
Ask HN: What do you do if you have passion but not the domain knowledge? - imkevinxu
In terms of starting a startup.<p>And even more so if the domain knowledge / connections matter a lot, like building something for Hollywood for example.
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kls
You have to research the domain, and gather the knowledge. Not knowing the
domain can make that difficult because you sometimes chase rabbits down holes
that go no where but you have to look at it as education for education's sake.

I will give you an example, I am a vehicle restoration enthusiast, I do what
are referred to in the domain as restomods. The particular segment that I am a
hobbyist in is older off road vehicles. There is a huge problem in this domain
right now due to the computerization of the engine and transmission, when
doing restomods many hobbyist like to update the power-train to a modern
power-train, but in doing so they have to swap the entire power-train. There
is no easy way to say take the best transmission available and couple it with
the best engine available. If you want to you have to buy a black box from a
vendor.

A lot of guys don't like having those kinds of restrictions as they like to
tinker with the whole mod so they opt to stick to technology up to the point
of computerization which has limited there options. For me, I never liked the
idea of having those kind of constraints, so I started reading everything that
I could about how these systems worked.

There is not a lot of direct information about how to modify them so you have
to gather the domain knowledge and then begin the process of reverse
engineering these systems. I read a lot of information that had no direct
relevance to hacking ECU's but there may be one nugget of information in a
book that lead to a discovery on my own. At first it was daunting because I
did not know how to even identify quality information, but just reading and
reading helped me to focus portions of the domain knowledge into something
usable.

I use ECU hacking as an example because it is known for being a black art with
very little direct information available, therefore one has to acquire domain
knowledge to develop direct education on the system at hand.

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wturner
Get the domain knowledge through brute force,research,personal projects and
determination. Even if it takes years. If you truly have passion it shouldn't
be an issue. If you want to talk to people smarter than you then cold email
them but make sure you always have something to "give" in the emails.If you
don't, you will look like a leech.Read "How to win friends and influence
people".

