
Ask HN: Where can I find “unsolved problems” for various industries? - matthuggins
As a developer, I&#x27;m interested in working on a problem in my spare time. However, most of the problems I&#x27;ve thought of over the years have already been addressed in my field. I&#x27;d like to consider other fields that have problems needing solving, but I&#x27;m not really sure where to start other than doing pretty generic Google searches.
======
callmeed
I've had some level of success with the following 2 strategies:

1\. Take your closest circle of friends and family. Cross off anyone who is
also a developer. Among the rest, look at people who are professionals or
small business owners. Take them to lunch. Ask if you can shadow them at work
a bit. Take copious notes. _Find out what the most annoying /tedious part of
their business is_. Also, if they rely on clerical/support staff, talk to
those people too.

2\. Pick an industry that you have an interest or curiosity in. Put a job
posting in your local Craigslist for people in this industry (ex: mortgage
brokers or elementary school teachers). Say you are looking for an advisor to
discuss some startup ideas. You will get several responses. Have lunch with a
couple people. You don't have to have ideas up front. Just ask them the same
questions as option 1 above. Ask them if they'd be willing to beta test
something you built.

Protip: there are some industries I'd suggest avoiding. For example,
restaurant owners are extremely busy and working in a very low-margin
industry. They generally don't have time to meet or test things.

Disclaimer: these are mainly B2B strategies. Most B2B problems really boil
down to _saving money_ , _making more money_ , or _saving time_ (time is
money). If you can do any of those things for someone, they will pay you.

~~~
bwilliams18
If you're a developer and want to work on restaurant stuff message me.

~~~
lwall_mba
Hi bwilliams18

I'm interested in learning more. What do you do in the restaurant side? I've
been showing a prototype of an app to GMs but open to solving real issues.

------
jeremysmyth
Let me turn that question around a bit.

Part of the art of being a successful solution provider is having the
expertise to identify a problem in the first place. Usually that comes from
having a lot of experience in that industry already.

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but bear in mind that you
have a bunch of saleable skills (otherwise you wouldn't have thought of this
already) _and_ you're willing to apply those skills in helping people who are
willing to pay for them.

Also, we have a tendency to ignore the things we're _already_ good at in
favour of the things we've _most recently become_ good at, so when you start
narrowing your focus and zoning in on problems you want to solve, you might
ignore some of the things people might find most valuable in your skillset,
however long ago and intellectually uninteresting to you those skills are.
Remember, solving business-level problems is more about your overall viewpoint
of the industry and how its bits fit together, not about tickling your own
brain with this month's interesting JS framework.

So, as a really bad example, you might have written a bunch of task
scheduling/interleaving code to drive PLCs on a production line a few years
back, and that might not be interesting to you anymore, and you might also
have become really good at hooking Hibernate up to replace a bunch of badly-
handwritten SQL after that, and again, that's not interesting anymore. But, if
you _really_ know automation and enterprise app ORM, you might suddenly find
something that people are willing to pay for.

~~~
Jemaclus
Great way to think about it!

------
jerelunruh
One option: get a part time job in an interesting industry.

I discovered this by getting a contract (few days a month) doing onsite work
for a small/medium size organization. I asked lots of questions about things
that I perceived as broken and found out what processes and software they
hated. Then I worked on a prototype (evenings, for fun) and showed it to them.
Now a year or so later that organization is my first customer for a SaaS I saw
that they needed.

Also, make friends with other vendors while you're there. A company that
already serves that industry can give valuable feedback and even market your
app to their other clients if it integrates well with their solution.

~~~
timjahn
What's the SaaS?

~~~
frobaldo
Software as a Service

In Pizza as a service terms: you dine out.

