
Ask HN: Industries Ripe For Disruption? - jasonlbaptiste
After seeing the ticketmaster/livenation merger post, there's probably a long list of industries ripe for disruption. ie- ticketing, riaa/music,etc.  I'd love to start putting together a list of other industries, so hence the reason for this post.<p><i>Please post reasons and/or a piece of information that provides insight as to why that industry is ripe for disruption</i>
======
mixmax
Look at a lot of big traditional B2B businesses. They haven't gotten much
coverage because they aren't sexy and visible to the normal consumer.

\- ERP ssystems are impossible to understand for the people that work with
them, and require an army of highly paid consultants just to get it up and
running.

\- financial software for large companies doesn't allow managers to see
numbers in real-time, is difficult to get numbers in and out of, and hard to
use.

\- HR software for managing people, their interests, knowledge, track record,
etc. in large companies.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many
more.

The advantage of B2B software is that you have a very good income model. A SAP
ERP system for a company with 1000 employees runs into the millions. There are
customers out there willing to pay you by the bucketload if you can make
something that doesn't suck. And most of what is on the market today sucks
badly.

This is an industry that has been resting on its laurels for many years, and
is ready to be picked off by nimble competitors.

~~~
iamwil
Right you are, but you'll find that even though you've got the technical and
design chops to blow the current systems out of the water, the sales cycle for
these large corporations are pretty long.

Part of the problem is that when things cost beyond a certain amount they need
approval. With approval comes delays and red tape. You'll have to have some
sort of pricing and buy-in strategy for you to be able to get the large
company to buy your stuff if that's the case.

If you can manage that, then by all means, go kick ass.

~~~
mixmax
Never said it was easy ;-)

But you're absolutely right - the sales cycle is very different. Not only do
you have looong lead-times, but you also have to understand all the corporate
bullshit, and weird decisions that get made based on the sometimes irrational
behaviour of big corporations.

But if you do it right you can make big-corp pay for your development. If you
sell it well some companies will give you the opportunity to sell them
something you have yet to make, and that they full-well know will make your
company very profitable. Nix the VC, go straight to the customer, and make
them pay up front.

------
jakestein
Title Insurance. See this article from Forbes magazine:
<http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1113/148.html>

Summary: Fancy this: racetracks that keep 93% of your money and return only 5%
in winning tickets. They wouldn't last long, not unless they could somehow rig
the rules to both forbid price competition and make the purchase of race bets
mandatory. That's more or less what the title insurance industry has done to
American homeowners.

~~~
tontoa4
Required for a mortgage, government protected, and 93%+ of the premium for
profit/overhead. Wow.

------
jonmc12
Read the 'The 4-steps to the Epiphany' by Steven Blank
([http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/0976470705))

Things to look for in a disruptive market:

1) The presence of the 'Earlyvangelist'. It does not matter if you can disrupt
an industry if no one will realize the value of the innovation. This means
finding real people at real companies and gathering requirements for something
they will buy.

2) An existing distribution channel that is available for the new product.

3) Existing product positioning that you can leverage. As a startup, its hard
to disrupt when you have to spend all your money on advertising, branding, or
explaining what your product is.

4) Large existing market.

The book has a helpful framework for analyzing markets base on some of these
factors, maturity, etc. This identifies the primary constraints of market
risk. From there you can work with the customer to build a better product, and
if you are lucky the risk shifts towards execution.

------
robfitz
visas / immigration. you're looking at $400-900 an hour for lawyers to point
you to the right webpage and tell you whether or not your particular situation
fits through a loophole.

corporate setup & startup paperwork of all sorts. also housing rental
contracts, contractor... contracts. etc.

patent applications. it's so hard to find good examples and templates. i'd pay
to have something that said "type your overview here", "upload a picture
here", etc.

college applications. they charge what, $50 per application they look at? save
them time, save applicants money. and how many colleges would perfectly suit
you that you never heard about?

make school scholarships more transparent and ease the application process.

keeping up with relatives. i feel a little dirty about this one, but i'd love
to have a helper manage my familial relationships in a behind-the-scenes
fashion. birthday email templates, friendly hellos, status updates, etc.
although deciding to pay for a service of that sort would mean acknowledging
that you're a terrible grandson/husband/etc.

warranties & mail in rebates. they all turn straight into money and dealing
with them is total bs.

i'm going back to work...

