[HN Gopher] Startup Ideas 2020
___________________________________________________________________
Startup Ideas 2020
Author : saadalem
Score : 204 points
Date : 2020-01-17 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dcgross.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dcgross.com)
| rmac wrote:
| "I've yet to see anyone properly tackle the more rudimentary,
| "boring" and lucrative approach: an on-prem search appliance,
| similar to GSE, that indexes internal intranet, wikis as well as
| email."
|
| Is there a reason to believe this is something enterprises
| actually want? Was GSE too early?
| sjg007 wrote:
| Probably yes. I think there are a few companies that are
| hesitant to put everything on the cloud. There are probably
| hybrid options worth exploring. But lucidworks.com is in this
| space so ... I think you can be self-hosted or managed.
| lowercased wrote:
| whether they want it or not, they probably need it. the last
| few enterprises I've been in, I could never find anything. And
| because people couldn't find stuff, it was a disincentive to
| document stuff (because no one would ever be able to find it
| anyway).
|
| Getting everyone to put everything in confluence - for example
| - helps, but... there are entire categories of data that don't
| end up getting stored in confluence, so... it wouldn't get
| found. And, fwiw, the confluence search always seems to be not
| very helpful whenever I'm needing to find something - but I
| often can't tell up front if the search is bad or the data just
| isn't there (or I'm searching for the wrong terms).
|
| If they don't want it, though, they won't buy it, whether it's
| helpful to people on the front-lines or not.
| vkou wrote:
| Enterprises want this. Source: Every single company, tech or
| otherwise, everywhere in the world, is a complete mess when it
| comes to discovering information you need to do your job.
|
| Whether or not you can actually make enough money from building
| a selling on-prem search is another question. It is an
| incredibly difficult space to develop for, because every one of
| these messes has a _vastly_ different IT stack. [1][2][3]
|
| You could take the easy way out and build search for Slack +
| Jira + Email, but that would help less than 1% of businesses
| world-wide.
|
| [1] The first full-time job I worked had an unholy amalgamation
| of HP Quality Center, SeaPine source control, something about
| Sharepoint, and random documents stored in people's shared
| folders. Oh, yeah, and it had an on-premise Google Enterprise
| Search (Or whatever it was called back in 2011), which was
| almost entirely useless.
|
| [2] The second was a mix of Jira and TikiWiki.
|
| [3] The current job my wife holds has a bunch of files in a
| shared directory, a database that is installed from four floppy
| disks, and an IT stack that quite prominently includes Windows
| 2003.
| eitland wrote:
| > It is an incredibly difficult space to develop for, because
| every one of these messes has a vastly different IT stack.
|
| I have a strong feeling that Google Desktop Search had a lot
| of this sorted.
|
| That was 10 years ago.
|
| With all the advances that has been happening in the meantime
| and assuming businesses are interested enough to adjust a
| tiny bit to simplify crawling this doesn't seem impossible at
| all if a well-funded team started working on it.
| vkou wrote:
| The technical problem is solvable, the deployment and
| technical support, and sales problem, and getting customers
| to upgrade, and the technical support, and did I mention
| the technical support problem would be a complete
| nightmare.
|
| You can't actually leverage any of the economies of scale
| that you can get from building software, when you have to
| hold the hand of every single customer you deal with.
|
| Someone like Oracle[1] can get away with this sort of thing
| (While charging an arm and a leg for it), but this is not
| the problem that your typical startup can solve.
|
| [1] The other difference is that your Oracle database +
| solution is business critical, and businesses have no
| problem with paying $XY,000/year for business-critical
| solutions. Intranet search is a nice-to-have, and
| businesses balk at paying $5/user/month for that sort of
| stuff.
| tempsy wrote:
| Half the bullet points on here all fall into enterprise SaaS...
|
| In my opinion the shift from big game changing ideas like Airbnb,
| Lyft/ Uber, and Stripe to a dozens enterprise SaaS apps popping
| up in San Francisco has been one of the biggest reasons why I've
| felt for the last year that there doesn't feel like there's been
| a "big next thing" for awhile.
|
| I just can't get excited by another dressed up note taking app,
| and wouldn't be excited to work for one.
| pascalxus wrote:
| > Remote is acceptable, even encouraged.
