

Ask HN: Do you have startup ideas to share? - timedivers


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akg_67
A few months ago, I had a BRAVO study done for acid reflux issue. Basically, a
capsule with wireless transmitter is attached to esophagus wall. You carry
around a bulky wireless receiver with antenna sticking out that records pH
readings for 48 hours. You also record when you are lying down, eating and
encounter acid reflux episodes on a piece of paper. After 48 hours, you need
to take receiver and paper with recorded information back to the clinic so
that they can retrieve the data from recorder.

Pain points:

1\. A Bulky receiver that patient need to carry around or keep within couple
of feet of your body. (inconvenience).

2\. Patient need to remember to record on a paper when you are lying down and
various other information.

3\. Patient need to take the receiver back to clinic.

4\. Clinic need to enter the information listed on paper and download data
from receiver and upload to an analysis system.

5\. If receiver is lost, patient is charged $3,000 to $5,000 and clinic need
to buy another receiver.

In this age of smartphones with gyros and apps, I thought these pain points
can be easily solved by creating a Smartphone App and turning smartphone into
receiver from wireless capsule in esophagus. Smartphone can be attached to the
chest to detect when a patient lies down. Patient can manually select options
in apps for various information that need to be captured. After 48 hours,
smartphone automatically sends captured information and data to a central
server over internet.

Benefits:

1\. Everyone has smartphone, no need for clinic to provide a bulky receiver
that need to be returned to clinic after 48 hours and deal with lost
receivers.

2\. Patient doesn't need to go back to clinic just to return receiver and
completed forms (Travel time and cost).

3\. Clinic doesn't need to perform data entry and upload information to a
system (Expensive medical labor).

Challenges:

1\. Potentially limited market. But I am sure there are a few other similar
medical monitoring procedures to which this solution could be extended (small
market).

2\. Potential FDA approval and clinical trials (expensive and long time to
market). Depending on wireless protocol used between capsule and receiver, may
need to redesign the capsule (much larger hurdle for a new startup instead of
existing maker to modify).

3\. Bringing together people with medical imaging domain knowledge and mobile
OS App developers.

Why I am not pursuing this idea myself?

I thought about pursuing this idea for a short while as I spent couple of
years consulting in medical imaging IT. But thought of putting together a
qualified team and raising financing stopped me in the tracks. I prefer ideas
that I can bootstrap (result of previous scars raising OPM). Most of my
medical imaging contacts are on East coast of Canada and I am now on West
coast of US so difficult to put together a good team with people I know. No
experience with Mobile. Already involved with another idea in a totally
different space.

Hopefully, sharing this idea helps someone else.

~~~
Mz
Can you explain to me what the benefit of this study is supposed to be? (I
think finding a way to eliminate the study would make more sense.)

~~~
akg_67
The study measures the pH over 48 hour period near the entrance of stomach.
This helps determine the frequency and strength of acid reflux into esophagus
from stomach to assess the severity of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).
Typically, capsule is placed in esophagus during the endoscopy.

Based on my readings before the procedure, in my opinion, BRAVO capsule
technique is currently the most advanced, accurate,and convenient method
compared to previously used methods such as stents/catheter.

More info
[http://my.clevelandclinic.org/services/esophageal_ph_test/hi...](http://my.clevelandclinic.org/services/esophageal_ph_test/hic_the_48-hour_bravo_esophageal_ph_test.aspx)

I am not sure what do you mean by eliminating the study. How else are you
going to measure the pH to detect acid reflux in esophagus.

~~~
Mz
Thank you for replying. I am trying to understand what benefit there is to
studying the frequency and strength. How is that information used? What good
does it do you to know?

I am sorry if I sound obtuse. I am genuinely trying to understand this. I have
a serious medical condition which causes extreme acidification. Reversing the
acidity has reversed a lot of my symptoms. I did not need a fancy test to do
that. So I am trying to understand ... why people do this sort of thing, I
guess. It makes no sense to me but what I do makes no sense to other people. I
don't know how to cross that communication gap right now. I am trying to
figure it out.

~~~
akg_67
The study helps figure out the severity and seriousness of the problem. There
are wide range of treatments, from lifestyle changes to extended treatment
with drugs, maintenance drugs and surgery. There is no one treatment that
applies to everyone and study helps make a much better informed decision about
treatment options. Too much acid reflux can result in lining deterioration,
perforation or even cancer in esophagus. Based on study results, doctors can
recommend the checkup frequency for esophagus too.

