
Ask HN: Business Ideas, Profit Off Trump Presidency - gist
With the new administration it seems that there is and will be tremendous upheaval as well opportunity over the next 4 years.<p>I am wondering what business ideas people have (whether they plan to implement them or not is not the issue) as a result of a change that is unlike any other we have seen. [1] . Thoughts? Ideas?<p>Not looking for a political discussion but startup ideas which take advantage of people&#x27;s uncertainty and&#x2F;or hope for the future.<p>[1] Iphone release in 2007 pales by comparison.
======
codegeek
Financial Tech companies are buiding apps to track DJT's twitter feed and
based on his tweets, they may go long/short on stocks. For example, he talked
about Pharmas "getting away with murder" and this happened:

[https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/819220410340405248/photo/...](https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/819220410340405248/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

~~~
EdwardMSmith
This got me thinking - Would it be illegal for Twitter to institute a delay
between when Trump's tweet was "Sent" and when it is actually published, and
in the intervening time, do something with that information?

------
patrics123
\- a platform to publicly present all business affiliations (and side-
earnings) of any politician. (Probably not-for-profit / donations, If it
something like this does not already exist) for more transparency

\- an autonomous wall-construction-bots business ;-)

\- anything which takes advantage of rising sea levels (like boats, waterproof
housing on smaller areas, natural desaster warning and evacuation systems for
private people or gvt) and something to handle the following mass migrations

~~~
blunte
\- Your business affiliations idea would be great, but people like Trump (and
basically anyone rich and motivated to hide information) have so may
strategies to employ to create multiple layers of opaque barriers that it
would be nigh impossible to do this with provable accuracy. And besides, as we
are seeing right now, "the people" can't be bothered with such concerns. Just
let a guy be rich and do what he wants, right?

\- Your wall building idea is good though! Mix up some self driving AI with
manufacturing robots that 3d print blocks out of whatever local resource they
can grind and collect, follow some GPS waypoints, and you've got an anti-alien
wall builder! You almost certainly could get that company funded, and you
probably would secure some contracts. And if we're all lucky, your tech would
get used by more mundane (and useful) projects like building low cost housing
for poor people in desolate lands.

\- I forget where I read this recently, but I read a good expose about the
people who profit from the global refugee crises. So if you just want money,
then I'm sure there are opportunities to commercialize and scale the
relocation of refugees. Maybe you could approach it like the doctors/lawyers
who created the boom in scooters (or Rascals, if you're a SouthPark fan). They
figured out how to work the disability or medicare system, and some of them
operated legally while making a ton of money. Or take the US auto makers as
example back when they pushed the business deduction loophole which
essentially started the large SUV business. Suddenly you wanted your vehicle
to be heavier than necessary so you could meet the loophole requirements for
gross vehicle weight.

Now what I would do is try to combine fear, exclusivity, and disaster
preparation into a product that would be attractive to rich people. I mean,
they already have financial assets distributed offshore and in ways that
provide relative security during volatile times, but their personal physical
safety is still always a concern (unless they choose to live in a bunker.) I
understand that they are flocking to New Zealand as a haven - it's far away
from all the dangerous poor people, and it's just a beautiful place that is
generally for sale. So maybe create an emergency evacuation insurance
business. They pay a small monthly fee (say 10k), and when the local shit hits
the fan you whisk them away to a nice safe place. It's probably best to
actually work out the details of how this could be accomplished, but on the
other hand you could just roll like big businesses and just apologize and take
a small financial judgement when you fail to deliver on your promises.

------
bsvalley
Not nesseceraly more business ideas. I would say for sure, fewer taxes will
lead to more opportunities and more money back in our pockets. Which means
more investment opportunities for up coming ideas.

~~~
blunte
He said he wasn't looking for a political discussion. But since you insist on
repeating the lower taxes = more opportunity, I would suggest you look at
historical American tax rates relative to growth and income. Or you could
research the last four years of California vs Kansas to see how taxes can
affect economic performance.

~~~
bsvalley
Comparing California to Kansas is indeed a smart thing to do...

------
vntok
A fact-checking platforms' checking platform?

------
stephancoral
The Trump administration is giving bloggers and other online 'news outlets'
previously unheard of press access and credentials. I would find these blogs
and 'news' sources (I personally find their journalistic pedigree laughable)
and aggressively track their headlines and content. Scrape all data and train
neural networks on them to generate headlines and content. Either hire a cheap
college student to do some quick once-over editing or do it yourself. Then,
automate a publishing pipeline - it could be as simple as Lua script that
samples from the NN and then pushes to a wordpress or blog. You can do all of
this on a $750 dollar computer (just splurge on the GPU). The real trick is
crafting the facebook posts. So I would watch to see what breaking news alerts
happened and then tweak the generated content based on that and then dump a
few dollars to promote the post that had a great headline + FB commentary, not
to mention a catchy picture. Once you build an audience, ad money will roll in
and I don't just mean AdWords. Focus on native content and tweak your
generation algorithm for each brand sponsor you acquire (trust me, if you have
a few thousand uniques a day you'll have people knocking on your door esp if
its a conservative slant since more small business owners in America tend to
lean that way). I've played around with generating Breitbart headlines and the
results are sometimes scarily close to home. It's also key to generate "think
pieces" and other opinion material so that way you can produce content that
isn't necessarily "news" (and thus less reliant on 'timely' data which is
expensive to acquire since it takes time to train the NN on new data) but are
still able to propagate repeatable viewpoints/headlines i.e. 'facts' in our
time, which is how you build your audience and revenue stream.

The genius part of this is that even if your cover is blown, you will be
hailed as a thought leader because of your subversive enterprise. It has all
the requisite crossover buzz: machine learning, fake news, alternative facts,
'bubbles', distrust of media etc. You can easily pick up some television and
other media spots not to mention the tell-all piece for Vice or Esquire.

For inspiration and more information, read up on Vladislav Surkov. Also check
out the latter half of the videogame Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty,
which not only predicted the rise of memes as political discourse, but also
does an excellent job examining media disinformation techniques (in this case,
the hysteria of Y2K) and the use of AI to control public conversation. Have
fun.

------
omilu
pro trump / anti trump t-shirts is first to come to mind.

~~~
tmaly
He must have some sort of trademark on the name