~~~
tokenadult
_visas / immigration._

The perceived value of immigrating is high enough that the price is not
objectionable to many clients. They just want to make sure it is done right.
In a market I used to work, by far the most successful immigration lawyer was
regarded as a sleazy guy by most of the other immigration lawyers. But he
projected WEALTH, and that was perceived by clients as the ability to succeed
with a case. So he had plenty of income to maintain the trappings of wealth,
and the cycle continued. Most immigration lawyers have enough technique to do
most cases, yes, and many clients (if they are good at reading English, which
is not a given) could look up laws and forms on the Web and do their own cases
themselves, but immigration lawyers trade partly in peace of mind.

~~~
sh1mmer
Having been through the immigration process myself with a corporate
immigration lawyer who used an online system for streamlining I can attest to
this.

Lawyers are there to do 2 things, spot anything which might become a problem
before it does, when it becomes a problem get your back. No 100% automated
online system could do that.

However an automated system could probably reduce costs a lot.

------
CFS
The largest industry that is 'over ripe' is the energy industry. In
particular, electricity distribution. Creating devices that perform 'demand
management' are nearly trivial.

In Australia, the normal price for large scale wholesale electricity from the
national grid is Aust $48 per Mw/hr. But several times a year the 'spot price'
is over Aust $10,000 per Mw/hr.

This is the reason companies have 'peaking' plants that only operate 3-5 days
a year.

There will be 2 main stratergies:

1\. Owner / user generated power would be transferred back to the grid during
high price periods.

2\. Load shedding (automatic turn-off of power) would occur during high price
period.

The primary requirement is a 'smarter grid'

~~~
anamax
> The primary requirement is a 'smarter grid'

The grid doesn't have to be all that smart. It just needs to tell folks when
the peakers are being turned on and off.

And, folks need to be compensated for reacting to said on/off.

------
nazgulnarsil
Blackboard and other proprietary software that colleges use. Blackboard sucks
and could be easily replaced by hacking together open source solutions and
presenting it in a slick package (like 37 signals) but tailored for college
instead of business.

~~~
conover
I couldn't agree with this more. I work with Blackboard's software on a daily
basis and it is a aweful, unstable mess. The only problem is that Blackboard
seems intent on sueing any competitors out of business using patents (see
desire2learn)

~~~
Retric
I think some of these have been invalidated:

[http://mfeldstein.com/all-44-blackboard-patent-claims-
invali...](http://mfeldstein.com/all-44-blackboard-patent-claims-invalidated-
by-uspto/)

------
geuis
Job search. There are a ton of competitors in this space, established and
startup, but so far its all crap. I've been looking for a new job recently and
I'm completely dissatisfied with everything that's out there. Craigslist is
still probably the best resource for finding tech jobs, at least in San
Francisco but there has to be a better way.

A couple of ideas have popped into my head recently about ways to really shake
this area up and to make it into a profitable business to start.

~~~
auston
Have you seen indeed.com?

~~~
bemmu
Wow, Quantcast/Compete estimate their monthly users to be 6-9 million. Their
AdSense account must be quite healthy. I wonder how they got granted access to
the data from the first few sites they index.

~~~
webwright
Yaw I was in the jobs industry. There's simplyhired.com and jobster.com ...

6-9 million uniques isn't really worth the funding any of them received, I
don't think.

They didn't ask permission for the data any more than Google did.
Scrape/index/refresh/repeat.

~~~
natrius
Some links from indeed have affiliate IDs in them, so there are definitely
some partnerships involved for some of their sources.

------
chris11
Real estate listings. Only limited information on a MLS is viewable without a
broker. And getting your house information on one can cost 200 to 500, or up
to 6% of the price. There are already free internet listings, but those can
lack listings and information on houses.

~~~
yalurker
Seconded on all things real estate. This is more of a legal/social problem
than a technical one at this point. Websites like zillow.com make a real
estate agents role largely obsolete, yet they still try to command a huge
commission on every sale. Another poster above mentioned Title Insurance as
well.

I suspect over the next 5-10 years we will see major changes in this industry.
Huge savings to home buyers & sellers are available if the bureaucracy and
traditions can be broken and replaced with a more consumer friendly system.

~~~
kapitti
Zillow hardly makes the role of a real estate agent obsolete - first off,
their Zestimates are no where near correct in a lot of markets especially
Today with all of the foreclosures and short sales. Second, the process of
purchasing or selling your home isn't any easier because of zillow - only
marketing a home is easier.

