Ask HN: Do you have startup ideas to share?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7285759

by timedivers • 12 years ago

23 39 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Remiii• 12 years ago

You can read the article of Paul Grahm in order to find some ideas by yourself: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

karterk• 12 years ago

Over time, I have come to realize that what usually constitutes a startup idea is very hard to "share". Sure, you can express it in words, but an idea in your head is usually far more subtle than the words you can string together to convey it.

Edit: grammar

mattmanser• 12 years ago

That's why people make such a big deal about an elevator pitch.

If you can't express it as an elevator pitch, it's probably not a fully formed idea.

wilbertliu7• 12 years ago

Recently i thought about making to-do list that don't suck :) Interested to know more about it?

namenotrequired• 12 years ago

What sucks about to-do lists?

wilbertliu7• 12 years ago

Actually it's related to my laziness (and hopefully others had that too) to write to-do list because of these two things :

1. It will become a long list (when reaching 10 or more items) and it made me psychologically "lazy" to write more or mark some item as "done". 2. I just realised that it's best to focus on one thing and make it done as soon as possible rather than seeing a long to-do list.

Any thoughts? :)

saranshkataria• 12 years ago

We both are on the same page here I guess! Wish to discuss more?

wilbertliu7• 12 years ago

Would be glad to do so :)

miguelrochefort• 12 years ago

Are you me? Let's talk.

wilbertliu7• 12 years ago

What do you mean by "are you me"? :)

meowface• 12 years ago

While a noble pursuit, I think there are dozens of start-ups (completely free/open apps as well as for-profit businesses) trying to do exactly this. I think Trello counts as a big one.

wilbertliu7• 12 years ago

Trello is great, i used that for few times. But it turned that i spent much of my time to organise things than make it done.

yatch33• 12 years ago

We're publishing out ideas that can eventually be turned into a startup here: http://www.blazingx.com

brickcap3• 12 years ago

I have one but I think it pretty crazy and I am not really sure if it can work. I would love if you could find holes in my idea and help me to refine it or tell me if it can work at all.

So I have been thinking that the biggest roadblock to solar adoption is the high upfront cost of installation. If there could be an incentive to make money with solar a lot more people might be willing to "invest" in it.

So my idea is similar to carbon credits. It is a lot easier to measure the amount of energy generated by the solar panels. So the amount of clean energy generated by the households could be sold off the organisations with a bigger carbon footprint. Similar to how advertising networks sell page views to the advertisers.The unit of energy is well established. We could set the price of 1 watt of clean energy to a bidder.

So the question remains why the bidder would want to buy this clean energy? I don't have an answer to that besides that it could be a good marketing tactic. For very large cooperation it could be a chance to gain some good PR (if they really care about that).

The people participating in this program would have to install a chip that would monitor the generation of this clean energy. With networked chips like tessel and spark.io coming out soon it could become pretty easy for people installing solar panels to connect these panels to a local cloud where there could be an automatic transfer of funds to bank accounts of people depending upon the amount of clean energy that they have generated. Now for a give area this energy should be the same for a standard solar panel since the are will receive more or less the same sunlight. With some work standard pricing can be reached for a locality.

sgslo• 12 years ago

Great idea. Unfortunately, you just described New Jersey's SREC system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_renewable_energy_certific...)

brickcap3• 12 years ago

Ah I see. Well it is encouraging in that it is not totally crazy! Any way I have never heard of such a system in India, where I live. So maybe if I or someone else can make this work there is a lot of money to be made here.

kordless2• 12 years ago

I'm working on a highly distributed cloud framework that implements a Bitcoin operated OpenStack deployment. Basically, you install OpenStack at your house or small data center, launch a small instance with some Open Source code that turns the instance into a virtual appliance controller, and then join a pool of other providers/users. The pool operator provides search functions (like geo) and Bitcoin addresses so others can launch a server by just paying coin to a given address. No usernames, no passwords. Secure, reliable payments for providers to get ROI on excess/hobby capacity. Fast, easy, and dirt cheap.

