source code available for adding extras when purchased. What is this built in?

23andwalnut2• 13 years ago

Yes, the source is available. It's built with php and javascript. It has an MVC architecture, but I didn't use any frameworks. It should be pretty simple to pick up if you're familiar with the concepts of MVC or you've worked with backbone in the past...

adamzerner3• 13 years ago

Providing way more information to college applicants.

http://www.collegeanswerz.com/

girvo5• 13 years ago

Personal finance software isn't smart enough, and I'm lazy. I'm helping computers learn your spending habits, to save you money, pay off debts, and go on that holiday you want -- with as little effort from you as possible.

grimtrigger• 13 years ago

Amazon is awesome, but not very fun.

Solution? Svpply/Pinterest for Amazon.

http://www.gemsinthejungle.com

firefoxNX114• 13 years ago

Love the idea!

pldrnt• 13 years ago

I LOVE this question (and it's the first thing I usually ask to myself and to others) so:

- Study scientific papers by deconstructing them through a wiki-like interface.

- Filtering news feeds, automatically removing stories and tweets I don't care about.

- Keeping an updated journal for each of my projects in the fastest and least intrusive way.

- Learning languages by cutting and pasting single expressions from podcasts into a personal audio library.

- Aggregating my soundcloud, beatport, bandcamp, youtube and shoutcast 'likes' into a single cloud playlist.

nkvoll• 13 years ago

Starting an Elasticsearch server is easy. Maintaining and scaling a production cluster is hard, but not optional. http://www.found.no/

dangrossman• 13 years ago

1 in 4 ad clicks are fraudulent.

PabloOsinaga2• 13 years ago

Average amateur musicians love to make music with other people, but it is really hard to do as the whole thing involves getting together physically, practicing a lot to be decent together as a band, etc

While there has been quite a few attempts at online music collaboration, clearly the average amateur musician is not using any of them.

PROs use pro-music software to collaborate with other people, and some tech-oriented amateurs hang out in collaboration forums.

But all that is too hard/annoying for the average amateur musician.

BandHub "The Internet Music Studio" - makes it easy to make music with other people over the Internet.

http://getbandhub.com

reddiric• 13 years ago

How does it handle latency?

PabloOsinaga2• 13 years ago

It's not real time. It's based on overdubs - i.e., you record tracks over previously recorded tracks. You can even start with any YouTube video as a base (e.g., original song you are covering, click track, karaoke type youtube video, or a dude playing guitar+singing that you want to add bass too).

utkarsh_apoorva• 13 years ago

There seems to be a problem in streaming. I have a 16MBPS connection but the files needed to stream every second, freezing the audio and video.

fookyong2• 13 years ago

Create content for your social media accounts in just a few clicks. Because creating content is time-consuming but we all need to do it!

http://beatrixapp.com

mikemikemike• 13 years ago

This is exactly the kind of idea that I want to have.

girvo5• 13 years ago

Oh wow. That's awesome. Forwarding to my Mum for her new business...

AznHisoka2• 13 years ago

Isn't this curating content, not creating content since it's already been created from someone else? Subtle but huge difference, as most people won't view you as a thought leader if all you're doing is curating.

fookyong2• 13 years ago

Depends on your definition of "create", but Beatrix also creates :) It's not just about link sharing - sign up and choose (for example) the Technology category and you'll see original pieces of content as well as link sharing in your content feed.

waps• 13 years ago

Given that rewriting a text using AI is not that hard, I wonder. At what point does it stop being copying and start being creating ?

I sort of wonder about stuff like that. If you look at what we know about the algorithm that "is" the human mind, it's not actually capable of creating. So nothing is created. It's copies of other things, usually mixed together.

