
Ask HN: Let's Revive PG's /ideas.html discussion - parkern
Since the discussion for PG's ycombinator.com/ideas.html seems to have gone stale (and possibly out-dated) lets get a new discussion going.<p>There are also a lot of "What do you want built.." posts, so lets consolidate.<p>Answer any of the following questions:<p>1) What needs in your life do you wish were fulfilled online?<p>2) What online sites do you admire and how could you see a similar concept working in lateral industries?<p>3) What offline sectors do you see as the least represented online?<p>4) And then to go back to the original ycombinator.com/ideas.htm - feel free to elaborate or add to the list. (in the same vein, generally speaking)
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nudge
1/3) Auto repair / servicing. The internet has helped consumers in all kinds
of markets - retail and travel, perhaps most obviously - compare equivalent
goods to ensure they are getting a fair price and good service. I would love
for this to be applied to car repair and servicing. I confess that I know next
to nothing about cars - I just want my car to run, and when it need repairs or
services, I want to know that I'm getting a fair price. As it stands I have no
idea really.

There are two aspects to this problem: (i) the garage is both doctor and
pharmacist - there is an incentive to take advantage of my lack of knowledge
and propose unnecessary work; and (ii) I don't know whether, for the services
and goods proposed as necessary (including labour), the price is fair.

I know this is stuff that I should probably know, but I feel like there is an
opportunity for this all to be made better.

~~~
jpalmer
<http://repairpal.com>

Techcrunch about them: [http://techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/repairpal-its-like-
google-h...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/repairpal-its-like-google-
health-for-your-car/)

~~~
chrisa
Here's the HN thread about them from about a year ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=755665>

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rwl
1) Job and apartment search -- or "matching." I know there are all kinds of
places where you can look for a job or an apartment online. But the process
_sucks_. There is a ton of information out there, most of which is irrelevant,
and the tools for sifting through it are terrible (I'm looking at you,
Craigslist). Even when you find a job or an apartment you want to contact
someone about, it's a total crapshoot as to whether the person at the other
end will get back to you, most likely because they _too_ are being inundated
with irrelevant information -- inquirers or applicants they're probably not
interested in.

I can envision something that works more like a dating site solving these
problems. Both parties put in descriptions of themselves and criteria for what
they're looking for in a potential employer/landlord or employee/tenant. Then
the site matches people based on these criteria and sends both parties a list
of good potential matches. Et voila -- a much smaller, more relevant set of
data for both parties.

I know there are sites that already do something like this in one domain or
the other, but I haven't seen any that really do a good job. I also think
there's huge potential for putting the two problems together, since people are
often looking for both a new job and a new apartment at once, and they use
similar criteria (e.g., location, proximity to XYZ, seeking someone who has or
wants XYZ...) that are currently difficult to search by.

Edit: I see that "dating site" and "Craigslist competitor" are both on the
original ideas.html. I see my idea as an instance of these.

~~~
Srn22
Yeah, these apartment hunting services (the ones in which they drive you
around for free and get paid the first month's rent by the unit's owner) do
extremely well and seem to be far more popular than Craigslist. Also, they are
the ones on Craigslist over-saturating the listings in the hopes that they can
show you an apartment and if you don't like it, they can easily take you to
see more.

There is so much overlap because the apartment finders (working on commission)
are all posting the same listings they grab off the MLS. This seems ripe for
innovation as the redundancy and non-existent barriers of entry make for a
very ineffective system.

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rokhayakebe
8) Dating. I have been trying online dating for about 4 weeks now. I am damn
near close giving up. The process is too damn painful and it nows seems it is
much much much easier at a bar.

If anyone wants to take a crack at it, here what I would advise you build: A
simple app that asks you your very very basic info (name, picture, age,
location, add 20 word description of yourself). Then simply, simply, simply
show me pictures of women. If I like a girl I click "like". If the girls Likes
me as well, then we can email each other. I dont need to email her through on
your app. You can use the craigslist email style.

That's it. Nothing else. No video chat, IM, levels of communication etc... I
don't know about girls, but most guys will only talk to women they are
attracted to, no personality match can do the trick if I do not like what I
see.

~~~
rguzman
The fundamental thing to attack when considering dating is how to get enough
people to use it and keep enough people using it; not the semantics of the
site.

I think the basic problem with a site that operates like you suggest is that
attractive women tend to not need dating sites. The same is true, probably to
a lesser extent, of attractive men.

~~~
dagw
I know a few very attractive women who use dating sites, because it is quicker
and more time effective than any other approach. They have jobs which take up
most of their time and they don't want to spent the little free time they have
trawling for partners. Don't think of dating sites as a service for people who
cannot get dates any other way, think of it as a service for people who don't
have the free time.

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brianto2010
Internship programs for high school students. I see many for college students,
probably because they need it more, but few are targeted towards high school
students. Rather than work at a lower-level job, they could enrich themselves
in a co-op, both furthering their knowledge and developing industry
connections (and possibly make money on the side).

~~~
mace
This is an interesting idea. The vast majority of kids in High School are
employed/exploited by fast food restaurants. Hundreds of years kids of High
School age were under some type apprenticeship. It would very interesting to
bring back something like this today.

