

Ask HN: Which problems can we build an MVP for in a week? - mrborgen

I&#x27;ll spend next week building an MVP together with a few fellow students at my coding bootcamp.<p>I understand that one week is far to little time to solve any problems at all. However, I&#x27;d rather spend this week trying to tackle an actual problem than prototyping an idea for yet another &#x27;mobile&#x2F;social&#x2F;local app&#x27;..<p>I&#x27;d love to hear if people here know about problems they&#x27;d like to see solved.<p>Background info:<p>I&#x27;m currently attending a free coding bootcamp in London called Founders&amp;Coders. I&#x27;ve been coding for about a year, mostly in Javascript&amp;Node and Python&amp;Django. I&#x27;ve also been running a kids app startup for a couple of years.<p>PS:<p>An area I&#x27;m quite interested in is the inequality in the real estate market. Both the issues of buying your own flat, (extremely expensive in London), and the issues of renting a flat&#x2F;shared flat. So any problems in this sphere are highly welcome.<p>But so are all other problems!<p>Cheers,
Per<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;foundersandcoders.org&#x2F;
======
supercoder
If you're going to tackle something in the area of real estate for your MVP,
I'd advise being careful not to create something that is a two sided market
place.

So if the app requires people to list property, but as well as users to view
the properties etc then it's something that will be hard to gauge any traction
on quickly as you'll need both sides to be rapidly signing up.

Developing a product that is focused on either the seller or the buyer would
improves your chances considerably for validating an MVP.

~~~
mrborgen
I was thinking about a 'Yelp for rental apartments', where people can rate
their experience with various landlords. Hopefully it could make bad landlords
provide a better service. But as you point out, it's such a huge task to reach
critical mass on something like that.

~~~
a5seo
I know this market really really well. There have been attempts at this, but
unsuccessful.

[http://consumerist.com/2006/01/26/trembickycom-the-bad-
landl...](http://consumerist.com/2006/01/26/trembickycom-the-bad-landlord-
story-site/)

~~~
mrborgen
Yeah, Swapt too tried something similar, but seems like they are doing a
pivot, or at least re-launching.

[http://www.swapt.com/](http://www.swapt.com/)

If you know this market well, I'd be very interested in getting in touch with
you, for possible input on future project I might be involved in within this
space.

~~~
a5seo
hah, those guys just hired people to write reviews. Their "users" had hundreds
of reviews each, and almost all were freelance writers. I wonder if they told
investors they were "growth hacking."

The reality is that it's pretty unlikely to get traction with a review site
unless you have a very cheap source of traffic (like an existing rental site).

A review site is just a two-sided marketplace, as the first commenter pointed
out.

~~~
ericjonwolfe
Hey there - I'm the founder of Swapt. As a5seo pointed out, we did pay certain
users for reviews (much like Yelp in its early days) and offer other
incentives (e.g. donations to local charities). Our average cost per review
was around $1-3 when you factored in all the incentives (note that +50% of our
reviews came from unpaid reviewers). The average number of reviews per user
was 8 - much less than the "hundreds" claimed above. There were a few users
that wrote +100 reviews, but they all worked in real estate (e.g.
agents/brokers).

The major problem with "apartment reviews" is that the average person has only
lived in 3-4 places and doesn't typically want to write about places they've
visited, which significantly limits the # of potential reviews per user. As a
rule of them, only ~1% of users contribute content, so you really need that 1%
to contribute a lot of content. This works for Yelp because that 1% can
contribute hundreds or thousands of reviews (e.g. they may try a new
restaurant every week). But this isn't the case for housing given the low
turnover.

Brokers can write significantly more reviews but some users found their
reviews to be biased (e.g. only giving positive reviews to apartment
communities that they represent). The brokers were also very motivated by
money, so unless you have an established audience that will help them secure
new business, it's a tough sell.

Overall, I learned quite a bit from the experience and definitely think there
are numerous ways that startups could bring greater transparency to the rental
market. But if you're trying to do "apartment reviews," just understand that
this will likely take you many years and many VCs are unwilling to be that
patient.

If you want to know anything else about my experience with Swapt, just ask or
hit me up on LinkedIn. Best of luck.

------
bliti
You won't get real answers here. Go and talk to people in the real estate
market and listen to their pain points. Forget about finding actionable data
on the web. The real world has it available right now. Just pick up the phone.

