

Ask HN: Hacker in need of ideas? - cmplma

I'm a hacker, currently employed at a start-up that has finally become break-even.<p>Now that I have some free-time I am itching to work on interesting things on the side, but alas I have no good ideas.<p>Where can I get some?<p>Is there a good place to get paired with people who have ideas or need help?
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ChuckMcM
One of the things I wish I had is a "white-list" credit card. I suggested to
the folks at Square (via their email suggestions, never got a response) that
this might be a useful adjacent market for them.

The concept is pretty simple, use the existing payments structure which is
built around credit cards and create a card that 'cannot' be used for fraud.
The latter bit requires some clarification.

So in my use case, I've got vendors who I would like to establish a long term
relationship, whether it's a subscription to the WSJ, or a my App Store credit
card on file. I give them a credit card number and they keep it on file, I
periodically buy services/products from them, and everything is great until my
credit card gets compromised some how and then I have to go unwind all of
these arrangements with a new card number. Even when I use a 'special' card
just for subscription services (easier for me to monitor) if someone breaks
into one of my vendors databases "just for the lulz" and my details get out
then I still have to go change all my numbers. Its a fact of life but it is
also a pain point for me.

What I would like is to have a payments system where I could give the vendor a
"credit card" and they could authorize it for transactions. That would send me
a text which says "they want to authorize" and if I respond appropriately the
relationship is set up. Now if that number gets compromised, the person who
gets it can't use it for hotel reservations or 100 pizzas because it isn't
authorized to make purchases anywhere except for the vendors where I pre-
established a relationship.

Basically getting my card compromised at the LOLCatz shopping cart portal
doesn't give the attacker any power other than to spend more than I would
expect to spend at the LOLCatz store. My life gets better, the credit card
company has less fraud exposure, and I no longer have 'change the card
everywhere' firedrills.

As a bonus if this credit card front end could be attached to other payment
sources "behind the wall" as it were (imagine having a credit card number that
had properties like a Google Voice phone number, it could draw from multiple
sources to pay out.) Then I could do even better by attaching 'dubious' cards
to an account with a limited withdrawal rate.

I would love to be in charge of my credit like that and I have a much better
view over what is, and is not, an attempt at fraud (presuming of course that I
am not the fraudster).

I wish some bright YC group somewhere would build something like this.

~~~
systemtrigger
That already exists. It's called a corporate purchasing card. I used to sell
new Fortune 500 accounts when I worked at American Express, so I'm quite
familiar with them.

You can set myriad fine-grained controls like "only permit Office Depot
purchases of paper reams, Monday thru Friday, in zip code 94304, $40 maximum
per use." Stuff like that.

The account administrator gets a granular data feed with all the purchases
pre-categorized, and reconciliation and reporting software.

The trouble competitors have is gathering the data at the point of sale.
American Express blows away the competition on data, primarily because of card
readers. Many American Express merchants have a separate card reader which can
be programmed to force the merchant to filter transactions based on the
controls set on the cardholder's account. Many companies won't buy from
suppliers who aren't fully set up for American Express purchasing cards, which
is why so many suppliers go through the trouble of uploading their product
database and paying the high transaction fees.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That's great, except that I don't want this for my corporation, I want it for
me, John Q. Public.

Its not the concept that is disruptive, its opening up the market to a much
larger base of consumers.

This "The trouble competitors have is gathering the data at the point of sale.
American Express blows away the competition on data, primarily because of card
readers. Many American Express merchants have a separate card reader which can
be programmed to force the merchant to filter transactions based on the
controls set on the cardholder's account. Many companies won't buy from
suppliers who aren't fully set up for American Express purchasing cards, which
is why so many suppliers go through the trouble of uploading their product
database and paying the high transaction fees." is so true in meat space and
doesn't need to be true on the Internet. 'Readers' are as sophisticated as the
shopping cart software needs them to be.

The value adds here are:

1) This gives individuals control over their exposure by sharing credit cards
with these vendors.

2) This mitigates fraud / change on those accounts which for consumer cards is
a huge part of the expense.

3) This creates an exemplar of a payments system which is more buyer focussed
and thus differentiates from existing payment services.

~~~
systemtrigger
Ok I thought you were talking about a physical card that you could swipe in
meat space. Narrowing scope to the internet makes your bank idea easier though
it would still take a ton of work.

How familiar are you with the regulations guarding the banking industry?

How do you plan to solve the chicken-egg adoption problem? Most vendors offer
3 to 5 credit card brands, and they won't want to adulterate their payment
forms with strange unproven options. I wonder if collaborating with companies
that build shopping cart plugins is the way to go or if you would have to fly
solo for awhile before the established shopping cart players would take you
seriously.