~~~
pizzeys
Surely it's the other way around, normal software is dining out, and SaaS is
dining in?

~~~
frobaldo
Depends on the term comparison: for on premise / iaas / saas/ paas, normal
software is baking it yourself.

[http://www.ektron.com/assets/0/75/132/2147483682/2b35a8f4-f2...](http://www.ektron.com/assets/0/75/132/2147483682/2b35a8f4-f28d-4e06-8b65-c0027e44a127.jpeg)

------
mynegation
There is a dilemma that others pointed out: you need to know the industry
pretty well to be aware of the pain points. On the other hand you tend to
settle for things you get accustomed to, taking for granted that "things are
the way they are". One way out of it is every time you find yourself slightly
frustrated at something, but just continue schlepping, ask yourself: do things
_really_ have to be that way? Is there anything that can be improved, any
single aspect?

Just to give you an idea from the area you know well: programming. It is not a
secret that a lot of programming these days boils down to searching
stackoverflow and copy pasting the code fragments. You switch from an editor
to SO, do a search browse from comments, pick one, copy paste the answer,
format it.

As a developer you usually have a large monitor or dual monitors. What if you
had an editor plugin that on a shortcut would open SO in the browser,
searching on the question that you already typed in. Few other shortcuts give
you the movement across answers, another shortcut copies nicely formatted code
from the currently selected comment. Bonus points for automatic renaming of
variables according to the type information if you have it.

It shaves only seconds to minutes from the workflow, but imagine how many
people are doing it how many times a day, and this might be an example of the
problem totally worth solving.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't think that the search+copy+paste is where all the time is; the time is
spent on looking at the seven questions that _almost_ ask how to solve the
exact same problem you're facing, then reading the twelve answers (none of
them marked as the correct one) that _almost_ look like they might be what
you're looking for, and then trying to figure out which one is the easiest one
to start from and then cobble together with the others to actually fix the
issue.

~~~
grkvlt
OK, how about highlighting some error message in a log file, right clicking
and choosing a menu option that googles for the string (filtering out dates,
times, host/domain names and perhaps some filenames too) then opens a browser
window with a tab for each SO answer? Now _that_ is definitely part of my
debug workflow. Not sure its the next killer app though. Actually, I could
probably knock it up in half an hour with AppleScript and Automator on OSX, as
a new 'Services' menu item...?!

~~~
pavel_lishin
I fiddled with Intellij plugins; seems like it would be pretty easy to write
if you've written one before, maybe a weekend project if you have passing
knowledge.

I'd give myself a week, including the time to search Stack Overflow :)

------
Jemaclus
I cross-posted this in another thread, but it's relevant here. Modified
slightly:

I think an interesting direction is figuring out how to leverage web tech (or
just code in general) to interact with the real world. Consider companies like
Uber and AirBNB. They've identified a real-world problem and set out to solve
it using technology. A lot of the cutting edge stuff these days is figuring
out how to take a real-world problem (genetics, taxis, mail), and writing some
code to make it accessible, cheap, and easy to do.

IMO to find interesting projects, a better idea is to look backward: what
industries are still in the 20th century, and how can you help bring them into
the 21st with modern technological advancements?

What about farmers, truck drivers, construction workers? Why are they still
driving tractors, trucks and bulldozers? Why aren't robots doing those things
more widely?

What about real estate agents and their legalese? Why are real estate agents
still handing me stacks of paperwork? Can't you Zenefits the crap out of that
process?

What about community outreach programs and community centers? Why are
community outreach programs still accosting me on the street and handing out
fliers? Can't they do outreach digitally? Can't we automate scheduling
basketball games and pick-up kickball games?

What about having to fill out paper applications or stand in line at the DMV?
(Shouldn't all that crap be automated by now?)

What about having to actually hand your credit card to the cashier at the
drive-thru at McDonald's? (Can't they just magically detect who I am somehow
and charge me accordingly? Why do I have to hand some punk ass kid my card or
cash?)

What about planning weddings or raising kids? (Haven't enough people gotten
married that planning a wedding should be as simple as browsing Amazon for a
few hours? Haven't enough people had kids that we should have some solid data
about what works and doesn't work?) (These two things aren't really tech-
related, but man, if you could figure those out...)

The best part about this approach is that pretty much _any_ idea you come up
with will be an improvement over the status quo. These are the things we're
still doing the same way we did 50 years ago, before computers were even a
thing. Can't we do better?