~~~
aepearson
This should be a lesson at all "coding bootcamps" \- learn to pick up the
phone and talk to people.

~~~
mrborgen
Not just to all coding bootcamps students, but to all
coders/founders/creators. I've met very few who actually do it, spanning from
amateurs to experienced developers.

~~~
aepearson
It's weird right?

The rest of the world, the people who will be paying you money or helping you
solve your problem, don't always operate in the same closed off world of
email-only communication.

In my work experience : Phone calls or in-person meetings = $$. Email only =
lots of emails.

So, in this case - I'd compile a list of realtors and/or letting agencies.
Then, call them up and ask them about their pain points.

Not only will you get REAL and valuable info, but you'll be making potential
connections. (call them up next week and say, "hey, remember that product I
was making to help you? well - I did it, you should check it out")

A room full of programmers will likely never have the answers that you are
looking for (in this case).

~~~
mrborgen
It is! I will take your advice and do it. Almost every time I talk to
potential customers I'm surprised over the amount of valuable info I get from
the chat.

------
falcolas
Might I recommend a quick perusal of the following resources for some ideas?

[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)
[https://github.com/samsquire/ideas](https://github.com/samsquire/ideas)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codeprojects/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codeprojects/)

Lots of chaff, but there's a few pretty awesome ideas to be found which could
probably be tackled in a week by a focused team.

------
phantom_oracle
Here's a simple process to follow:

1) Identify a pain-point you are personally experiencing in some X-industry

2) Search through to the deepest darkest hole of the internet to find an
existing solution

3) Identify whether current players are poorly marketing themselves OR if the
market is too small (only 500 people need this??)

4) If after analyzing 3), the idea is viable, go for it, else begin from 1)
again.

~~~
mrborgen
That's a good process! My personal pain-point in this is paying way too much
rent for way too little. (However, that's just the supply/demand mechanisms
doing its work). But also, the landlord aren't delivering what it promised
before I moved in...

~~~
workergnome
It might be interesting to look into creating a service for form-letters for
various real-estate complaints. I know that previously, I've had to deal with
landlords who were withholding my security deposit, or refusing to make
repairs, and a way to quickly generate official, legally-correct letters for
requesting what I am legally entitled to could be useful.

~~~
mrborgen
Definitely! I'll look into this one.

------
a5seo
Problem: I have a 30+ variations of the same photo, and I only need the "best"
one. Help me find it with the help of Turk.

I bootstrapped a real estate related web app and sold it for a bit over $10M.
My advice is that unless you enjoy creating stuff for technology laggards
(i.e. people who adopt things only begrudgingly), avoid that industry.

~~~
mrborgen
Mind sending me an email or connecting on LinkedIn? I'd be very interested in
getting your input in the future: per@forlagetpropell.no
[https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=92593053](https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=92593053)

------
BerislavLopac
Here's an idea: aggregate available APIs (Google, Zoopla, TFL) to help people
make decisions which neighbourhood(s) might be right for them. Make users
answer questions (e.g. What newspapers you read? Where do you work or
regularly commute to? Do you have children? etc) and narrow the options based
on the answers.

~~~
mrborgen
Thanks for the tip! I like it. This would make a great project for using
D3.js, to visualize the data in an exciting way, if people are to browse
through neighbourhoods for example.

Do you know of any services that does this already btw?

~~~
Gabriel_h
Check out www.illustreets.co.uk (built in Meteor)

------
squiggy22
Problems in Real Estate listings:

Accuracy (many expired listings out there)- a good MVP would be a third party
solution to feed inaccurate listing reports back to Rightmove / Zoopla etc,
along with information on what part of the listing was inaccurate.

Shared Flat - finding the perfect room mate. Kinda like a dating app, only for
room shares.

As someone else mentioned, Neighbourhoods aggregation of data from Gov
websites on Crime, that sort of thing made into a good pluggable in solution
using a postcode. .e.g. Pass a Postcode into your MVP API, spit back
aggregated neighbourhood info.

~~~
maaarghk
gov info london - [http://data.london.gov.uk/](http://data.london.gov.uk/)

and there's glasgow too
[http://open.glasgow.gov.uk](http://open.glasgow.gov.uk)

Probably some more if you searcha bout!

~~~
WickyNilliams
Also: [http://data.gov.uk/](http://data.gov.uk/)

The real problem is finding the useful needle in the data haystack, because
there is an incredible amount of open data out there.

I've had exactly this on my ideas list for a long time, it's something that
interests me.

------
adaml_623
If you want to help inequality in the UK then figure out a way to get money,
people and jobs out of the black hole that is London.

------
omegant
The biggest pain I found living in London (that can be solved in a week) is
bus lines visualization. I find almost impossible to visualize the route of a
bus, much less to combine two routes to get to a point. The official site
gives line number information from point to point, but no visualization. I
don't know if the London transports has an API with real time information, but
it could be cool to have all the buses diplayed in a map. This could be
expanded to see delays, or other line issues.

