
Ask HN: What do you need that you'd pay a lot for? - joncalhoun
PG mentioned this question in his most recent essay, so I am redirecting it to everyone on HN. What does your company (or you individually) need that you would play a lot of money for?
======
joshfraser
Tax evasion as a service. Target the same legal loopholes that big
corporations use to avoid paying taxes like "transfer pricing". You set up the
offices and shell corporations in Ireland and the Netherlands for a Double
Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. You then share those resources (offices, staff,
lawyers, accountants, etc) between your clients & charge a percentage of the
tax savings as your fee.

~~~
lubos
This won't work. Tax authority will simply not accept tax deductible expenses
which allow you to transfer profits to Ireland and will issue you new tax
bill.

Why big corporations can get away with this? It comes down to people. Little
guy working at tax office doesn't have enough confidence to oppose Apple or
Google but will have world of confidence to scrutinize unknown small
businesses.

I see companies like this popping up all the time offering services that allow
profits to be concealed under some bullshit scheme. It might take a few years
before tax authority will catch up but they will eventually find every single
client of such company, they will conduct detailed audits and will issue new
tax bills with penalties to all involved.

~~~
praxulus
Do you have a specific example of something Apple does that is illegal, but
for which the IRS isn't pursuing them?

~~~
lubos
I didn't say anything about illegal.

I specifically said, tax authority won't accept tax deductions they don't
like. They will simply issue you new tax bill and couldn't care less whether
what you are doing is legal or not.

It's up to you to challenge their interpretation of law through legal system
if you think what you are doing is legal.

By the way, EU’s executive Commission is currently looking into Ireland and
says what Apple is doing could be illegal under EU law. If confirmed, Apple
will get a huge repayment bill.

source: [http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/is-the-apple-tax-
dod...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/is-the-apple-tax-dodge-about-
to-end/story-fn5lic6c-1227076637565)

------
MrDom
Here's something my mother badly needs: an alternative to meditech that is
easy to program and use, but cheap enough for small hospitals to afford.

Just to put this in perspective, Meditech allows users (ie: non-technical
medical personnel) to write their own "programs" for retrieving and organizing
information in something called "Meditech Magic." Here's a clip:

    
    
      BEERv1.1,
      100^b,T("")^#,DO{b'<1 NN(b,"bottle"_IF{b=1 " ";"s "}_"of beer on the wall")^#,
          N(b,"bottle"_IF{b=1 " ";"s "}_"of beer!")^#,
          N("You take one down, pass it around,")^#,b-1^b,
          N(b,"bottle"_IF{b=1 " ";"s "}_"of beer on the wall!")^#},
      END;

~~~
mappu
Interesting, tell us more. Do you need something that's a drop-in replacement
with compatible syntax, or is it more about built-in libraries / integrations
that could be solved as an extension to another language?

~~~
MrDom
I was thinking a complete replacement of the entire platform, but thinking
about it more made me realize that's not practical for anybody. For better or
worse, a lot of applications are already written for this platform.

A drop in "replacement" that creates a web-based UI for easy creation and
retrieval of Meditech data would be very useful. It could communicate with the
system and translate javascript into MMagic. Bonus points if it could
translate already existing applications automatically. Time to see if Meditech
has an API I can access from javascript.

OT: I took a look at your projects page and I have to say I like the cut of
your jib, sir.

------
jrkelly
Photo storage /viewing that doesn't try to sync my photos to a computer
(making me scared of losing them in a sync mishap) or share them. Electronic
equivalent of a shoebox. Snapjoy did this but Dropbox bought them and shut it
down. I haven't seen an alternative - maybe the new Amazon photos does this?