~~~
nicholas73
You are an idea machine!

~~~
phkahler
>> You are an idea machine!

Nah, he's just sensitive to things that waste a lot of time.

His friends say he's a real whiner. No, that's a joke. I don't know him or his
friends.

------
Animats
There are lots of unsolved problems. Unsolved problems which can easily be
solved with appcrap and webcrap are getting scarce, though. Too many people in
that space.

Some medium-sized unsolved problems:

\- Solar panel installation. Installation is about half the cost of an
installed system. Figure out how to get that down. Can solar panels be
integrated into roof systems? And last for 40 years without leaks?

\- Police paperwork. Cops spend far too much time doing paperwork, which they
hate. There's pressure for cops to wear body cameras, which they also hate. So
come up with a system where the body camera images, audio, GPS info, and what
you can pull from police files are used to put together most of the arrest
report. Cops would like that. Start with something where a camera glance at an
ID or license plate or face fills in much of the details.

\- Tablet based basic education - reading, writing, spelling, and basic
arithmetic. Not just canned lessons, ones that adjust adaptively to the
student's performance and errors. Ship on a $50 tablet.

\- Good $50 tablets. Some are good, some suck, some have weak points. Evaluate
some, find the weak points, talk to the manufacturers in Shentzen about
getting them fixed, and set up a distribution chain where they're sold in
bubble packs in the back-to-school section of stores.

\- A rugged phone with no holes in it. No connectors, wireless charging only.
Permanent battery. Hermetically sealed at the factory.

\- Intelligent HVAC for homes. The next step after "Nest", which can only turn
heat and A/C on and off. Window fans and A/C with inside and outside temp,
humidity, CO, and CO2 sensors. Outside air is used as much as possible. The
whole system learns the house, self-adjusts, and doesn't need HVAC
engineering.

\- Video from talks where the speaker image and slides are combined
intelligently, with the system deciding when to emphasize what.

\- A PA system which absolutely cannot feedback. It's a simple DSP problem;
why isn't it everywhere?

Those are a few ideas to get you started.

~~~
impendia
> \- Video from talks where the speaker image and slides are combined
> intelligently, with the system deciding when to emphasize what.

This, at least for chalkboards instead of slides, exists. And works
surprisingly well.

[http://www.birs.ca/facilities/automated-
video](http://www.birs.ca/facilities/automated-video)

~~~
Animats
That's fascinating. The company behind it has a web site.[1] They had this
working in 2002. Their web site is so outdated that it uses RealVideo and
QuickTime. Their standard system costs $90,000. Their web site was last
updated in 2004.

The name "AutoAuditorium" is licensed from Telcordia, which used to be
Bellcore, which used to own Bell Labs. So this may be a Bell Labs spinoff that
was commercialized, but not very well.

Somebody in the online education business should buy this technology and
modernize it, so it costs about $9000, or $900, instead of $90,000.

[1] [http://www.autoauditorium.com](http://www.autoauditorium.com)

------
rwhitman
It's getting really hard to find simple problems that have software solutions
in a niche that isn't already competitive. There are a lot of software
companies out there and more talented developers with successful side projects
floating around than ever before.

10+ years ago you could maybe just google around and find a niche business
problem with a simple software solution in a wide open market. This is not the
case today.

As a developer your experience of the world typically overlaps with every
other developer, so anything you can relate to by a few degrees of separation
is pretty picked over and likely very competitive. Ditto for anything in a
cash-rich industry.

So really anything that's easy to solve with an MVP product that wouldn't
require clawing for attention, is lurking deep in the trenches of an industry
or hobby you've never heard of and wouldn't be exposed to without being
embedded in that world for a long time. There may be some sort of very
valuable software solution for a problem with wool production in patagonia but
you'd never know if you weren't a patagonian wool producer.

I think the best approach these days is pick out a very programmer un-sexy
field, study it intensely and chat with as many people in that field as
possible until something shakes out. Or just bite the bullet and go head first
into a competitive market and try to make something that outshines the
competition...

------
robodale
I picked a niche (US contractor-type businesses)...HVAC, builders, etc. I
grabbed contacts off the Internet and started emailing and calling the owners.
Cold calling if necessary. After about 55 successful calls, I documented 115
specific pains that I grouped into 12 "solutions" I could provide as a SaaS.
I'm currently building the first one right now.

Also try to find out where your target market hangs out. LinkedIn and Facebook
groups are sources of very valuable information...just dont go into the groups
and start posting "hey everyone tell me your painz!!!"...you'll be ignored.
Build the rapport over time. Lurk for a while, then like some of the posts,
then make a few comments, then make your own post in the group based off
someone else's recent post and make sure you reference them.