Hope this helps clarify why such studies are performed. I look at such studies
as data-driven decision making.

~~~
Mz
Thank you for your patience. I am not sure it helps because I think what I do
is data driven but it comes from another direction. I am not sure I understand
any better or know what I need to be asking, really.

------
kordless
I'm working on a highly distributed cloud framework that implements a Bitcoin
operated OpenStack deployment. Basically, you install OpenStack at your house
or small data center, launch a small instance with some Open Source code that
turns the instance into a virtual appliance controller, and then join a pool
of other providers/users. The pool operator provides search functions (like
geo) and Bitcoin addresses so others can launch a server by just paying coin
to a given address. No usernames, no passwords. Secure, reliable payments for
providers to get ROI on excess/hobby capacity. Fast, easy, and dirt cheap.

The initial pool run by myself will provide low trust, low cost, highly
transient instances. Chaos Monkey model. Market prices will likely fluctuate
based on instance launch demand.

The concept encourages multiple pools running the code, so there will be
future opportunity in building up a brand that attracts a given set of
infrastructure providers and/or service companies to band together and coop.
This could be done to leverage features like geo location, excess capacity
requirements, feature sets, or trust levels through accreditation. Think about
a handful of Silicon Valley companies sharing infrastructure among themselves
and being able to balance the costs through Bitcoin. They could also share
cooperatively in the areas of operational competence and security, given they
have a good relationship between the companies (which many do).

For me, it's been a long haul working on the concept, especially considering I
had to get OpenStack accessible for the average user. Now I'm mostly done with
my OpenStack scripts, I'm finally cranking out the code for the controller and
have it launching instances by sending in Bitcoin to the instance addresses.
It's pretty slick when you use it.

More work has to be done, so it'll be a few months before I do a general
release of the first pool. If you or anyone else is interested in this
concept, building a new pool brand, or building the services that need to be
build around it, hit me up. My email is in my profile.

~~~
akg_67
Like your concept. I am very interested in OpenStack myself, more look at it
as a building block for private cloud. Sounds like you are trying to create a
NOVA pool for virtual instanced from excess available CPU/memory capacity of
the participant users. Not sure you really need to have OpenStack to achieve
this. What will happen to all the virtual instances running on a NOVA node if
a participant user turns off their NOVA node? Also, how are you going to
handle shared storage side of OpenStack?

About 12 years ago, I was trying to do something similar pooling together
excess storage capacity and tried to position as solution for SMB and consumer
market (big mistake). A positioning and solution focusing on Disaster Recovery
and enterprise most probably would have been more successful.

~~~
kordless
Here's the whitepaper: [https://github.com/StackMonkey/xovio-
pool/blob/master/whitep...](https://github.com/StackMonkey/xovio-
pool/blob/master/whitepaper.md).

Each provider (a user) installs their own OpenStack cluster, which includes a
nova controller. That cluster runs a virtual appliance who's job is to watch a
given Bitcoin address for payments. If it sees a payment it either starts an
instance or resets a counter to keep an instance running. Payments by users
are taken by the pool operator. The pool then starts micro drips to the
instance, in most cases half a cent or so.

The pool I'm going to run will be at stackmonkey.com. If a provider shuts off
their controller, something crashes, or there's a rig failure, only a small
percentage of the total number of instances will be affected. Payments won't
matter because the instance costs are so low, and the drip can be turned off
when the appliance stops responding to the pool controller.

OpenStack makes this handy because it handles all the heavy lifting for
starting and stoping instances, doing network setup, images, instance sizes,
etc.

Initial audience for this low trust pool will be hackers, developers, testers,
tor nodes, individuals, etc. Very low cost, highly ephemeral instances.

There's a video here: [https://vimeo.com/86717476](https://vimeo.com/86717476)

~~~
akg_67
Thanks for the whitepaper and video. So, at high level the resource provider
is accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars to provide a virtual instance to a
customer. Does this sums up what you are trying to do?

I have hard time imagining who might be the customer that will be willing to
run their virtual instance on low trust ephemeral pool and for what purpose.
What are some use cases for your solution? Is there such a low trust ephemeral
pool already in existence that accepts dollars? Why would someone use this
solution over just launching a VPS or EC2 instance?

------
brickcap
I have one but I think it pretty crazy and I am not really sure if it can
work. I would love if you could find holes in my idea and help me to refine it
or tell me if it can work at all.

So I have been thinking that the biggest roadblock to solar adoption is the
high upfront cost of installation. If there could be an incentive to make
money with solar a lot more people might be willing to "invest" in it.