~~~
sjm
I had an idea a while back for this kind of thing, but never stuck with it. I
wanted to make something with Amazon Glacier that would be for long-term
storage of RAWs for all those people who don't want to ever really delete a
RAW file, with small jpeg previews of your library. Maybe I should dig up my
old notes and give it another go.

~~~
btgeekboy
I've mentioned something along these lines before as well. I want it to be
seamlessly integrated with Aperture (and likely Lightroom, given how things
are going in Aperture-land) such that I can browse all of my photos at any
time. The RAWs are securely backed up in some datacenter, and if I want to
edit the photo, the RAW is cached locally so that it can be edited. If the
photo hasn't been edited in some time now, it's evicted from the cache, and I
still have the preview available for perusal.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Aperture is very much officially dead. [http://www.cultofmac.com/285357/apple-
kills-development-aper...](http://www.cultofmac.com/285357/apple-kills-
development-aperture-iphoto-os-x/)

------
jcr
Health. When you make a list of what people will (gladly) pay a lot of money
for, health will always be at the top of the list, since without good health,
you suffer from a constant impediment. Unfortunately, providing solutions to
health problems is probably well beyond scope for already struggling startups.

PG asked, "What do you need that you'd pay a lot for?" in relation to changing
sales discussions with the hope of bringing in some revenue for struggling
startups. The problem with taking this a bit too literally is it's essentially
the same thing as asking a customer what they want. The classic statement from
Henry Ford is, "If I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd tell me a
faster horse." Often, the customer may not know what they want.

Instead of asking "What you'd pay a lot for?" you could ask "Where are you
spending lots?" or "What costs you a lot?" One of my favorites is, "What
regular task in your job annoys the ever living snot out of you? Yeah, what's
that thing you absolutely dead doing?"

    
    
      What annoys you?
      What do you dread doing?
      What infuriates you?
      What upsets you?
      ...
    

The funny thing about human beings is, if you ask people where it hurts,
they'll often tell you. If you take the time to learn where they hurt, you
might be able to help.

~~~
joncalhoun
You are correct that phrasing the question different ways can often get better
results, but I just wanted to hear from HN users and it seemed simpler to just
ask the question verbatim.

------
cyberjunkie
Peace of mind.

Take care of all my trivial stuff for me. Bills, taxes, money management,
politics, corruption and other stupid distractions that stop me from focusing
on people that matter.

How much do you want?

~~~
bash-j
There's a company where I live that does some of these things regarding your
bills and saving money. You go in for an interview and you show them all your
expenses, incomes, etc. They will work out a budget for you, pay your bills,
save money for your goals, send you a bit of spending money for groceries,
etc. negotiate with your credit card companies, banks and what not if things
are really bad. They set up a bank account which your income goes into, but
you can't immediately access it to withdraw funds. Instead you have to
call/email them and ask for it, which is good for preventing impulse
purchases. Fees are a few hundred dollars for setting up, which is worked into
your budget so you don't have to pay upfront, then around $25 a week ongoing.

~~~
annnnd
They can even assign you a person who does all this for you and more. Usually
she is called "wife" (or "husband", if it's a "he"). It is rumored that the
costs are usually way higher in that case though (especially if you decide on
a "wife" instead of "husband").

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)

More seriously though: do you have a link? I find this concept seriously
intriguing / weird / ... on many levels.

~~~
bash-j
mybudget.com.au

------
alizaki
A work/travel-program for knowledge professionals to travel the world and work
a set number of hours a week on projects to pay their way. Air tickets,
budget, airbnbs/apartments all paid for. Then you resell services to clients.

You could probably keep a high enough margin by saving through smart
purchasing/renting of travel along and picking lower cost/highly desired
destinations (south east asia comes to mind, for example).

a business of lifestyle, if you will.

------
karmacondon
Please make my brain work better. I need a way to organize information that I
come across online, get control of my schedule and find a way to manage my
general learning process. Maybe a mix of bookmarking, google calendar and
anki, with some event discovery thrown in. Then add some Tinder style social
functionality so I can get a date or meet new friends.

I wouldn't be able to throw money at you fast enough.