~~~
tuyguntn
Can you share other 11? :)

------
drallison
I don't think you'll find anything useful looking at "grand challenges" or
other such lists. Problems get on such lists because they are hard to solve
and because they require significant resources.

A better approach might be to find a slightly technically backward field,
learn about it in detail, and then apply modern technology to improve
performance or lower cost. I remember meeting a guy, years ago, who had made a
fortune inventing a new high-tech way to remove the casings from hot dogs.

Finding an appropriate problem to solve is part of the problem.

------
nsheth17
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems)

These are mostly sorted by academic fields, but it's a good place to start.

~~~
kepano
Related:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emerging_technologies)

------
eswat
See whom of your friends have a career on the fringes of what you do or know
about. Grab them some coffee and ask what pain points they have about their
job or the inefficiencies they see in their workplace.

If you show enough enthusiasm and curiosity to solve the things they mention,
they can connect you to others in that industry that can open more doors for
you.

I second not looking to Google to discover these problems. While you will see
more bitching than praising on the internets, much of you see will be
superficial symptoms of a more serious problem. To understand the true cause
you need to talk to people directly and in a way where they can be vulnerable
(managers may not say what unsolved problems their companies face if you’re
just shopping around for solutions that could possibly benefit their
competitors).

------
mindcrime
The thing is, it's not always about an "unsolved problem" per-se. I think
looking for "unsolved problems", in a manner of speaking, is an overly
simplistic idea. The question is more "where are the places where the
introduction of some technological solution could (make some process more
efficient | help somebody make quicker/better decisions | improve quality |
reduce costs | drive revenue | etc). In most cases, firms have _some_ kind of
solution to their problems, they may just not have the _best_ solution.

I guess you could also say that this is arguing semantics, but they may also
have places where things could be better using some new technology, but they
don't think of it as a problem, since they don't know the technology exists,
and therefore don't even think in terms of applying it to their "problem".

Also, as somebody else mentioned, people tend to "normalize pain" over time,
to the point that something can be painful but yet if you ask them "tell me
about your pain points so I can help you", they don't even think of $WHATEVER
(because it's become "normalized pain").

My point is, it's hard to just ask around for "unsolved problems" and find
good stuff, even if you called up people in various companies and asked them
flat out. And that's simply because they may not know what to tell you.

I think the best way to really identify areas for improvement is to have a
deep knowledge of how a particular company (or at least, companies in a given
industry in general operate) and identify the problems spots based on your own
knowledge. That, of course, is difficult for domains that you don't know much
about. Unfortunately I don't think there are any easy answers to this.
Probably the best answer I can offer is to say, build relationships with
people in a given company / industry, spend as much time talking to them as
you can, and bounce ideas back and forth until something seems to resonate. IF
you can find a company that has "business process analysts" on staff, some of
those people may be able to help you, since they spend all their time looking
at business processes and trying to find ways to improve them.