|
| 11% of all SE jobs posted on Stackoverflow in the last 4 months
| or so were Remote:
|
| https://skilldime.com/app.php?PieChart2=Remote
|
| I like the way the blog post is so well written in a witty style
| that's both entertaining and interesting to read.
| atupis wrote:
| Remote will be huge and there is definitely a need for tools to
| enable remote working and communication.
| overcast wrote:
| What exactly is missing from remote working/communication? I
| honestly can't handle anymore stupid messaging/conferencing
| systems.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I'm also curious what tooling is missing. Slack, Zoom, and
| Outlook has covered 100% of our very large (over 1000
| employees) remote company's needs.
|
| Seems the issue is more about reducing the number of tools
| rather than acquiring new ones.
| ollifi wrote:
| Exactly, they are stupid. If they worked the experience
| would be the same as sharing the same space. The tech
| should be more or less invisible.
| gppk wrote:
| Why are all those job postings only minutes ago? Is this brand
| new or am I missing something?
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Bytedance?? OK, I guess... But Lark's home page blurb seems a bit
| direct: "Hey look, the Chinese government is going to hack into
| your servers and look at all your corporate secrets sooner or
| later, why not just make it easy for both of us and use this
| service now? Sign up here."
| citilife wrote:
| > 3. The New Meme: Enterprise Search
|
| Exactly what we're doing: https://insideropinion.com/
|
| Seems like most people aren't thinking of search the exact same
| way though. It's a huge problem (having worked in large fortune
| 100 companies).
| MediumD wrote:
| For #3: If anyone is looking for an enterprise search they can
| boot up "cloud-prem" (in their VPC), that's exactly what we're
| building at https://landria.io/customers/why-landria.
| shreyshrey wrote:
| Lark looks very similar to what we are trying to accomplish with
| AirSend (https://www.airsend.io). I guess interesting days ahead.
| maverick19221 wrote:
| An aside, I love the metaphor rich writing:
|
| > Privacy might be the digital spinach
|
| > As this chewing gum loses flavor
|
| > A startup idea that hits the seed ecosystem like a fashion fad,
| with a surprising number of founders suddenly all wearing the
| same ripped jeans
|
| > The market has priced in the trade war in atoms, but not in
| bits.
|
| Any suggestions on how to get better at writing like this?
| ases wrote:
| Read a lot of content like it, really the same as any sort of
| writing.
|
| Then practice.
|
| You could additionally look to use a memorisation tool
| (something like Anki perhaps) to store new words and phrases
| that you like, so they are in your head, ready to be retrieved
| as you're hammering away at the keys.
| kian wrote:
| When you think or hear a particularly clever phrase, write it
| down. Whenever you feel the creative urge, stop all other
| things and write it down.
|
| When writing, try to imagine and feel what it is you are
| talking about, and metaphors will naturally suggest themselves
| from a combination of embodiment of feeling and resonance
| against the words you have already written. For each of the
| lines you noted above, can you feel how the author _feels_ and
| _thinks_ about the item being discussed?
|
| Particularly potent writing uses this device, lingering on
| these interwoven metaphors to set a contextual feel that makes
| it easier for you to get the point they intend for you. In this
| example, the first three are interwoven metaphors all drawn
| from the schoolyard.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Read a lot and think about what makes this writing good or bad.
| Then try to duplicate it and show people and get feedback. Show
| it to everyone and anyone.
|
| This is how I approach physical board game design. Play as many
| games as I can and contemplate the choices made. Why do people
| like this game even if I don't. Then make my own and have
| anyone and everyone play them. Modify and test again until
| strangers ask me when they can buy the game they just played.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Practice creative writing daily. I'm not too convinced reading
| a lot is part of it, as the other comments suggest. Else we'd
| all be great writers. I'd argue that consumption is the least
| important part of being a good creator. Else we'd all be good
| creators with our endless content consumption.
|
| But I guarantee you will notice results if, every morning, you
| write at least a few paragraphs answering some sort of creative
| writing prompt. After a while, creative ideas will just come
| out of your head as you try to write. Just like how words and
| phrases magically come to you as you get better at another
| language.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/ is a great resource. I
| like to read a few ideas in the morning and consider them in
| the shower. Then I brew a coffee and write as much as I can
| before I start my day, even if my idea completely sucks. I just
| try to treat my crappy idea as a constraint and run with it.