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ComputerGuru
3) Health. I'm working on a startup for the blind right now, made huge initial
progress but now have not touched it for months :S

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parkern
I will start it off...

2) I personally admire email campaign sites like campaignmonitor.com and
mailchimp.com. They have created great businesses centered around a very
simple product. It also has a wide enough audience and viral loop.

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sushi
I have personally loved sites which have tried to utilize the "intelligence of
masses" and wikipedia being the prime example of that. Similarly Hacker News,
Reddit, StackOverflow and many others which excite me the most.

1) I think I'd love a much better way of finding homes/real-estate which can
derive synergy from 3rd-party apps like Google Maps as well as bring about
some kind of social features more in the line of commenting we see on HN.

2) Mentioned earlier.

3) I think one can see huge opportunities in B2B niches. There seems to be a
great unfilled opportunity in bringing together the businesses. The thing is
that most of these businesses don't understand anything about web or Google
Adwords which they might use to better market their products. The idea is to
make it extremely simple for them to find other businesses which might be
willing to buy the products and services.

~~~
adam_albrecht
I've been consulting (as a software developer) for a large home-building
company for a while now and this experience has given me quite a few ideas and
insight related to your #1. I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on this a bit
more. Billions and billions of dollars go through this industry every year
(even when it's down) and yet, the industry as a whole doesn't understand the
web. So there are plenty of opportunities.

~~~
jeffepp
There is a lot of room in real estate -- from getting a mortgage --> finding
houses on the multi-list.

I ended up getting my real estate license about a year ago just to not have to
deal with agents (I have flipped a few houses). They were so inefficient it
literally was painful.

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ben1040
I would love to see a real estate search site that used what Latitude or
Foursquare know about me to suggest houses/apartments.

I imagine a search service that tells you things "4 times a week, you check in
at restaurants with 1 mile of this apartment" or "Buying this house will shave
8 miles off your commute."

~~~
dagw
I like it, but don't see the need for the Foursquare stuff (possibly because I
don't use or get it). I already know where I work and what restaurants I go
to. A site where I can filter on must be within N minutes
walk/drive/bike/train ride of these addresses would be great. The trick would
be, not to simply measure the distance between two points, but to take into
consideration public transport, cycle paths, traffic levels and similar
things.

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dreur
Click : <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

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fjabre
Can't imagine the potential liability but crowd sourcing patient symtptoms for
a diagnosis would be interesting.

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adrianwaj
A way to see a HN profile while staying on an item.

Elaborating:

A small popup can appear upon selecting someone's HN username on a thread to
then show their profile information. Selection would involve holding the left
mouse button down on the user name for more than 1.5 seconds, and then the
popup would appear with bio, member since, and karma. When the mouse button is
released, the popup disappears.

The profile page may need to be parsed to extract information before
displaying. It could also be cached client side with HTML5.

As an extra nuance, if the mouse is moved away from the username, the left
button can be released but the popup remains activated and a little 'close' is
inserted (and the submission and comment links appear). This allows the user
to click on any links in the popup, as well as the submission and comment
links.

In effect, the popup operates much like on Twitter when the mouse is moved
over a username in the timeline, but in a more controlled fashion where it
doesn't appear automatically upon mouseover.

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JeffL
I really want a combination of Google docs + wiki for my online collaboration.
Basically the ease of use and simultaneous editing of Google docs, plus a
structured resource of a wiki where we can link to the other docs, not have to
set the permissions of each page, etc.

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Srn22
I for one love niche businesses and think this post touches on a lot a small
business areas/ideas that are oft-ignored in favor of flashier ideas.

When I look around my area I see lots of money being spent in a variety of
areas that have not been innovated online at all.

1) Landscaper architects/garnders/etc. - Still a very old way of doing things.
This easily could be brought online

2) People love their dogs and as a result, dog walkers, groomers, etc. have
very thriving businesses

3) Coffee/morning commute - Some sort of app that ties both of these together.
A great offline component.

4) Coupons - Groupon has proven that people want deals and that if you're able
to remove the stigma around it, they'll buy it with tenacity. This could
definitely be expanded upon.

~~~
rajatmehta1
3) Coffee/morning commute - Some sort of app that ties both of these together.
A great offline component -- i liked the idea..does something exisit similar
to this...

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gmichnikov
3) Education 2) Groupon for live video education. Teacher offers to teach x at
a certain time at a certain price per student, with a minimum number of
students required. Interesting speakers could offer guest lectures to teachers
at the classroom level.

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toumhi
Apartment search is very clearly a pain. In Amsterdam, people look on 4-5
different crappy websites to find a an apartment to rent. It's incredibly
frustrating and time-consuming. I also hate to give a thousand euros (or more)
as a fee to an agent just because they list a house. That's a classic example
of information asymetry problem. Lowering the bar for homeowners to put an ad
online and better matching owners-tenants would work wonders.

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tjmaxal
3) the business side of Healthcare. There are tons of sites for consumer
information but very few about the Healthcare industry from the business
perspective.

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amac
RFS 2: New Paths Through Product Space

Offline catalogues have/are being duplicated again and again online yet the
Internet is capable of so much more than paper.

