
How to get business ideas – remove steps - nate
http://ninjasandrobots.com/how-to-get-business-ideas-remove-steps/
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wazoox
Then you have the problem of selling it. Some people I know made a piece of
software that literally destroys half (or more) the jobs among broadcast TV
operators. They regularly got shown the door harshly because they presented
the solution to the wrong person: either someone who'd lose his job in the
process, or someone who'd lose half the team under her orders and therefore
her power in the company.

~~~
michaelbuddy
what is the software? please share a link? Something a small media company
could use?

~~~
wazoox
Definitely what a small media company should use. It combines traffic
management, ads insertions, media asset management in a very easy to use, full
drag-and-drop web UI, completely customizable and an impressively complete API
with full documentation.

Really a fantastic product that puts everything from the big names to shame.
It's available as both a standalone or cloud-hosted solution. It's so simple
that usually only one journalist of graphic artist can manage a set of
channels all by him/herself.

[http://www.chyro.fr/en/](http://www.chyro.fr/en/)

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danso
Having worked in an incubator space and constantly overhearing aspiring
entrepreneurs' wildly impractical proposals...I've always wondered why it
isn't just _common sense_ that you heed the advice mentioned in another
article currently on HN's front page:

[http://fridriksson.tumblr.com/post/86584610871/a-startup-
pos...](http://fridriksson.tumblr.com/post/86584610871/a-startup-postmortem-
with-a-happy-ending-in-thailand)

> _But our biggest self realization was that we were not users of our own
> product. We didn’t obsess over it and we didn’t love it. We loved the idea
> of it. That hurt._

In a way, the OP is just another re-phrasing of this...if you know the steps
of a process pretty well, it's because you're an active user. You know what
steps are worth removing, and as an active user, you can maintain a tight
feedback loop informing you whether the cost of removing those steps are worth
it. And, as a cherry on top, you're actively making something you _already_ do
more enjoyable.

~~~
digikata
The flip side is also sometimes true. When you know the steps of some process
well, it means you've internalized all the existing assumptions. That can make
it difficult to clearly realize where removing steps is possible.

~~~
Terr_
Sort of like why sometimes experts in a field make the worst teachers. They've
forgotten the important transitional steps.

~~~
bryang
I guess this is why I will never teach math.

When I was in high school I would always lose points on my tests because I
never showed any work. It was always easier for me to imagine formulas in my
head like puzzle pieces then writing them down.

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eduardordm
I would also like to add that you need make sure you really understand the
whole context when improving something.

As someone who actually does the dishes, I cringed when I saw the OXO
measuring cup, those small corners are hard to clean if flour gets stuck in
there. Maybe the execution could use some work. If you consider washing part
of the job, that measuring cup is worse than a common measuring cup.

~~~
dave5104
If you're using it to measure solids like flour, you're actually using it
incorrectly. The OXO cup is really for measuring liquids. To measure out
solids (flour, sugar, etc.) you should be using solid measuring cups.

~~~
rmc
I will never understand the US idea of measuring solids by volume. If you
recipes called for "200g of flour", then that's trivial to measure out on a
scales.

~~~
dgallagher
It's quicker sometimes.

This morning I made some oatmeal. I took a 1/2 measuring cup, scooped out some
oatmeal, shook it quickly to remove the overflow, threw it in a pot, and
dropped the measuring cup in my sink. It took around 5-10 seconds.

If I had to do the same by weight, I would have had to get my scale, put on a
bowl, zero the scale, slowly start pouring oatmeal onto the scale until it
reached the desired weight, throw that into a pot, put the bowl in my sink,
and put the scale away. That'll probably run around 15-20 seconds. If I screw
up and poured too much into the bowl by accident, it'll take a lot longer to
correct than briefly shaking a pre-sized 1/2 measuring cup.

Other times a scale is much easier to use too; it just depends on the context.

~~~
lobster_johnson
You would put the pot directly on the scale, surely. No need for an
intermediate container.

~~~
ghc
You'd put a pot of boiling water on a scale? Wouldn't that risk damaging it?

~~~
lobster_johnson
I don't make oatmeal, so I don't know the exact procedure, but if one is bring
the water to a boil _before_ putting in the oats, then the simple solution is
just to use your serving bowl — the one you will eat the cooked meal from —
instead. I do that with pasta, for example.

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ilaksh
It is not difficult to come up with new business ideas or ways to improve on
businesses that already exist.

(As a side point, you don't really need to come up with new ideas or even make
an improvement, you can just enter an existing market and be successful at
selling.)

I come up with new business ideas probably once a week. Maybe several in a
day.

It is orders of magnitude more difficult to actually effectively execute a
business idea. And also often extremely difficult to successfully market it.

The reason it is relatively easy to come up with a new idea: you just need to
make a loose identification of a product or solution. To actually implement
it, you have to fill in all of the details and refine them. A simple concept
can encapsulate a huge amount of complexity and engineering work. For example,
the OXO cup. Once you have that idea, you need to work out exactly what design
to use and where to place the measurement labels. Then you need some kind of
manufacturing. Manufacturing a product can be very complex. You need
distribution.

And then you need marketing. There are many reasons that marketing hard. For
one thing, people are bombarded with products. There are so many new options
that people have built up a tolerance for amazingness. Even if your product is
absolutely incredible it may not break through into someone's consciousness
for more than a moment. Also, people are busy and they have a limited capacity
for learning new things. Even if your product makes things much easier, it is
still a new thing for that person to learn, so they have to make an investment
of their time and effort. And unfortunately with status quo bias there is a
tendency for everyone to undervalue innovative ideas. And for your product to
really become popular then you need to access network effects, i.e. move the
entire herd.

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maj0rhn
The unstated assumption in this blog post is that any [ethical] idea that
makes money is worthy.

I would hope that persons of talent aspire to higher goals. A better measuring
cup is of trivial benefit to humanity. A new dessert is actually a detractor.

If all you can do is make new measuring cups and new desserts then, by all
means, do it and support your family. But if you think you bring something
special to the world, try to improve it in a significant way. If that means
investing a few years of your life to go to nursing school (for example) and
learn a profession of value, then make the investment. You will then find
ample opportunities to innovate, and bring benefit to your fellow man.

~~~
mseebach
> A better measuring cup is of trivial benefit to humanity

Oh, so it is of benefit, is it? What, exactly, is the minimal amount of
positive benefit to humanity I must exert in my work to be deemed worthy in
your optics?

What, exactly, is it about nursing, as a whole, that makes the field
universally superior to the measuring cup industry? Is all of nursing equally
deserving? What if you, as a nurse, spend your entire career caring for the
morbidly obese, extending their lives so then can eat more smores? Is it OK to
care for the obese, but not to feed them better desserts?

Human development is a long, hard trudge of incremental improvements, with a
few leaps here and there. If you insist on sitting around waiting to be part
of a leap, resisting the temptation to incrementally bringing benefit to your
fellow man, you're missing the forest for all the trees.

PS:

> A new dessert is actually a detractor

Bullshit.

EDIT: Try not to be provocative.

~~~
dang
> I'm guessing you're a lot of fun at parties.

Please don't address other users this way on Hacker News. (It's a bad way to
respond to provocation because it degrades the discourse further and invites
worse.)

~~~
mseebach
Yeah, you're right. I got pretty worked up over the premise.