The initial pool run by myself will provide low trust, low cost, highly transient instances. Chaos Monkey model. Market prices will likely fluctuate based on instance launch demand.

The concept encourages multiple pools running the code, so there will be future opportunity in building up a brand that attracts a given set of infrastructure providers and/or service companies to band together and coop. This could be done to leverage features like geo location, excess capacity requirements, feature sets, or trust levels through accreditation. Think about a handful of Silicon Valley companies sharing infrastructure among themselves and being able to balance the costs through Bitcoin. They could also share cooperatively in the areas of operational competence and security, given they have a good relationship between the companies (which many do).

For me, it's been a long haul working on the concept, especially considering I had to get OpenStack accessible for the average user. Now I'm mostly done with my OpenStack scripts, I'm finally cranking out the code for the controller and have it launching instances by sending in Bitcoin to the instance addresses. It's pretty slick when you use it.

More work has to be done, so it'll be a few months before I do a general release of the first pool. If you or anyone else is interested in this concept, building a new pool brand, or building the services that need to be build around it, hit me up. My email is in my profile.

akg_675• 12 years ago

Like your concept. I am very interested in OpenStack myself, more look at it as a building block for private cloud. Sounds like you are trying to create a NOVA pool for virtual instanced from excess available CPU/memory capacity of the participant users. Not sure you really need to have OpenStack to achieve this. What will happen to all the virtual instances running on a NOVA node if a participant user turns off their NOVA node? Also, how are you going to handle shared storage side of OpenStack?

About 12 years ago, I was trying to do something similar pooling together excess storage capacity and tried to position as solution for SMB and consumer market (big mistake). A positioning and solution focusing on Disaster Recovery and enterprise most probably would have been more successful.

kordless2• 12 years ago

Here's the whitepaper: https://github.com/StackMonkey/xovio-pool/blob/master/whitep....

Each provider (a user) installs their own OpenStack cluster, which includes a nova controller. That cluster runs a virtual appliance who's job is to watch a given Bitcoin address for payments. If it sees a payment it either starts an instance or resets a counter to keep an instance running. Payments by users are taken by the pool operator. The pool then starts micro drips to the instance, in most cases half a cent or so.

The pool I'm going to run will be at stackmonkey.com. If a provider shuts off their controller, something crashes, or there's a rig failure, only a small percentage of the total number of instances will be affected. Payments won't matter because the instance costs are so low, and the drip can be turned off when the appliance stops responding to the pool controller.

OpenStack makes this handy because it handles all the heavy lifting for starting and stoping instances, doing network setup, images, instance sizes, etc.

Initial audience for this low trust pool will be hackers, developers, testers, tor nodes, individuals, etc. Very low cost, highly ephemeral instances.

There's a video here: https://vimeo.com/86717476

throwwit2• 12 years ago

Just one idea. Could anyone take these two stories from today:

Telecom firms mine for gold in big data despite privacy concerns https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7286080

Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7287155

... and create a bitcoin like wallet/api of a consumer's permission to trade data.

A Twitter User Is Worth $110; Facebook's $98; LinkedIn's $93. http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/11/07/a-twitte...

brickcap3• 12 years ago

The idea of bitcoin like wallet api sounds good. But can you explain the correlation with the stories that you linked?

throwwit2• 12 years ago

The 'wallet' would be a verification/allowance mechanism for user-stored private usage data. Basically the user becomes the data broker. And an API/(exchange) could charge a fee on the other side of the business.

akg_675• 12 years ago

A few months ago, I had a BRAVO study done for acid reflux issue. Basically, a capsule with wireless transmitter is attached to esophagus wall. You carry around a bulky wireless receiver with antenna sticking out that records pH readings for 48 hours. You also record when you are lying down, eating and encounter acid reflux episodes on a piece of paper. After 48 hours, you need to take receiver and paper with recorded information back to the clinic so that they can retrieve the data from recorder.