~~~
sideproject
In regards to "bookmarks", I know guys working on a new tool called
"Marvelogs" [http://marvelogs.com](http://marvelogs.com) \- They're keeping
all your likes, favorites, follows etc from various web services (e.g.
YouTube, Instagram, GitHub, BitBucket etc) and putting them in a single place.
Really like the concept.

~~~
stevekemp
You sound like you're not involved, but previously you've implied you are:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703270)

------
joshfraser
Tool to constantly monitor domains I'm interested in keeping an eye on
(competitors, etc). Crawl their site every day and email me smart diffs
(ignore timestamps, randomized content, etc) of every page that changed.

~~~
ajankovic
There are existing services that provide services similar to what you request.
Just Google for "track your competitors".

Is there anything specific that you need that current services don't provide?

------
mrwnmonm
knowledge, i want a website that i tell that i want to have the knowledge of
someone about certain domain. then the site give me a path(books, articles,
exercises) that lead me to this. this could be simply done by letting people
write about their knowledge and give the path by themselves

~~~
kirillzubovsky
just as fyi, I had this in mind while doing ramenapp.net, but then it quickly
turned out that people don't like to share very much. those who do, they
already share, but the majority is happy otherwise. imo

------
allendoerfer
People pay premium prices for stuff, that they want to do very much or that
they do not want to do at all, but have to. Cyberjunkie described the second
category as stuff that brings piece of mind. For the first category you get
bonus points if you find something, that is highly visible to others (status
symbols).

First category: Golf equipment, expensive knifes, barbecue stuff, wine, shoes
etc.

Second category: Taxes, cleaning, medicine, everything which lets one appear
to be a better parent (does not matter if it actually does) etc.

------
joshfraser
Data as a service. Collect, normalize and index public (but often hard to
find/use) data sets and re-syndicate them in a data-as-a-service model.

~~~
nichtich
I like this one. Normalized data, with all changes timestamped, realtime
pushed directly to my own server where I can use along with my own internal
datasets. It'll be very labor intensive though.

------
csallen
Easy access to well-funded companies looking to hire highly skilled full-stack
developers for contract work. Word of mouth works great, but it'd be good to
have something reliable to fall back on if my network falls through. I imagine
I'd be willing some small % of my hourly/project fee (less than recruiters
would take), or a somewhat high yearly rate for access if it was good.

Wouldn't pay "a lot" for it, maybe $10-20/month, but I'd like some sort of
"learning framework" software. I imagine it would be a clever combination of
Anki/Mnemosyne (but modern and web-based), note-taking software like Evernote,
bookmarking similar to Pocket, and maybe some basic reminders/tasks that I can
schedule. Disclaimer: I've put no more than ~5 minutes of thought into this
total.

Someone said [legal] "tax evasion" as a service. I'd pay for that. As a
contractor I've set up an LLC for myself, and I'm sure I'm missing out on lots
of elementary tricks that could save me money. I actually have a meeting set
up with a tax guy later this week, but my intuition is that if a company
figured out how to scale this, it could be cheaper and more effective. I'd be
willing to pay a % of the money saved if it's substantially more than what
I've been able to do on my own.

Office hours with experts. I'd pay upwards of $200/hr to be able to schedule
time to speak with certain experts. I doubt I'd use it more than a few times a
year, but that's still a lot of money.

Some sort of automated personal assistant that coaxes me to do the things I
need to do without a lot of manual input on my part. It's been tried many
times and it's tough to do, but if someone gets it right, I'd pay a lot.

~~~
joncalhoun
Office hours with experts sounds like Helpouts[1], AirPair[2], and I think
there are 2-3 others out there that I am forgetting. Some are targeting
specific markets (eg programmers) but the end goal would seem similar for them
all.

[1] [https://helpouts.google.com/](https://helpouts.google.com/) [2]
[https://www.airpair.com/](https://www.airpair.com/)

------
hoodoof
Someone to sell my latest software product.

~~~
sideproject
[http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com)? (can we help? - I run
the site) :) just throwing it out there.