| 40acres wrote:
| A start-up at the intersection of 'developer tools' and 'NoCode'
| would be very exciting to me. I'd love to see tools that reflect
| some of the principles outlined in Bret Victor's blog.
|
| http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/
| http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/
| sansnomme wrote:
| Just remember that the tool has to be useful and practical at
| the end of the day. Red's obsession with crypto tokens and the
| failure of Eve reflects badly on the rapid application
| development ecosystem (on the other extreme, you have
| Embarcadero Delphi and SAP, each costing n-figures).
| Microsoft's suite is for some reason on life support. Access,
| Visual Basic are all pale shadows of their former selves.
| davnicwil wrote:
| > Just like Javascript made programming more accessible to a
| broader audience
|
| I think this is entirely cart before horse. What actually
| happened was the web made programming relevant to a much broader
| audience and JavaScript is the language you use to program for
| the web, so everyone learnt that.
| a13n wrote:
| To some extent it was both. The web made programming relevant
| to a much broader audience, and JS is much more approachable
| than other popular languages from that time (eg C++).
| TheEndless wrote:
| Now the latest boom if JS is its use in full stack
| applications with Node.js One language, everywhere. Also
| supersets like TypeScript for validation and specificity.
| blowski wrote:
| JS appeared at the same time as PHP and Ruby. Python was 4
| years old when JavaScript was first released. All those
| languages are about the same level of complexity.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cambalache wrote:
| Correct, all the assumed authority of the author flew out of
| the window as I read that sentence.
| LameRubberDucky wrote:
| All? A person can have an incorrect view while still
| maintaining other correct views.
| loco5niner wrote:
| True, but you tend to question their statements much more
| now.
| chupa-chups wrote:
| Could you explain why you think this?
|
| Programming is 75-90% repetition of patterns. The remaining
| 10-15% are the difference between a simple translation of
| usual human language into a foreign language vs. developing
| algorithms and/or logic to solve a problem.
|
| If we can get rid of the non-algorithm, non-logic part we'd
| be better off, and this is what i read into this sentence.
| msla wrote:
| New learners are suspicious, if they're any good.
|
| Look at this snippet of Java: public
| static void main(String[] args)
|
| You have to put that exactly in every Java program. Why?
| What does it mean? Why can't I omit it?
|
| To answer all of those questions, you need to go into
| method visibility, the difference between static and
| instance methods (itself easily requiring the teacher to
| introduce the concept of 'state' and what OO _is_ at a
| basic level), types and the notion of a "void" type, and
| odd historical baggage which prompts the JVM to look for
| 'main' as a special, magical name. You haven't even gotten
| to "Hello, world!" and you have to unpack at least a
| lecture's worth of knowledge into the poor sap's head.
|
| It's a lot easier to have a language where you type
| commands and the machine follows them. Even fundamentally
| bad languages, like GW-BASIC (my first language), have a
| hypnotic power over young programmers simply by virtue of
| that immediate response.
| chupa-chups wrote:
| This is what is said. So why do you appear to oppose?
|
| Programming today still means 85%-90% doing repetitive
| stuff. Tools could do away with this, freeing the
| developer/engineer to spend more time on solving actual
| problems.
|
| If you oppose to this, please state the reason why, since
| I'm probably fogged.
|
| To be more clear, I don't propose to make programming
| easier. I do propose to make so-called "programming" go
| away, to focus on the actual problem-solving part.
| "Programming" to me means mostly translating requirements
| into code (without having to deal with decomposing and
| recombining requirements, which is the real work).
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| repetition of patterns is the easy part, so getting rid of
| the easy part and leaving the difficult part might not make
| much difference in the end. Especially as the easy part can
| be an access point to the more complicated.
| chupa-chups wrote:
| Still it takes easily 50% of the time available for
| actual coding, even using modern IDEs.
| icandoit wrote:
| I think you are right.
|
| Also anybody could right-click and "view source". (Imagine
| being able to do that in any Swing app in their peak, for
| contrast.)
|
| When pages were just a few hundred lines any page could be
| recreated with a web browser, ambition, and enough time. Those
| days are long gone, now, with huge transitive node
| dependencies, minification, and feature-combinatorial-
| explosion. Like a sandboxed document-centric qbasic.
| justinzollars wrote:
| I agree with this question:
|
| "Will it [TikTok] be in the US App Store by years end?"
