Ask HN: The Why Now Question

[dossss]

I'v been looking for startup ideas lately, and a thing that came up was that I need to answer the question "why now?"

Q1. Is it fair to assume that if a startup idea could of been made 10y ago and hasn't then it's just a tarpit idea?

The next thought that I had in order to answer the "why now?" Q, is that your answer could either be 1. A social trend, 2. Some new tech paradigm

And the only new tech paradigm we have right now is Gen AI, so that means you just have to come up with ideas that use GenAI, but doesn't that just mean that your SISPing -> solution in search of a problem?

Would love to get insights on my thoughts and Qs, thanks!

[mikewarot]

An example of something that might be useful (or likely might not) of an idea that could have been done decades ago is my hobby project, the BitGrid.

The reason nobody has done it yet has to do with the fact that it's too far conceptually from everything that was done back then. The emphasis was on speed (1/latency), keeping the silicon area small, and utilization of the chips, in that order.

A BitGrid flips those assumptions, and would be a horrible way to build an FPGA. The idea of using cells of 100 transistors just to pass data would have been laughed out of the brainstorming meeting, and the person who brought it up derided.

However... one of the big problems with FPGAs is fitting designs into them, it can take days for a computer to figure out how to fit a design into an FPGA. Then there are timing validations that have to be run, etc.

The BitGrid uses the magic of graph coloring, and "slow is fast" to get around those things, focusing on ease of use, and aggregate throughput instead of latency.

It's likely a horrible idea... or it might be brilliant... without a real world trial, and the codebase to exercise it, we'll never know.

I suspect most world changing ideas are like this... such a big departure from "the way we've always done it", that nobody really wants to try them out for fear of wasting money, time, energy, and reputation.

Back in 1982, it would only have been someone with access to all of the resources required to get an ASIC made that could even attempt this. This might have been 1000 people.

Now it's a $150 bet using TinyTapeout for anyone to give it a go. ;-)

[Scottydot]

Great question! Timing is definitely a huge factor for startups success. And for sure, tech advancements & social trends are the easy ones to spot. But as someone who chased his share of tarpits, it’s also good to keep your eye on a few other things:

- Regulatory changes - Economic changes like recession or inflation - Lower costs - allowing a business model to suddenly work. - Investment climate - money matters, so look for surges in particular sectors - New gaps in the market - due to maybe shortages in some material, maybe a competitor drops out, maybe there are disruptions due to pandemic, weather changes. - New collaboration & partnership opportunities.

A final note; Often the ‘why now’ only becomes apparent in hindsight. We’re great at building a narrative after seeing success or failure. It’s a lot tougher to leverage “timing” in advance. And timing is rarely the only factor!

[ilaksh]

I believe that a significant amount of what happens is based on herd movement. Which is similar to the concept of social trend, but I think that makes it sound more rational than it is.

People seem to be largely motivated by a subconscious desire to keep up with the flock. They copy what everyone else they see doing without realizing they are doing it.

This can be fairly mindless and random. But all of the activities are rationalized (again subconsciously) so people think that there are logical reasons they are using some service, tool, whatever.

Most of the ideas that you think haven't been made in the last ten years probably were made, by multiple people. They just didn't become wildly popular, so you never heard of them, or if you did, you decided they were a failure. Because now any business that does not get $50 million in funding or a million users is a "failure".

[muzani]

I'm working on something and the why now is because the #1 player on the scene is falling apart, and the new players are evolving to become some VC-backed soulless way to exploit mentally ill people. That's because new science and a certain unicorn is making a particular approach trendy with VCs.

So, 3. Market trend as well.

GenAI also opens up a lot of market changes. For one, you have players like Google who are closing down some of their existing products to go all in on GenAI.

Two, you have certain markets like Instagram being flooded with AI content. That opens up new markets like Cara, who vow to be AI-free.

Also 10y ago is fine. Stripe came in after PayPal. Lots of grocery startups after Webvan. Tesla after Better Place. So 4, prices have gone down or infra has gone up (doesn't have to be a whole paradigm)

[al_borland]

I think there are other reasons something didn’t happen 10y ago.

- No one thought of it.

- Someone tried, but the implementation, execution, or something soured the project, not the foundational idea.

- The world wasn’t ready for it. This could fall under social trend, but I think it’s its own thing.

- Something might exist that’s “good enough”, until something better comes along that shifts the market. The iPhone is a good example of this.

[dotcoma]

I don’t think GenAI is the only new thing. I am sure there are things you could have done 10 years ago, but that you could do much more on the cheap today, for example.

[a_tartaruga → dotcoma]

One good example is moving industrial processes to solar power.

[HenryBemis]

I had an idea to analyze markets movements for day-traders. I had the data. I had the idea. I had a anecdotal-proof that my idea was working.

I was missing 1) the python/Julius machine that would do the work for me (yeah it would have taken less years to learn Python) and 2) the ChatGPT to help me with the code for writing the actual trading code. I couldn't test my theory in Excel (difficult to make 3D calculations on 2D tables). I was too laze to do it in Access. I could have done it in SPSS but I haven't used it since 2003, so... no.

Once "AI" came out, I knew I could offload this to a Py-AI machine, throw a some $ at it for a subscription and see if that works (and in which timeframes, instruments, etc) so I can then fine-tune and make niche predictions (e.g. Gold in Januaries, on Tuesdays, between 14:30 to 15:30 it goes up $5 with a 90% rate of success)

(yeah it would have taken less years to learn Python)

(yeah it would have taken less years to learn MQL4)

[brudgers]

The hard part of working on ideas is the hard work. Coming up with reasons not to work on ideas is not hard work and is not working on ideas.

Hard work is also the hard part of working smart. It is not an either or.

Good luck.