A consumer friendly solution is needed - when we purchased our home last year,
the amount of times I needed to initial and sign documents and then sign again
after changes and again when the conditions were met, and again when we
removed the contingencies, etc - and each time Scan & Email or Fax it back to
the sellers or a third party; it was just annoying. With all of the e-sign
technologies and document collaboration, there has got to be a way to make
this process easier, smoother and less archaic.

We got our home for a great price, and used a real estate agent, I could care
less whether or not the realtor was removed from the process. What I want
removed from the process is the pain.

------
callmeed
_Insurance industry_ : I have a close friend in the industry and he says there
are tons of ways to improve the application, binder, and other processes.

 _Online learning_ : Large edu and enterprise players like Blackboard and Saba
are due for a disruption IMO (I think the ball is already rolling on this).
Schools and enterprises don't want to keep paying huge licensing and
infrastructure fees, and students should be able earn an online degree from a
combination of online courses (from multiple schools).

 _Online classifieds_ : I know this has been discussed here before, but I'm of
the opinion that craigslist is due for a disruption of some sort.

 _Car buying and financing_ : I just bought a car for my wife. Even though you
can apply for financing online, the entire process was a total pain. There
needs to be a "TicketStumbler for cars" that includes a financing and
insurance option. I should be able to apply for traditional financing as well
as peer-to-peer (ala prosper.com) financing all in one swoop. It should pull
listings from classifieds, dealer inventories, auto trader, etc.

------
anthony_barker
Almost any industry can be rattled if the power goes to the consumer instead
of the vendor. This has happened with consumer products but could go to
services etc.

-automobile disrupted by cars from asia - oh shit happened!

-book industry disrupted by self published electronic books

-shipping industry disrupted by automation - happening

-pcs industry by netbooks with no moving parts/cellphones

-Windows/Office by Ubuntu/Openoffice (outside of USA)

-power industry by cheap solar cells - pipedream

-housing industry by prefab homes - pipedream

-newspapers by online media - happening

-drug industry by Indian made generic drugs - legislation won't let it happen

-all driving trades (taxis, truck driver etc) by automated DARPA style cars - pipedream

-most manufacturing jobs by cheap chinese/korean robots - happening

-most farming jobs by automation (eg AutoFarm - gps/AI driven tractors) - happening

-Californian/Arizona farming by cheaper farms in Mexico, Guatamala etc - happening

-drive through order takers by voice recognition -Long distance by skype, calling card & SIP providers - happening

-Business travel by HD Video conferencing systems - happening (Cisco + HP)

-Telecom equipment by Huawei

-Oil furnaces by alternative pellet combustion system (see Jon Udell) -??

-Military soldiers by remote controlled robots - happening

-billboards by gps aware ads

-interbroker dealers by cheaper competitors (ITG - etc) - happening

\- speeding ticket writing by RFID tag reading systems (UK) -various
industries by the rental business (Netflicks, Zipcar etc)

Candidates that will not be disrupted

\- Governments - always political and loath change

\- Unions

\- Near monopolies (Heathcare, Cell phone)

\- Religion to an extent

------
mojombo
Classifieds.

CraigsList is not the be-all end-all of buying/selling things locally online.
It may be a tough nut to crack, but it won't be hard to radically improve upon
their horrible user experience. I would love to see some competition in this
space.

~~~
josefresco
Not going to happen. Craigslist is at that early Google period where everyone
who uses it for the first time never looks back and is uber-loyal to the
brand. A slick competitor with a great interface and new tools still has to
climb that huge Ebay/Facebook-style mountain (no users no stuff, no reason)

~~~
coglethorpe
I've used Craigslist for a car sale and wasn't impressed. I ended up paying a
fee to AutoTrader and sold it fairly fast.

~~~
tontoa4
I'm working on the motorcycle equivalent at MotoListr.com.

~~~
khafra
Your interface is cleaner and more attractive, but cycletrader.com is a pretty
well established competitor. Do you have a plan for beating them along any
particular axis?

~~~
tontoa4
My plan is better dealer support. Direct line to my cell phone.

------
noodle
online auctions.

ebay sucks, for both the buyers and sellers. and ebay doesn't even like
auctions anymore, they're moving towards the amazon-style marketplace model.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Good one. Ebay is just such a force to be reckoned with, but they've
completely lost their soul. They've pissed their sellers off like none other.
You would have to have something so different and innovative to start stealing
their thunder. Maybe you start in a different niche ie- Etsy. I really like
what Etsy is doing.