~~~
bobosha
My thoughts exactly. find what they _need_ , not what they _want_

------
bamie9l
The best discussion I've read about this is in this reddit ama:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/13q8ja/iama_serial_in...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/13q8ja/iama_serial_inventor_with_120_patents_to_my_name/)
search for "On average how long does it take you to come up with an
invention?" for a relevant section, but the whole thing is very interesting.

~~~
wandering2
What did you like about that AMA? As many of the comments expressed, most of
the answers were very vague, and the whole thing was pretty much a tease.

>Basically, it is a specialized method of learning faster and retaining
knowledge more comprehensively. Think about it -- what percentage of what you
learn do you retain? In all likelihood, you are losing information almost as
fast as you are gaining. Second, assemble the information into a useful format
within your mind. Then, find out where inventions emerge within the mind.
Turns out, you won't like the answer. Your mind invents in a place you may not
be able to access. Break into this space and you will be inventing quickly,
methodically, and reliably. To solve the learning problem and the thinking
problem will take some years.

>I invent using a specific system that was developed by myself and a colleague
when we were in college. The system allows one to invent in whatever field you
want and methodically (you will definitely solve the problem more effectively
than even the practitioners within the field). However, there are specific
limitations. However, it is one of the few "systems" that is methodical and
that can be taught. It is not random. My colleague has something like 60-70
patents and is also a successful inventor and intrapreneur. He did not like
being independent so he has stayed at a large company. I went solo.

Everyone wanted to know the details of these ideas, but the OP refused to
provide any specifics, not even a very general overview.

Despite this, there were a few interesting tidbits concerning patents and
about how he generally approaches his career and problem solving. I'd really
like to know more about his process though.

------
karmajunkie
There is a really easy way to evaluate ideas to see whether it would make a
good niche startup: does it involve one or more complicated spreadsheets?

If the answer is yes, and the spreadsheet is connected to a problem with
currency attached, you've got a decent shot at building a better mousetrap,
because the mousetrap they're using now sucks.

If the answer is no, then its probably not a hard enough problem that people
are willing to pay for it, or their current solutions aren't a pain point.

------
lwall_mba
One thing that is strikingly weak across the board in many industries is
service.

In the pursuit of profits, industries have automated, off-shored, etc. etc.
etc. most things that have to do with customer interaction.

I am having weekly examples of having to interact with services I buy, needing
help with something, filing a claim, etc. where the space for improvement is
huge.

Anyone out there that makes services a core value generator of their business,
and finds a way to scale it without leaving quality behind will make a ton of
money.

In other words, break the assumption that good service is for expensive
services.

My take is that most of the time, what lacks, is people on the other side (the
customer service team) with the intention, will and ability to understand what
is happening to the client. They are not paid to understand what the heck I
need, someone pre-determined (offshoring agency?) what will happen to me and
try to solve it as fast as possible. God forbids your scenario has not been
through about by the geniuses when implementing the system!

It is a shame to be living in the most advanced economy of the world and have
to waste time on a phone trying to explain things to someone who doesn't care
much, or can't even understand it.

------
Mz
I think it is more complicated than just doing the tech. I have a certificate
in GIS and worked in a completely unrelated department in a Fortune 500
company for over 5 years. They even had existing means to submit
suggestions/new ideas. My GIS training was routinely helpful in doing my job
that de facto involved working with various databases. It made me really
talented at figuring out what the new glitch was when we had updates and we
worked with a lot of geographically related info (addresses were a big thing).
My GIS related suggestions were routinely ignored and dismissed. Only one guy
at the entire company in the more than 5 years I worked there even knew what
GIS was before I explained it to them.

A lot of these problems remain unsolved because LA LA LA NOT LISTENING, not
because "gosh, it's just a hard problem to solve and we have been trying and
it just is so very hard." A lot of it is cultural and lack of understanding,
etc. You won't get past that just by creating the latest, greatest technical
solution.

------
retroafroman
Asking people isn't likely to get you an answer, based on my experience. If
you want to find a problem to solve, you'll have to actually _see_ what
they're doing that can be easily automated. They have blind spots and just do
it, without thinking about how it can done differently.

------
JSeymourATL
I'd like to consider other fields that have problems needing solving>

The odd thing about people in other industries; they may be perfectly happy
with the status quo. So asking industry insiders might not yield anything more
than how to tweak current processes. As an outsider, you are the person most
likely to find true breakthroughs. What space frustrates you the most?

The James Dyson story is instructive in this regard >
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds)

------
impendia
I am a professor at a university. Unbelievably, all the classes offered by our
math department (with roughly 100 different teachers) are scheduled by hand.

This takes a tremendous effort, and then when one class gets cancelled and one
professor has to be reassigned to a different class, but she can only teach on
Tuesday/Thursdays, it sets off a giant stack of dominoes...

Seriously, the amount and sheer drudgery of thankless admin work in my
department makes me want to cultivate a reputation for disorganization and
irresponsibility.