------
SeoxyS
Automating the US immigration system. Obsoleting attorneys.

~~~
chrismcb
I used an attorney, because I wanted to make sure we did everything we needed.
But you don't need an attorney, you can do all the paperwork yourself. There
are instructions on the government website on how to fill the firms out.

------
javajosh
Irrevocable access to a channel that reaches every human on the planet.

------
mw67
I'd pay a lot for a desktop version of whatsapp. I live in Asia (Hong Kong)
and 90% of my communications with clients, staff, partners go through whatsapp
because its instant, free and everyone has it. But I'm really tired of having
to pull my phone to reply to people when I'm on my computer. It's a $19bn
company, someone should work on this, ideally something multi-platform a la
Slack would be fantastic.

~~~
lzy
A quick Google search brought up the following 2 solutions, never tried them
but just might be what you need?

[https://whatsremote.com/](https://whatsremote.com/)
[https://whatsappformypc.com/](https://whatsappformypc.com/)

~~~
mw67
Thanks, tried those but only work if you have an android phone (for your first
link); and for your second like it works either on desktop (through the
android emulator), or on mobile, but not on both. :(

------
Cressi
Personally, I'd pay lots for a set of hardware-integrated network
infrastructure monitor tools of a more advanced sort.

~~~
aneesh
What tools do you use today, and what don't they do well enough?

------
gyre007
LONGER LASTING PHONE BATTERY. Simples..

------
thewarrior
A way to boost my cognitive capacities.

~~~
bootstrapnyc
aderol works pretty well

------
smileysteve
> Nice, show me something cool when you've got your first PHP app running!

Just show me what you have. It doesn't have to be an app.

> Once you're more comfortable with basic web programming

Don't use the word BASIC! Simple, Basic, Easy, Quick are all still denigrating
their effort and experience.

------
SiVal
This question is interesting enough that I'd like to see it as a partner to
the monthly "Who is Hiring" posting. This "What Would You Be Paying For (If
Only It Existed)" is a question worth asking again and again....

------
andrewstuart
I make money to pay my bills when I get someone a job. Help me do that better.
It's much harder than it sounds. None of the software products I have heard of
help.

------
joannerr
Make things organized.

Take care of all the messy details of my life. Bills, big events (like a
wedding), group traveling. Would pay compared with a 3rd party's service fee.

------
rsaarelm
Anti-aging life extension. Intelligence augmentation.

------
sir_akshay
A more approachable match making service.

~~~
chetangole
Indian :D

------
cdvonstinkpot
Self-powered subdermal GPS tracking for my pets.

------
gesman
Regex-aware vertical search engine

------
expose
Affection and/or love.

------
sraquo
I have three windsport-related ideas for you.

1) weather analysis

I'm a hang glider pilot, but this applies to all wind sports – windsurfing,
kiteboarding, paragliding, sailplanes, possibly even surfing and skydiving.

These sports require weather analysis. Is the wind blowing from the right
direction? Is the cloudbase high enough?

Some weather analysis tools exist like
[http://www.xcskies.com/](http://www.xcskies.com/) for hang gliding and
paragliding, but they're not perfect to say the least.

I still spend too much time looking at various charts and forecasts in the
summer, and then waiting on site once I arrive and the weather conditions
aren't right. If you can make me wait less on my precious weekend time, you
have my money.

Participants of these sports pretty much accept the current level of
technology to be as good as it gets, because there are very few meteorologists
who could create new, better weather models, and at the same time be either
interested in doing that for free or have the technical and business acumen to
make it a business. So pretty much everyone uses the RASP model and weather
data off many disparate websites.

\---

2) flight instruments

Hang gliders, paragliders and sailpane pilots use special devices that combine
a variometer with GPS and some stored map data to record flight paths, show
airspeed, descent rate, etc. These are small, like a fat iPhone 6+ with a
calculator-style screen.