~~~
icefox
So far the only auction site I have seen that has gone anywhere is tfields.com
which started as a transformers toys auction site and grew from there. It is a
real catch-22, you need lots of buyers and sellers suddenly.

~~~
ssharp
I think the best model to beat ebay is to create a "Ning" style auction site
where you have separate auction sites dependent on the community that they
target.

The best strategy for a startup to topple a massive corporation is to flank
them. Hit them in their weak spots, grow, and eventually you might get enough
resources to topple them.

------
shalmanese
Higher Education. Existing institutions are selling inefficient and grossly
overpriced products in an environment in which objective evaluation is hard to
obtain and the status quo fears innovation. If you could crack that nut, it
would be massive.

~~~
katz
There is another bigger one: College Book Industry.

The current system is pretty inefficient. This probably differs from country
to country. The current system here works like this:

The universities give lists of subjects and prescribed textbooks to brick-and-
mortar bookstores. They then buy the books and sell them at a huge mark-up.

Students generally do not order online because of the time delay/import BS and
many do not have a fixed postal address. Secondhand book sales are a bit of
mess because it is not centralised, etc...

There are possibly quite a few ideas on how to make this system more effective
(esp. in countries in which the internet penetration is not that high but the
cellphone penetration is).

~~~
eli
Tangentially relevant:

8 Stupid Frat Boy Business Ideas
[http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-
boy-...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/8-stupid-frat-boy-business-
ideas/)

" _NO BOOK EXCHANGE HAS EVER REALLY SUCCEEDED. I HATE TO CRUSH DREAMS BUT
PLEASE FORGET ABOUT THIS._ "

~~~
katz
Ouch. There is a huge degree of truth in that. Situations differ however and I
know of at least a few local book exchanges that are making a living (i.e. in
operation 2+ years).

I do however not know of one central/large one. There are several reasons why
in some cases it succeeds and in others not. In poorer regions/countries
people would look for more ways to save money (the pressure isn't really on an
Ivy League guy to buy a $50 book instead of a $100 one when his tuition is
$40,000. In countries where students live on less than $3000 a year it is).

A solid business idea I have seen is a chinese copy center - you hand in a
book and the next day get your book and copy for about $20 (this business is
in operation more than 7 years without any uhm... legal problems).

------
ciscoriordan
Text messaging. It's been discussed here before but it's worth repeating.

~~~
eli
This is difficult to tackle if you don't already have a serious presence in
the mobile industry.

~~~
masonlee
There are still a lot of innovations you can make here without replacing the
SMS backbone wholesale.

For example, users interact with user interfaces, not messaging layers. If you
can get people using your interface, you can switch the messaging layer where
appropriate. Notice Google now sending IM to SMS?

At my startup, Borange, we send group SMS for free on the iPhone, and are
working with metadata and a user interface to innovate around sharing social
availability and impromptu invitations, one of SMS's big use cases. When the
time is right (read PUSH for iPhone?), we'll migrate users to a modern mobile
messaging layer, and keep our backwards compatibility with free SMS for
interacting with the rest of the world.

Check us out, by the way. We just launched our iPhone app and are looking for
investors and partners who believe in the Matrix and major change in the
communications space. <http://www.borange.com>.

~~~
eli
You mean like 3jam, Limbo, sms.ac, Zemble, Google's Dodgeball, Yahoo's ill-
fated "Mixd," and a dozen others who are no longer around and I forgot about?

Jeez, I truly do wish you guys luck, but group/social SMS is a pretty tough
nut to crack.

(I used to cover the mobile industry for a trade publication.)

~~~
masonlee
Well not exactly... The work we are doing at Borange is more concerned with
scheduling and availability than sending group SMS, and my main point was that
there are possible strategies for migrating people off of SMS by including SMS
compatibility. It's the lowest common denominator in mobile messaging, and you
really can't afford not to include it to some degree for moving forward.

Yeah, crazy dead heap there, though! How long until SMS joins it? :)

------
blakeweb
Finance is another area ripe for innovation. There's a crisis going on, as
we've all noticed, and one reason behind it is that businesses in the industry
who were perceived to be creating tons of value turn out to have just been
running intelligent people in circles.