~~~
PopeOfNope
But will your university pay for a better solution? Most small universities,
public or private, won't shell out the cash to solve that particular problem.
Same thing goes with small hospitals, high schools and probably dozens of
other public and private institutions.

~~~
impendia
I wouldn't trust my _university_. Their IT department has the collective IQ of
a toad.

But individual departments have their own budget. If one faculty member says
"I'll do the scheduling if you pay $500 for this software", and everyone else
says "I'm too busy", then that $500's gonna get spent.

------
taprun
Go to an event for people in another field and ask people.

------
mellery451
you can try looking at:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/somebodycodethis/](https://www.reddit.com/r/somebodycodethis/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/)

...who knows, you might find something interesting to spark your imagination.

------
problema
I have been told that this problem was a business problem in itself... I've
been thinking about ways to gather a list of problems deemed worthy of being
solved, and to actually make it a business. Or at least, a hobby.

What kind of problems are you interested in? What kind of skills do you
practice on a regular basis?

~~~
vijayr
what if someone (who has basic knowledge of programming) went around
interviewing experts from other industries and posting the interviews? the
interviews should be problem specific - _what tasks they do daily, that can
potentially be automated_ type of questions. How can this be a business
though? this interviewer could probably become a consultant?

~~~
problema
Well, I had ideas about how to make a business out of it, but I'll start with
seeing if I can make a hobby first :) You are bringing good ideas to the topic
at hands though - thank you for this!

------
garagemc2
Hey, I applaud your approach.

Only thing I would add is that don't just look for problems but for
inefficient workflows as well. A person may have to do some same set of tasks
everyday and not realise that they can do it faster or it is a problem at all.

Perhaps go to random meetups or business networking events etc

------
mmwako
Partys. Just state you are a developer looking to solve problems. Not kidding.

~~~
klibertp
Be prepared for tons of idiotic, impossible or simply not that interesting
ideas in this case. If you hate parties and in general want your social
interactions be as short as possible then it's not a good method for you.
OTOH, if you can have fun while simultaneously _maybe_ hearing something
inspiring then it seems a really good solution.

------
nickthemagicman
Ive found if youre really interested in a subject and read about it in your
spare time, youll kind of know what problems exist and what have been solved.

So just do something that interests you and let the problems emerge

------
asantash
Yellow Pages, or your local directory / ad compilation books. People post lots
of advertisements for problems they need solved - en mass, some of those
problem spaces may be disruptable.

------
bendtherules
Irregular newsletter on problems submitted by users.
[http://probhunt.com/](http://probhunt.com/)

------
demian
Talk with "domain experts".

Your job is to identify and abstract domain problems into models that can be
solved using your technical expertise.

------
ceedan
Reach out to people who work in those industries.......... not google.