Most commercial AI products these days avoid patent issues by using AI. Every AI program that isolates and OCR's text uses dozens of patent pending techniques. It's just that this is not visible in the actual code. The reason that it's not in there is that that code encodes something akin to a VM, and the real program is the training results. It is generally very hard to determine what exactly the program does, but for trivial patents that (e.g. energy-lines to separate individual letters, or tracing likely pen movements and recognizing the derivative) is something these algorithms can be shown to do. Yet as far as I know, no-one's been successfully sued.

The algorithms themselves have the advantage that most are quite old, and have obvious roots in the 60s and 70s. So they are not patented in the US (effectively). Is this the perfect way around software patents ?

I wonder. Copyright-wise. If I use an algorithm analyse all text from an author and then have it produce "his next book", would that be legal ?

veesahni• 13 years ago

Traditional help desks are over-complicated & hide your team behind "the desk" ..

We solve both - http://www.supportfu.com

rfnslyr2• 13 years ago

I'm solving weight and budget issues. Grocery application. Scan barcode of items you're buying in store. List is generated. Define units for each item (12 granolas in a box, 1 unit = 1 granola, etc).

When you log your calories, you can only choose from the foods that you bought and logged. When you use them, the quantity decrements.

You setup reminders for when X food is at Y stock, and get push notifications based on that, an automated grocery list application with a calorie counter to manage your spending on food and weight!

Lost 100lb so far on it.

cshenoy2• 13 years ago

Interesting. Is this a public-ready application? Would love to see/hear more.

rfnslyr2• 13 years ago

Not for a very long time. I made it using phonegap initially but it's not in the state I want it to be in.

I'm learning OBJC & JAVA via teamtreehouse as fast as I can so I can start building it natively for Android and iPhone.

I really can't stand apps that you're not absolutely thrilled to use, so I won't be releasing my current version.

Maybe in a few months? Anyone want to help out?

juliangoldsmith• 13 years ago

It's not really a startup, but Dealer Wizard uses data from a car dealer's DMS[1] to help them sell cars to previous customers.

[1]Dealership management system, where the dealer stores information about car deals, repair orders, and inventory.

thurn• 13 years ago

I would note that not everything necessarily falls into this model. I don't think Angry Birds solves an all-caps PROBLEM in my life, but I think Rovio is doing ok.

acemtp6• 13 years ago

Indeed, the goal of this thread is not to list everything just the project who solve a problem.

For angry birds, the problem it solves could be "people have too much time with nothing to do" :)

girvo5• 13 years ago

Problem: I have free time, a smartphone, and a hatred for pigs, and wish to combine those things together?

cperciva2• 13 years ago

My startup: I want to make sure I don't lose my data if my hard drive dies. I also want to make sure the NSA doesn't get my data.

Tarsnap: http://www.tarsnap.com/

My side project: I want to run the world's best free OS on the world's best cloud computing environment.

FreeBSD/EC2: http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/

My hobby: I want to have fun while bringing classical music to my community.

West Coast Symphony Orchestra: http://www.westcoastsymphony.ca/

acemtp6• 13 years ago

You don't really describe a problem but describe what you are doing?

The problem could be "people lose their data, NSA can access my data"

cperciva2• 13 years ago

I consider an unmet desire to be a problem.

simonsarris• 13 years ago

Many web apps need some kind of interactive diagramming, but making and perfecting that functionality from scratch can be costly.