Here are a few thoughts: \- information and analysis. It's still too hard for
consumers and too expensive for professionals to get access to reliable and
usable information on the state of companies, economies, etc. \- sources of
capital for individuals and businesses. New ways will emerge of providing good
ideas and reliable individuals with cheap access to the capital they need to
build businesses, buy homes, etc. Prosper and kiva hopefully are just the
beginning. \- payments and micropayments. Does anyone out there love paypal?
Or credit card companies, for that matter? Should it really cost several
percent to handle every small and large transaction that takes place in the
world? And several percent isn't all that bad compared to transaction costs in
some industries, like healthcare. Should it really take 10 minutes and require
complete trust in the waitstaff to not steal my information every time I use a
credit card at a restaurant?

------
yan
You mentioned it, but I think the music industry is _really_ ripe for
disruption. Their business model is definitely shifting as we speak.

ebay/auction sites/local commerce can be done better.

~~~
icefox
The problem is that everyone knows that the music world is changing and wants
in on the pie and so far Apple has done the best job. The bad part is that
they are doing a pretty good job. The hardware is nice and works, the software
for the most part does work and gets music easily and cheap to users who are
for the most part happy. A high obstacle. Let others try attacking the music
problem and instead try one of the easier ones.

~~~
yan
That's assuming that the current lone model of "searchable mp3 catalog online
for $ per song." There are many different ways to profit from music: artist
interaction, live venues, merchandise, provide a quality recommendation/review
service, etc. The current market is skewed heavily towards what the content
that the industry thinks will sell, which receives the bulk of marketing.

Not to mention the fact that the market naturally segments into people of
varying levels of interest. People who love music and people who just care
about the Top40 can be catered towards by very different business models.

~~~
icefox
The biggest thing I fear about music is that it is emotional. People want to
be in a band and will work for less then minimum wage while living out of a
van so they can maybe make it big, but really just to play music. Combined
with the fact that in the mind of the consumer a song is near worthless means
that the money has to either come from selling massive quantities, aka iTunes
and they only break even or something else. And everything that is something
else that I have heard of isn't that revolutionary.

------
josefresco
Government. Now hear me out on this one. I think with new technology, and the
push for open access to information (that's digestible) will disrupt the
political system as we've known it. Doubt it will happen once things get 'back
on track' financially in this country.

~~~
gills
_Don't mistake this comment as me trying to make this thread a political
flamewar._

I agree with you that technologies used by government are ripe for disruption
-- and in my opinion the Senate and Geithner today pretty much guaranteed that
'back on track' will be years, if not decades, away. So this really is a good,
maybe vital, area to create tools that improve efficiency.

------
pudo
Most of the publishing industry, esp. books. This is somewhat contingent on
the success of ePaper/eBook technologies like (but not) the Kindle. They still
need to develop for a while (2yrs or so) so the displays will be fast, have
good contrast and be able to display color.

But even before that, we might see a lot more authors going online and
developing new patterns of writing that are based on shorter publishing cycles
and still lower revenue expectations.

I don't know how this will play out, but I'd bet that the RIAA/audio industry
would make an embarassingly good model of what this very conservative industry
will go through.

------
russell
Government, Governments are being run on antiquated software created by giants
of the military industrial complex. There are huge hurdles on the procurement
side, but the opportunities of making a 10x price performance improvement are
all over the the place. One key is to make the product highly configurable to
accommodate the different laws from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Another key
is to tackle smaller entities because they will be more flexible. Voice of
experience: dont start with the California DMV or the Illinois Secretary of
State.

------
run4yourlives
The insurance industry is a technological dinosaur. Many opportunities here.

------
jasonlbaptiste
Music Industry

This may be one of the most obvious ones out there. Artists don't need the
record labels anymore. The money is not purely in the music, but ticket sales,
merchandise, extra content,etc.

I like what topspin media is doing. Myspace has made great strides, but it's
just a start.

~~~
mikecuesta
iTunes much?

~~~
josefresco
His comment would have made more sense if he said "iTunes' instead of the
Music Industry.

------
josefresco
Health Care.

~~~
njharman
HIPPA, medical records, billing, medical office automation. The medical
industry is in the information dark ages and finally being dragged into
relative modernity by the government.

~~~
jgrahamc
Forget medical records. What about an online health care expenses manager like
Quicken. If you've ever dealt with many doctors, or more than one insurance,
or just the US health care insurance system in general it's a nightmare to
keep track of what's been claimed, billed, paid back, written off, reduced,
etc.

------
markessien
Television + Highly accurate profiles of the person watching the TV at any
moment.

------
hotshothenry
I think the enterprise sphere as a whole is ripe for disruption, which we've
been witnessing with SaaS and other web 2.0 applications coming out as of
late.