How many people are clamoring for such a financial account? If my credit card
account gets comprised, the most I'm liable for is $50 or something like that.
I check my transaction log for unusual activity, which I do with any financial
account. Even companies that have purchasing cards reconcile the transactions.
Apart from not having to pay $50 if my card ever gets compromised, what
benefit would your bank serve to me?

~~~
ChuckMcM
All fair points, lets see if I can address each of them:

"How familiar are you with the regulations guarding the banking industry?" -
out of date. Back when I was trying to get Sun into e-commerce (1995) was
plugged in with Visa, First Data, SWIFT, these days not so much. At the time
the regulations came in two forms, "Fair Credit" which is to say regulations
regarding consumer relationships with the bank, and "Liability management"
which was more interested in defining exactly when the liability for a
transaction changed from one party to another.

"How do you plan to solve the chicken-egg adoption problem?" - I suspect the
best way would be to partner with a vendor whose brand is under served
(Discover comes to mind) The alternative is a slog ala Paypal's early days and
no, we don't have an Ebay to leverage. Apple perhaps, especially if it meant
Apple got to collect some buying habits metrics, they also have a big iTunes
installed base this could plug into.

"How many people are clamoring for such a financial account? If my credit card
account gets comprised, the most I'm liable for is $50 or something like that.
I check my transaction log for unusual activity, which I do with any financial
account. Even companies that have purchasing cards reconcile the transactions.
Apart from not having to pay $50 if my card ever gets compromised, what
benefit would your bank serve to me?" - One can never know for sure until you
ship, but here are some bits of reasoning I've been using successfully:

People are being trained to leave a credit card on file for on-going
purchases. Started really with iTunes but now every game console has something
like it, every e-reader has something like it. Some online merchants like
Amazon and O'Reilly support it. Concommitant with that many monthly services
have enabled an 'auto-pay' facility of one form or another, currently
dominated by banks but we could build one that was bank independent with the
right API.

These changes are 'new' in that you haven't really had them on your credit
card before, so the 'pain' comes when you have to unwind-rewind them. You go
to buy something on Steam for example and it complains your card is invalid,
and you go "oh yeah I had to cancel that card and they must have the old
card." A lot of people who had Playstation network accounts got to experience
this when that system got compromised.

My claim is that the convienience of 'dynamic subscriptions' will get wider
(there are AppStores everywhere now!) the early servers of these are CC
companies and phone companies, both of whom have "issues" with customer
satisfaction and flexibility. I also claim that the pain of 'losing' control
of a card will get worse as you have more and more of these dynamic
subscriptions linked to it.

I expect the initial response will be multiple cards, but this adds its own
issue if the statements are not closely monitored.

So while I feel it acutely today (I wondered why I didn't get my FreeBSD CD
release and found out that Walnut Creek had my old card) I expect the
experience to expand across the population as the number of dynamic
subscriptions increase, the number of 'resets' due to exposed cards increases,
and the time wastage of re-doing everything creates a value proposition.

------
nurik
It might sound too obvious but often people try to come up with "ideas"
instead of building what people need/want. I am pretty sure you just meant to
ask: what should I build?

To find out what people need/want there are different ways to find out: Sites
like: <http://www.43things.com/zeitgeist/goals> might help.

Also take a look at PGs "Ideas for Startups":
<http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

~~~
cmplma
Yes exactly, "what should I build" is a better way to ask this question.

Great links - thanks. I had read the PG article a while ago but a re-read is
good idea.

~~~
alpswd
cmplma, please contact me when you have a chance -- alpswd (at*) gmail.com

------
hansy
Local meetups are a great place to find like-minded individuals as well as
other entrepreneurs (meetup.com).

Ditto noodleshare and builditwith.me

You can also try techcofounder.com. I hear the response rate for developers is
quite high.

Your throwaway account is hindering my ability to Google you (and subsequently
contact you myself), so if you want to talk, feel free to contact me. I have
ideas too :).

~~~
icebraining
Reading builditwith.me is exasperating, they're almost all outdated ideas with
trendy buzzwords. "An alarm clock with gamification!"

And then there are gems like this: _"What is "Unified Passport System"? It
likes Oauth, but it's more complicated."_ Yeah, because people were
complaining that OAuth was too simple ;)

I guess you may find something worthwhile in there, but it seems to me that
you can get a better return of your time by looking at what's already out
there and thinking on how to improve it.

------
ceposta
i agree with some of the recommendations already posted here, but i also
highly recommend a technique known as 'freewriting.' it's based on the concept
that ideas aren't endpoints, they're stepping stones to other ideas. the more
ideas you have, regardless of quality, the better chance you'll navigate to a
really good idea. i saw a review here on HN of an excellent book called
Accidental Genius. here's the link to the review:
[http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/07/accidental-genius-
summ...](http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/07/accidental-genius-summary/)

------
ashraful
builditwith.me is a site made for this.

Also, I have a few ideas I would like to explore. Email me at inlith@gmail.com
and we can talk.

------
mapster
Sparkmuse.com has idea submission and rankings daily.Plus you can start a
conversation with people and make connections.

------
mindcrime
Noodleshare:

<http://www.noodleshare.com/>

------
desushil
I have an idea, just to make you think for sometime, "YouTube of Text".

------
rush-tea
where are you located? if you are in bay area, lets talk, email me at
rush.tea@gmail.com