We thought of everything for you: http://gojs.net

~~~

I think this is an interesting side topic to get into: my above pitch can be generalized for nearly any library. Fundamentally, selling a library is about selling man-hours. Either a programming team does everything themselves, or they do some of it get one or more libraries and pay some dollar cost and learning curve cost in return for getting literal packaged man-hours, in the form of the thought and features put into the library.

So my product, like all libraries, is there for people who don't want to re-re-re-re-reinvent (and importantly re-re-re-re-retest) Diagramming concepts like node-link relationships, layouts, grouping, undo managers, performant rendering, etc. Like any library, people are buying the man-hours we put in to perfecting a set of things, so they can get on with building the more nuanced parts of their app without running in to their own set of layout/undo-manager/what-have-you bugs.

ericthegoodking• 13 years ago

Hi Simon, I was just wondering whether you get problems with people pirating your JavaScript library i.e not paying you after downloading the library. I just want to understand whether this is a huge problem.The other thing is have you found it beneficial having the evalution license? Thanks

iamwil• 13 years ago

I'm solving the problem of collaborating on hardware projects online.

https://cubehero.com

makerops• 13 years ago

Getting your lawn mowed, without a bunch of bullshit.

braindead_in• 13 years ago

High quality audio transcription with least effort. http://scribie.com

robodale• 13 years ago

Owning a swimming pool building, repair and service business is hard work. We are here to lighten your load.

petercooper• 13 years ago

Quickly remaining informed of new developments, tools and ideas in different fields of software development.

acemtp6• 13 years ago

You don't really describe a problem but describe what you are doing?

krapp2• 13 years ago

I'll describe a problem I wish I could solve: Successful social media platforms inevitably violate their users' privacy and exploit their data.

meowface• 13 years ago

It's essentially the only way they can make money, unless someone in the future invents a creative new way to monetize social networks.

krapp2• 13 years ago

I don't like the way these sites try to own, brand and market various aspects of their users' identity in such a strong way, and make it hard to nigh impossible to archive or remove your data, but I understand why they do it. The only ideas I've had amount to "x with anonymous posting and a big red DELETE button" or "x, but charge for y and somehow convince people to pay or y even though y is free everywhere else."

I don't think I have a good solution but given the general growing unease and distaste people seem to have with social media, I know it's needed.

KiwiCoder• 13 years ago

I solve 3 problems;

1. Charities don't do software development because they can't afford it.

2. Programmers who want to volunteer end up using skills other than programming (like IT support).

3. New programmers cannot get real-world experience because they don't have the necessary real-world experience to land a job

abraininavat5• 13 years ago

Link?

phireal• 13 years ago

http://socialcoder.org I would guess from KiwiCoder's profile.

firefoxNX114• 13 years ago

awesome!

fbueno• 13 years ago

Its hard to the business owner or marketer to update enhance and optimize the most valuable asset of theier website siteapps.com

mynegation2• 13 years ago

Not a startup, more like a personal hacking project, but what I am trying to create a cross-platform backup solution that would allow me to do incremental encrypted back up a la Time Machine, for offsite backups. Currently I use duplicity, but the problem with it is I cannot remove arbitrary past back up as it will render backups based on it invalid. That makes it much harder to manage the space on backup disk.

I am aware of the solutions like Tarsnap and Spideroak and I even use some of them, but this is more about very cheap offsite backup of bulk rather infrequently changing data, measure in terabytes, that would be prohibitively expensive to store there.

acemtp6• 13 years ago

you don't describe the problem in a tweet :)

mynegation2• 13 years ago

Need to store TiBs of backups on portable HDDs offsite, encrypted; update/remove them incrementally, with TimeMachine like interface

bradleyland• 13 years ago

Deliver savings and transparency on large capital purchases for government and private-enterprise companies through real-time reverse auctions.

chollida12• 13 years ago

I'm solving how to aggregate many different input streams of data:

- market data,

- order streams,

-news,

- predictive models,

- pricing models

and push out the appropriate buy and sell orders.

Tonnes of data must be processed as fast and efficiently as possible.

acemtp6• 13 years ago

What is the problem the user have?

chollida12• 13 years ago

Many,