The company producing the most popular ones is Flytec. I'm not sure how they
get away with selling a simple device that runs on two AA batteries for
$400-$1000. Maybe they have some key patents... though they are not a
monopolist, there's FlyMaster for example. Flytec's devices are pretty much
the same as those they were selling 10 years ago, they are cheap to make and
should not cost that much.

There's room in the market for a significantly cheaper and/or more magical
device. By magical I mean stuff like "go this way to get into the lifting air
you've just lost", or "fly faster/slower to maximize glide ratio".

\---

3) weather mapping drone

When the wind hits the mountain / ridge at a certain angle, hang gliders,
paragliders and sailplanes can easily soar next to that mountain. The wind
also needs to be in a certain speed range etc.

Sometime we pilots want to check if that mountain over there could be flyable.
It looks like it might be soarable, but to verify this, we need to drive up
the mountain and launch a live person in a glider from there. That's a huge
waste of time, and because often such roads are privately owned, there's a lot
of hassle in getting permission to do that. Landowners are afraid of the
liability (which we legally waive but it takes time to explain and verify),
and we don't even know if the mountain is soarable at all, we can only guess.

It would be nice if we could just launch a drone which would fly around and
record wind direction and speeds at various locations and altitudes.

The same technique could also be used to better understand existing flying
sites, OR to find thermals (invisible pockets of uprising air which gliders
need to stay up in the air for long period of time). And this is #1 thing we
want – more found thermals, more airtime.

So maybe it can be a sort of follow-drone that flies in your general area,
telling you where the thermals are. You can tell you're in a thermal once you
actually fly into it, but you're descending at 3 ft per second, so the amount
of time you can fly searching for thermals is limited.

Because you're flying a glider, the follow-drone can be a glider too with just
a small auxiliary engine, you don't need too much battery power.

\---

So there you have it. Wind sports are technologically underserved because the
market size isn't very big, but the pain is real, and it's #1 reason
preventing more people from participating. Maybe some of the weather /
hardware solutions you develop might also be applicable in other fields. Maybe
you already have a solution that is fairly easily adjustable to wind sports
(esp. drones).

~~~
cstigler
I'm also a (newbie) hang glider pilot. This idea is a little further out
there, but if anybody experienced with aircraft design could build a hang
glider that folded into a backpack, it would be huge. Lots of R&D and tiny
market, but they would pay tons for it. That convenience is one of the big
reasons paragliding is more popular right now.

~~~
sraquo
Dammit, how did I forget that. This is more important than anything I've
written above. Make a hang glider that packs to 2.5 meters max and doesn't
take an eternity to setup and break down (15 minutes max). The performance
needs to be somewhere between a modern paraglider and an intermediate hang
glider. It would be revolutionary to the sport.

Lack of such hang glider is #1 reason preventing willing people from hang
gliding. The popularity of paragliding is proof of that (a paraglider packs
into a big backpack). You can't store a hang glider in an apartment because
normally it packs into a 5 meter long sausage bag. And I can't even go travel
with my hang glider because where do I leave it when I sleep in the hotel? Too
risky to leave it on top of car. A small package also allows flying at some
ski resorts and other perks.

Designing this hang glider would be primarily solving a configuration problem
– how to arrange all required components so that they are foldable and yet
strong enough. You have 40 years of HG designs to get inspired from, and don't
forget Princeton sailwing, that's an old, under-recognized concept imho.

By the way, hang gliders are small enough that you can truck-test them on the
ground to make sure they're strong enough and have proper stability
attributes. Unmanned flight testing should also be possible, though not done
currently. HGMA even has a list of certification criteria online that you can
use as a baseline. What I'm saying is that designing hang glider is easier
than designing a Boeing. You do need to know what you're doing, but you don't
need a team of PhDs in fluid dynamics and materials science. All important
hang glider components are free to use, not covered by current patents.

~~~
annnnd
A bit off-topic, but not much: I always wondered why paragliders don't have
inflatable compartments like kitesurfing kites do... My theory is that it
would help with wing stability.

I have no experience with hang gliders, but as long as you have rigid skeleton
you have problems with trasport and storage. Could this skeleton be replaced
with an inflatable one?