~~~
ddebernardy
Curious to understand: how are the official ones not good enough or useful?

[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/maps/bus](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/maps/bus)

~~~
omegant
They are usable but they can be improved quite a lot, they are too general.
The night map is specially bad.

------
cscharenberg
You might talk to some realtors and investors in commercial real estate. I
know one guy who complains extensively about all the spreadsheets they mess
with to do investment return projections. He wishes it were a web-based app he
could access. He says this is an endemic problem in the industry where there
are some very high-priced tools for modeling, but not much at the lower end. A
SaaS might have a place taking over a lot of work in the low-mid end of the
market.

~~~
mrborgen
Sounds like an interesting problem to tackle. I'd be interested in getting in
touch with your friend. Mind dropping me a mail? My email address is
per@forlagetpropell.no.

------
lordnacho
A week is a pretty short time, especially if you haven't previously integrated
all the parts you need for the app (maps, geolocation, Facebook, push, etc).

But if you have, you could do a mashup that does this:

As you walk around London, have a look at the local area. If there's a flat to
be shared nearby, send a notification. If you want to share a flat, make a
screen that tells people about your flat.

IMHO that's more than enough work for a week.

------
nothrabannosir
I've been looking for rentals in London lately, here's my frustration. Perhaps
this already exists and I can't find it (please tell me): a good, _map-based_
UI for refining search for rentals.

When I'm looking for a house to rent in London, it's always lists. I never
lived there, so I see area codes and addresses, and they mean _nothing_ to me.
W3? Somedisuch park?

So now, I first go to all those sites, sort by price, some obvious filters,
write down the addresses in an excel sheet and pass that to a maps API. Then I
have to check is there a bus close? Subway? Nightbus? &c. It's a _huge_ chore.

I'd like big map with all the listings, and filter controls on the left. Like
for the tech compare & review sites. Max price, min price. Smoking y/n. Pets
y/n. Iterate and refine the searches. Hover over a listing: info. Buttons on
each info box to remove individual listings, or favorite / star. Perhaps some
of my own comments. Slowly iterate iterate until I get a list of 4 or 5 that
look most promising. If possible, allow overlaying with custom maps, or at
least have info about transit (nightbus can be a requirement for some, subway
for others).

I wouldn't even mind seeding some of the data, if I had to. At least it'd give
me a good overview overlapped with transit.

Does that already exist?

EDIT: Worst part about my current workflow is updates. Last time I checked was
last month. Okay, now what changed? I can't know efficiently.

EDIT2: Well whaddaya know, searched again and here's what comes up
[https://www.padmapper.com/](https://www.padmapper.com/) . Okay, I guess
that's a solved problem! :) great

~~~
mcjiggerlog
If you're looking for whole flats zoopla has a really powerful map-based
search where you can manually draw areas on the map that you want to search
in.

If you're looking for a flatshare then you can search on a map on Spareroom,
or there's [http://kangaroom.net/](http://kangaroom.net/) which I found
recently and is very slick.

------
zupa-hu
idea: spareroom with personal weighting.

I want to optimize for travel time to work, travel time to grocery, travel
time to gym, price.

Everyone is optimizing for travel time by deciding to live in the same country
where they work, for example.

Yet the concept of showing properties on the map is flawed as it assumes
distances matter, while that's not true.

Maybe just forget the idea of spareroom and create a time-map. You tell it
where you are, and it colors you the world by travel-time. That may be
feasible in a week.

------
shosko
What I've learned from multiple startup weekend and service design
"bootcamps", is that understanding and using the process is the most valuable
thing you can get out of your time. You're learning how to cook -- whatever
everyone is making is secondary and just the output. Both the service design
process and an understanding of BART group dynamics would be very helpful to
you.

------
cynusx
somebody told me just yesterday it was really painful to apply to non-profits.
their applicant websites are terrible and timeout often, also the
international red cross has dozens of different career websites and you have
to apply to all of them separately...

