
Ask HN: What next? Seeking ideas for my next project - _entropy
This question is <i>kind of</i> the inverse to &quot;Marketing gal&#x2F;guy looking for technical co-founder&quot;.<p>I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next. I’m looking for ideas, interesting projects you need help on, market needs you’ve already tested, things you would like to see in the universe, pain points, etc. I give priority to large and difficult problems -- they’re just more fun.<p>I’m a full-stack engineer -- I’ve worked for a large tech company, I built a successful startup that was acquired.<p>I’m in SF.
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chadkruse
With a successful exit under your belt and a large tech co name on the resume,
go out and raise a $1.2M seed for the "Foursquare for time". I'll happily be
user #1.

There are many people both in my professional life and personal life that I'd
like to connect with more often, but not enough to warrant a pre-scheduled
meeting. I wish I could "check in" to being free (say around the lunch hour),
and allow that status to be seen by certain people in my "yeah, we should get
together again soon" bucket. There's no need for them to say no or come up
with an excuse. If they're free and nearby, we hook up and I don't eat lunch
alone. If not, no worries...I needed to eat lunch anyway.

Here's your deck: [https://speakerdeck.com/chadokruse/10speak-pitch-deck-the-
mo...](https://speakerdeck.com/chadokruse/10speak-pitch-deck-the-mobile-
calendar-public-domain). See this thread for why we failed:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931130)

If you have an interest in democratizing philanthropy (similar to how
AngelList democratized angel investing), always interested in meeting new co-
conspirators: [https://angel.co/kyn](https://angel.co/kyn)

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ihatehandles
How about this? I see a lot of breaking news websites (or blogs that post a
story whose details they "update as details come in" have no way (ok, maybe I
just haven't come across it) of retaining their readers - a way to subscribe
to subsequent updates. So that means busy Bob will either completely forget to
come back to the story letter or that he will search for the story again and
go read on a competing publication.

So maybe a way for people to subscribe to these "developing stories"? An
example implementation in WordPress would be that it adds next to the publish
button a checkbox for indicating that this is a developing story. On the user
end, all such posts show normally but with an email input and relevant
messaging informing the user that the article will be updated as details come
in and that they can be notified of them.

~~~
kapilkaisare
I've noticed that Martin Fowler's
'[bliki]([http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/)'](http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/\)')
accomplishes this. He publishes a post in one or two paragraphs, and then
updates them over the subsequent days. And in my RSS reader it shows up as a
new post every time he makes an update, but points to the same page - albeit
to a new section therein, so you can start reading from where you left off.

~~~
ihatehandles
Yup, for RSS there are ways to implement this out of the box. I was thinking
more about regular people who don't know or use RSS, people that publishers
would like to retain over the course of reporting a developing story. How do
you think this could be accomplished?

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noxtras
My idea is not that difficult to get to MVP, but here it is anyway: In a
nutshell: an inverted ecommerce site, where you ask for the best phone under
$200, no contract, and this and that are important to you, and people bid and
tell you their recommendations and why (along with buy links / affiliate
links).

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lukasm
Airbnb for meeting rooms :)

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unclesaamm
Hmmmm if you're at this stage, I recommend going to Open Data and Civic
Hacking meetups. At least in Chicago I've been finding a very high ratio of
important problems to technologists who are willing to tackle them. You'll
have a blast, meet lots of interesting people, and actually do something that
contributes to general welfare :).

Since these problems are so applied and the datasets can be varied, you would
definitely not be at a loss for "large and difficult".

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PeterWhittaker
Enterprise management for Macs and mobile devices - especially for companies
without central offices, with a fair few remote workers, and with a mix of
owned and BYOD.

Sure, there are systems out there, but they just don't appeal, somehow.
(Sorry, it's a visceral thing.)

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tekknolagi
Hi there! If you like C, I'm working on a small (like REALLY small) virtual
machine called Carp.

I've no idea what I'm going to do with it, so feel free to chip in!

[http://github.com/tekknolagi/carp](http://github.com/tekknolagi/carp)

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dimeideas
My new venture may be of interest to you: I launched
[http://www.dimeideas.com](http://www.dimeideas.com) to help people with drive
and motivation but not as much direction.

------
matiaspenas
What industries are you interested in?

~~~
_entropy
Healthcare, consumer internet, real estate, enterprise data, sharing economy,
travel, journalism...

There are more, I've done projects/experiments in a bunch of these areas.

~~~
digita88
In health care there is a LOT going on and it could really push your limits in
terms of your technical skills - especially within hospital health care and
global health / global health policy arena. It also requires you to partner up
with a health care professional which makes for an interesting viewpoint
beyond SF tech :)

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dennybritz
Here are some consumer products I would like to see but don't want to build
myself (mostly because I prefer working on enterprise instead of consumer
products):

1\. A better music discovery service. I've tried using Pandora, Spotify,
Soundcloud, several radio stations, and other services. But so far none has
given a satisfactory answer to "give me songs that are similar to this song".
Spotify does an OK job at this, but the same songs keep repeating, and
similarity seems to be defined mostly based on artist. But what I want is
_songs_ that actually sound similar, not stuff by the same artist. The best
solution for me so far has been to search YouTube for mix videos (e.g.
chillstep mix) and listen to it. However, constantly searching for new mixes
and keeping the YouTube video open is quite annoying. I understand that the
space is crowded, but the music discovery problem hasn't been solved at all.
At least not for me.

2\. A better way to organize my life and habits. I don't use calendar apps
because they don't work the way I organize my life. I have my own system, done
in a text editor: I have "template list" of tasks and habits such as exercise,
meditate, project A, project B, book C, etc, ordered by "priority". These are
ties to long-term OKRs. Each of those also has a time span associated with it
(30min, etc). I organize my life by week, one file per week. Each weekly file
contains all days of that week. I then put the above templates/blocks into the
days, planning one week ahead. Many days look similar, defining what I call
"habits" (another template). There are no _absolute_ times, just relative
times (e.g. tasks that are worth a total of 10h per day). Not having absolute
times gives me flexibility in moving stuff around when needed. I manually
check off the things that are done each day.

3\. Algorithmic healthy meal optimization. I enjoy cooking healthy food and I
get recipes from sites such as
[http://fitmencook.com/](http://fitmencook.com/). I want to be able to define
my intake of certain nutrients (XX protein, YY calories), and the service
should give me recipes, minimizing my shopping list for different ingredients.
In other words, achieve the right nutrition while buying the minimum amount of
different products, making shopping easy and convenient.

4\. This one is a bit fuzzy, but if done right I believe it can change the
world. Come up with a way to meet "relevant" people (let's say in terms of
business or hobbies, but could also be personal) in real life that is not
creepy. I believe the key elements are taking away the fear of rejection (e.g.
Tinder), semi-anonymity (until all parties mutually agree), taking away
friction to initiate something (e.g. people are willing to attend organized
events/activities, but not organize something themselves, also due to fear of
rejection), overlapping social graph connections, and a way to make it non-
creepy. How to put these elements together? I'm not sure, but something is
there.

~~~
Envec83
Quite interesting ideas.