~~~
sraquo
I've actually researched this option. Using compressed air as a structural
component is a valid construction technique and could be applied to _hang_
gliders.

It won't work on paragliders because as ram-air wings, they need to collapse
when they get unloaded. Otherwise once unloaded the wing will fall over in
front of the pilot and probably get entangled with the pilot.

The only heavier-than-air inflatable aircraft currently in production is the
Woopy – [http://fly.woopyjump.com/](http://fly.woopyjump.com/) – its design is
very unconventional, with continuously running pumps and some weird flight
control mechanism. It never passed certification because it's probably not as
strong as other hang gliders.

Some potential problems of inflatable hang gliders:

* Ambient air pressure differences at varying altitudes, temperatures, etc.

* Bird attack – sometimes eagles and other birds can get aggressive and try to claw a hang glider. What is a minor annoyance now could be a dangerous flaw if your glider is inflatable.

* A failed inflatable wing can potentially gift-wrap around the pilot preventing them from throwing the reserve parachute in time.

* Less rigidity than metal tubes – danger of buckling at higher speeds / wing-loading.

* There's a certain stigma among HG pilots regarding the concept of inflatable aircraft due to controversy around Woopy and the general idea of riskiness.

However, inflatable aircraft IS a practical strategy. The shortcomings listed
above can be overcome given enough effort.

For example, see [http://www.prospective-
concepts.ch/html/site_en.htm](http://www.prospective-
concepts.ch/html/site_en.htm) – click on Projects / Air / Pneuwing (and other
projects).

Also,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane)

Lastly, in all likeliness the only advantage of an inflatable hang glider
would be portability. I don't think it will end up lighter than a tube+fabric
construction. The guys from Prospective Concepts seem to believe that they
will achieve better glide performance with an inflatable design, but to be
honest I doubt that. But then again, they know much more about their
technology than I do.

~~~
annnnd
Interesting, thanks for the write-up.

About the paragliders: you mean when they land? It is true that the landing
becomes more challenging, especially in case of wind (kitesurfers often help
each other when entering / exiting). But I guess this could be solved - if
nothing else, only the central area could be "reinforced". Let's wait a few
years, I'm sure someone will try it. :)

~~~
sraquo
No, I mean when the angle of attack of the wing gets too low in flight. This
can and does happen due to gusts and thermal activity in the air.

Normally a ram-air paraglider wing would collapse at low angle of attack due
to lack of pressure inside the wing (it only works in a certain range of
angles of attack), causing both the wing and the pilot to start falling,
picking up speed and restoring angle of attack, and re-inflating again. It's
kinda hard to explain concisely in more detail.

With a rigid inflated paraglider wing however, if the angle of attack becomes
too low, the wing might get unloaded (falls faster than the pilot) and will
pitch down even further because that's what a plank wing does in the absence
of pendulum weight provided by the pilot. So the wing dives down and gets
entangled with either the pilot, the lines or both.

I'm a bit rusty on the exact aerodynamics of paragliders because I only fly
hang gliders, but this is roughly what happens.

If you want to know more about how ram-air paraglider wings stay inflated,
check out this doc –
[http://downloads.flyozone.com/pdf/PG/ozone_shark_nose_en.pdf](http://downloads.flyozone.com/pdf/PG/ozone_shark_nose_en.pdf)
– it talks about a new ram-air intake technology and explains how ram air
wings work.

------
aaronbrethorst
More time.

------
pgcosta
Starbucks said coffee :D

------
chozero
Teleportation.

~~~
lyricalpolymath
stay tuned on [http://www.eyevel.com](http://www.eyevel.com) ;)

------
hoodoof
Time.

------
sir_akshay
A good music recommendation service.

------
kokonotu
my health...