- How to trade more efficiently - How to deal with the increasingly complex data that must be munged, aggregated and pushed through a decision model - How to lower commissions - How to slice up orders so large orders don't move the market and hide strategies so HFT firms don't learn about your flow.

For sell side firms, we allow their buy side clients to trade more.

peterchon• 13 years ago

Network of friendly people willing to help stranded motorists nearby.

firefoxNX114• 13 years ago

AAA or dozen other road-side assistance?

DjangoReinhardt• 13 years ago

I am lazy when it comes to reading feeds. Even with GReader, my inbox used to pile up like crazy. So, I wrote @updt_me[0] get feed updates delivered via DM to my twitter inbox.

These days, I usually read the feed updates as soon as they come in. Since I only get links in the DM, I also end up giving the authors the (mobile) page-views they deserve for their hard work. Win-win. :)

[0] http://twitter.com/updt_me

hippich• 13 years ago

Facebook monetize their platform by posting ads on yours and your friends timelines, but you get nothing out of it. I am trying to fix this with http://paidso.com where you will be allowed to do paid posts.

mattrichardson2• 13 years ago

Never miss another movie. Queue a movie and we'll let you know when they're showing.

(UK and US movie services, Cable TV, and movie theaters).

EDIT (Problem): Online movie streaming catalogs aren't great individually due to fragmentation of distribution across a huge amount of services. People tend to miss them. We tie all the services together, so you can be alerted when the movies you want to see are available in movie theaters, online streaming and cable TV.

acemtp6• 13 years ago

it s a pitch, not a problem description.

the problem is "people miss movies when they are available"

right?

mattrichardson2• 13 years ago

Right. Just added an edit of the problem and why it's a problem.

talhof8• 13 years ago

People don't have much places online to express their opinions and take part in deep discussions.

Interestin: http://interestin.co (provides "follow-up essays" as well)

yashshah• 13 years ago

Concerned about your image while Gossiping? Do you Have to think twice about what people will think about you, while posting anything in a group? Difficult to Pull out the desired conversations you are looking for? So here is the a gossiping platform for you which represents ‘behind-the-scene’ notorious world of gossiping about fun and crazy stuff in an amazingly new way: http://www.Areysun.com

kremdela• 13 years ago

It's difficult to learn and practice biblical hebrew without a rabbi or mentor. http://www.hebrewgenius.com/

DanI-S2• 13 years ago

Meat is expensive to produce. Insect protein is cheaper and more efficient, but insect farming technology is still very basic. http://www.openbugfarm.com

abraininavat5• 13 years ago

How does insect protein compare to plant protein with respect to cheapness and efficiency? What's the argument for inventing an industry when an industry already exists which provides plenty of healthy, cheap, and efficient protein for humans?

DanI-S2• 13 years ago

Insects are already eaten regularly by ~60% of the world's population. It's not so much inventing a new industry as improving the tooling of one of the oldest.

That said, there'll always be a demand for a variety of protein sources. We've had access to complete plant protein for thousands of years, but we consume more meat than ever. Vegetable protein will likely always be the cheapest, and that has been the case since the dawn of agriculture.

adrianwaj• 13 years ago

It's not just about solving a problem, and I'll reiterate what Guy Kawasaki says (whereby solving a problem is 2):

1) "Increase the quality of life. Make people more productive or their lives easier or more enjoyable."

2) "Right a wrong. A variant on the above. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem."

3) "Prevent the end of something good. Preserve something classic or historical. Save the whales."

So it's more about creating a value proposition, in which solving a problem is only part of that proposition. Thus, building something people will use entails a carrot and stick: carrot for being used, and stick for not being used. Simply solving a problem can ignore other benefits.. ideally, it's about replacing the system that created the problem in the first place that needed to be resolved (thus solving a set of problems and potential problems). Solving 1 problem only is a good start, but having a vision to lay on top of that can provide extra inspiration.

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/guykawasa...

maximgsaini• 13 years ago

CRM application:

- Converts English notes into organized data.

- Zero navigation interface: Everything on one page.

- Code in natural language: Make quick buttons for anything.

beat2• 13 years ago

Enterprise apps are complex and holistic. Configuration drift breaks apps. Find configuration inconsistencies across different systems.

http://www.baqbeat.com