So my idea is similar to carbon credits. It is a lot easier to measure the
amount of energy generated by the solar panels. So the amount of clean energy
generated by the households could be sold off the organisations with a bigger
carbon footprint. Similar to how advertising networks sell page views to the
advertisers.The unit of energy is well established. We could set the price of
1 watt of clean energy to a bidder.

So the question remains why the bidder would want to buy this clean energy? I
don't have an answer to that besides that it could be a good marketing tactic.
For very large cooperation it could be a chance to gain some good PR (if they
really care about that).

The people participating in this program would have to install a chip that
would monitor the generation of this clean energy. With networked chips like
tessel and spark.io coming out soon it could become pretty easy for people
installing solar panels to connect these panels to a local cloud where there
could be an automatic transfer of funds to bank accounts of people depending
upon the amount of clean energy that they have generated. Now for a give area
this energy should be the same for a standard solar panel since the are will
receive more or less the same sunlight. With some work standard pricing can be
reached for a locality.

~~~
sgslo
Great idea. Unfortunately, you just described New Jersey's SREC system
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_renewable_energy_certific...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_renewable_energy_certificate))

~~~
brickcap
Ah I see. Well it is encouraging in that it is not totally crazy! Any way I
have never heard of such a system in India, where I live. So maybe if I or
someone else can make this work there is a lot of money to be made here.

------
Mankhool
I read about this yesterday
[http://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/](http://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/)

Last September I posted this on my blog: Imagine sitting in an airport, for
example, and being able to join a First Person Shooter Game where all of your
opponents are in the same airport – they could be other travellers, airport
staff, pilots – anyone. But here is the main feature of this game: The virtual
location you see in the game IS the airport and it is created using all
relevant data (floorplans of the airport, wayfinding apps, and apps on your
phone that are able to map rooms, measure direction, etc.). The game
environment in which you travel seeking your opponents is generated using data
being generated by their devices as well – sort of a micro crowd sourced
battlefield with some help from publicly available data.

Where do I find a Tango Developer to work with to create this Massively
Multiplayer Mobile game?

------
throwwit
Just one idea. Could anyone take these two stories from today:

Telecom firms mine for gold in big data despite privacy concerns
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7286080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7286080)

Cryptocontracts Will Turn Contract Law Into a Programming Language
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7287155](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7287155)

... and create a bitcoin like wallet/api of a consumer's permission to trade
data.

A Twitter User Is Worth $110; Facebook's $98; LinkedIn's $93.
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/11/07/a-twitte...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/11/07/a-twitter-
user-is-worth-110-facebooks-98-linkedins-93/)

~~~
brickcap
The idea of bitcoin like wallet api sounds good. But can you explain the
correlation with the stories that you linked?

~~~
throwwit
The 'wallet' would be a verification/allowance mechanism for user-stored
private usage data. Basically the user becomes the data broker. And an
API/(exchange) could charge a fee on the other side of the business.

------
karterk
Over time, I have come to realize that what usually constitutes a startup idea
is very hard to "share". Sure, you can express it in words, but an idea in
your head is usually far more subtle than the words you can string together to
convey it.

Edit: grammar

~~~
mattmanser
That's why people make such a big deal about an elevator pitch.

If you can't express it as an elevator pitch, it's probably not a fully formed
idea.

------
sharemywin
Couple ideas: time sharing marketplace/factory/warehouse. 3d printer, other
maker tools, cnc, robots to move stuff around but virtual. delivering
take'n'bake pizza.(costs are pretty low for a large delivery area).
doorhangermarketplace.com - taskrabbit but focused on doorhangers.

------
Remiii
You can read the article of Paul Grahm in order to find some ideas by
yourself:
[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

------
yatch33
We're publishing out ideas that can eventually be turned into a startup here:
[http://www.blazingx.com](http://www.blazingx.com)

------
vidvaita
"get me stuff from the store" among neighbors, friends and work team mates.
"task rabbit" among social network with favors exchange

~~~
sharemywin
are you the only one working on it?

------
nahcub
A group voting system that uses text messaging that isn't frightfully
expensive for a small (~50-100) set of users.

------
wilbertliu
Recently i thought about making to-do list that don't suck :) Interested to
know more about it?

~~~
meowface
While a noble pursuit, I think there are dozens of start-ups (completely
free/open apps as well as for-profit businesses) trying to do exactly this. I
think Trello counts as a big one.

~~~
wilbertliu
Trello is great, i used that for few times. But it turned that i spent much of
my time to organise things than make it done.

------
chudi
Amazon for latin america