Pain points:

1. A Bulky receiver that patient need to carry around or keep within couple of feet of your body. (inconvenience).

2. Patient need to remember to record on a paper when you are lying down and various other information.

3. Patient need to take the receiver back to clinic.

4. Clinic need to enter the information listed on paper and download data from receiver and upload to an analysis system.

5. If receiver is lost, patient is charged $3,000 to $5,000 and clinic need to buy another receiver.

In this age of smartphones with gyros and apps, I thought these pain points can be easily solved by creating a Smartphone App and turning smartphone into receiver from wireless capsule in esophagus. Smartphone can be attached to the chest to detect when a patient lies down. Patient can manually select options in apps for various information that need to be captured. After 48 hours, smartphone automatically sends captured information and data to a central server over internet.

Benefits:

1. Everyone has smartphone, no need for clinic to provide a bulky receiver that need to be returned to clinic after 48 hours and deal with lost receivers.

2. Patient doesn't need to go back to clinic just to return receiver and completed forms (Travel time and cost).

3. Clinic doesn't need to perform data entry and upload information to a system (Expensive medical labor).

Challenges:

1. Potentially limited market. But I am sure there are a few other similar medical monitoring procedures to which this solution could be extended (small market).

2. Potential FDA approval and clinical trials (expensive and long time to market). Depending on wireless protocol used between capsule and receiver, may need to redesign the capsule (much larger hurdle for a new startup instead of existing maker to modify).

3. Bringing together people with medical imaging domain knowledge and mobile OS App developers.

Why I am not pursuing this idea myself?

I thought about pursuing this idea for a short while as I spent couple of years consulting in medical imaging IT. But thought of putting together a qualified team and raising financing stopped me in the tracks. I prefer ideas that I can bootstrap (result of previous scars raising OPM). Most of my medical imaging contacts are on East coast of Canada and I am now on West coast of US so difficult to put together a good team with people I know. No experience with Mobile. Already involved with another idea in a totally different space.

Hopefully, sharing this idea helps someone else.

Mz3• 12 years ago

Can you explain to me what the benefit of this study is supposed to be? (I think finding a way to eliminate the study would make more sense.)

akg_675• 12 years ago

The study measures the pH over 48 hour period near the entrance of stomach. This helps determine the frequency and strength of acid reflux into esophagus from stomach to assess the severity of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Typically, capsule is placed in esophagus during the endoscopy.

Based on my readings before the procedure, in my opinion, BRAVO capsule technique is currently the most advanced, accurate,and convenient method compared to previously used methods such as stents/catheter.

More info http://my.clevelandclinic.org/services/esophageal_ph_test/hi...

I am not sure what do you mean by eliminating the study. How else are you going to measure the pH to detect acid reflux in esophagus.

vidvaita• 12 years ago

"get me stuff from the store" among neighbors, friends and work team mates. "task rabbit" among social network with favors exchange

sharemywin2• 12 years ago

are you the only one working on it?

sharemywin2• 12 years ago

Couple ideas: time sharing marketplace/factory/warehouse. 3d printer, other maker tools, cnc, robots to move stuff around but virtual. delivering take'n'bake pizza.(costs are pretty low for a large delivery area). doorhangermarketplace.com - taskrabbit but focused on doorhangers.

Mankhool• 12 years ago

I read about this yesterday http://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/

Last September I posted this on my blog: Imagine sitting in an airport, for example, and being able to join a First Person Shooter Game where all of your opponents are in the same airport – they could be other travellers, airport staff, pilots – anyone. But here is the main feature of this game: The virtual location you see in the game IS the airport and it is created using all relevant data (floorplans of the airport, wayfinding apps, and apps on your phone that are able to map rooms, measure direction, etc.). The game environment in which you travel seeking your opponents is generated using data being generated by their devices as well – sort of a micro crowd sourced battlefield with some help from publicly available data.

Where do I find a Tango Developer to work with to create this Massively Multiplayer Mobile game?

nahcub• 12 years ago

A group voting system that uses text messaging that isn't frightfully expensive for a small (~50-100) set of users.

chudi• 12 years ago

Amazon for latin america

Ask HN: Do you have startup ideas to share?

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