abraininavat5• 13 years ago

Interesting idea, but your site lacks details. Vague blurbs with no real information about what's going on always turns me away.

beat2• 13 years ago

It's very early stage right now. Sign up for the mailing list and I'll keep you in the loop!

I'm bootstrapping alone around a day job. It's not impossible, but it's very painful. :( Trying to use my time wisely to get to a sellable product ASAP so I can switch to full time.

mbesto• 13 years ago

Endurance athletes, mainly triathletes, find it difficult to find one place to find races to participate in. (https://www.competehub.com/)

japhyr• 13 years ago

It is difficult for people with no technical background, who don't know any strong programmers, to learn how to program.

I'm working on an open resource for teaching and learning Python: http://introtopython.org.

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

I don't have a formal project nor start up for it, but many years and many environments have overwhelmingly been influenced by one factor: Noisy neighbors.

I see the solution at a combination of factors:

- Noise ordinances and advocacy for same.

- Understanding that we are not "all the same", and that some people have a legitimate need for and function much better in a quiet environment.

- Communities established with "noise control / quiet" as a principal item in their charter, and with the boundary and means to enforce it.

- Better building materials and standards. Construction that spends that 10% or whatever extra to build in effective noise suppression. Architectural plans also focused on this.

- Continuing work on effective, after-the-fact noise suppression. Although personally I don't want to be perpetually confined to such a "bubble", even if such becomes possible. I feel much healthier as a part of the "natural world", but a world not full of car stereos, straight pipes, non-stop blaring TV's, nor 20 coworkers ongoing conversations and phone calls.

P.S. Advocacy and education, so that people don't get "worn down" by noisy environments before they learn and find their way to better. That would include assisting one's escape before the negative feedback loop traps one, economically.

abengoam• 13 years ago

Removing the first hurdle for new side projects: user authentication, via a centralized REST service. Less initial friction = more projects.

firefoxNX114• 13 years ago

grails?

chadkruse• 13 years ago

Giving away money is easy. Giving away money effectively is hard.

Link: http://kyn.me

dclara• 13 years ago

Provide an alternative solution for Web 3.0 as opposed to the Sematic Web with the real implementation.

The real problems people have are:

- Repeatedly search for the things they want but have no one place to save

- Have to sort out from millions of low quality search results

- Search engine is not intelligent to help people find things more efficiently online

- Businesses have problem to get their products/services listed for SEO marketing

The project description is available on Kickstarter right now at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1986902972/bingobo-build...

The beta announcement is here:

http://bingobo.info/blog/bingobo/beta-release-announcement.j...

ivan_ah• 13 years ago

Three problems, one solution:

Problem 1: First-year university-level math and physics textbooks are too long, too expensive, and too boring.

Problem 2: Many adults lack basic mathematical skills. Few good books exist for teaching high school math to adults.

Problem 2 prime: Many parents lack the basic knowledge of mathematics required to help their children with their schoolwork.

Solution: A math textbook for adults.

krsmith352• 13 years ago

We can't find enough A Players to hire/work with because we are limited to our own networks. http://unbouncepages.com/a-players/

allstruck• 13 years ago

I think you mean that it can be difficult for most companies to find qualified candidates, for example software developers. I've heard many people complain that they can't find good coders, or any coders at all in some cases.

krsmith352• 13 years ago

Yes exactly - I got a little extreme on the 140 character cut off, but that is the idea. Everyone wants to hire great people, but the only surefire way to find them is to have worked with them in the past. I want to crowdsource this information to find out who the A Players really are. (Hint: they didn't all go to Harvard, integrate by parts, or explain why manhole covers are round.)

cogniteev• 13 years ago

You put stuff everywhere: FB, Dropbox, Gapps, Github, Twitter, Linkedin... Impossible to search throughout all services. Until now: www.docido.com

obsurvey• 13 years ago

Problem: If you don't do anything. JavaScript errors on you sebsite are just lost. Your website can be completely malfunctioning maybe for 10% of your users on a specific browser and you will simply not know.

Solution: http://muscula.com

Ask HN: What is the problem you try to solve?

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