| smbullet wrote:
| Interesting thought. If TikTok got banned they would probably
| release a web interface for Americans or Android phones would
| suddenly become really popular among teens.
| blackrock wrote:
| So teens would dump iPhone for Android just to get TikTok?
| That would be very interesting indeed.
|
| The other year, teens were surprised when they got a green
| bubble on their iMessage, indicating the other person was not
| using an iPhone.
|
| Admittedly, TikTok does appear to be more fun and interesting
| (for teens) than Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, because the
| point is to just watch fun and pointless stuff. And maybe
| learn something new, or do something yourself to imitate
| them.
| tito wrote:
| Completely agree on the "Carbon and Climate" section.
|
| Negative makes a carbon negative bracelet made with carbon
| dioxide pulled from the atmosphere. I created the company to make
| carbon more personal. http://gonegative.co/
| jpm_sd wrote:
| > DuckDuckGo is small, but it's growing 50% year-over-year. As of
| last week, it is also a search option on every European Android
| device. If the growth rate were to double, DDG would surpass
| Google in 6 years.
|
| That's what we call a "Big If". And doesn't DDG just rent someone
| else's index?
| luhn wrote:
| Yeah, search results are provided by Bing.
| gramakri wrote:
| Wow, this is news to me.
| shaneprrlt wrote:
| They have their own crawler they mention, they mention Bing
| as a source, but I think that's mostly for search ads.
| samstave wrote:
| ___" So, what exactly is it you'd say you do around here?"_
| __
|
| So -- What is DDG 's value to me, as I have switched over to
| Brave Browser+DDG+protonMail for as much of everything I can.
|
| (Also of note, there are sites that do NOT accept @protonmail
| as a valid email address :-/)
| krick wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that. So what exactly is a DDG then? Just
| a page to query Bing (anonymously?)? They don't crawl any
| data themselves?
| pb7 wrote:
| Yep. They do a small amount of crawling solely to populate
| their "instant answers" for limited topics.
| moretai wrote:
| So I could just make a DDG?
| pb7 wrote:
| You sure could. But DDG is a decade old company and its
| total lifetime searches amount to less than a week's
| worth of Google searches so it's likely your efforts will
| be in vain.
| sansnomme wrote:
| If you are willing to spend a decade marketing privacy
| features and bashing the establishment, yes. They are not
| Google-style "tech disrupters". One could say their
| success is as much a product of Edward Snowden's
| revelations and the subsequent societal shift towards
| tracking-as-a-liability as much as actual technology.
| Don't get me wrong, their UI gimmicks like !g are nothing
| to be scoffed at. UI has value, just ask Robinhood and
| Stripe. But DuckDuckGo is certainly not "hard tech".
| sansnomme wrote:
| Their marketing and brand are the most important aspects.
| Bing proxies are a-dime-a-dozen but only DuckDuckGo has
| achieved tremendous media attention and funding.
| moretai wrote:
| Their marketing got me. I was duped.
| pb7 wrote:
| One of the proxies had to win out, right? We're only
| talking about DuckDuckGo and not BearBearClaw because
| they survived. I don't think they're doing anything
| _particularly_ special. They 're also a much older
| company with a lot smaller search volume than people
| realize.
| chibg10 wrote:
| I don't think GP's claim is entirely accurate. Bing is an
| input into the results, along with other inputs (Bing is
| less than majority responsible in most cases iirc). I don't
| remember if DDG does any indexing on it's own.
|
| Hopefully someone more informed can chime in but GP's claim
| was strong, provocative, and to my knowledge inaccurate so
| wanted to correct it.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| DDG uses a lot of different sources-
| https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
| zackbrown wrote:
| When it comes to winner-takes-all (the bread & butter of VC
| economics,) it strikes me as dissonant to bet both on no-code and
| on dev tools.
|
| No-code's winner-takes-all scenario presumes full automation of
| developers. It's in the name: no code, no developers.
|
| Postulate: software developers will remain necessary as long as
| human brains don't natively speak "Von Neumann."
|
| Thus the winner-who-takes-all is going to be "with-code," not
| "no-code." "No-code" is a misnomer and a dead-end.
| harrisreynolds wrote:
| Re 2. Saying Yes to NoCode ... We are working on an MVP in this
| space called Webase. It is still very early but we are starting
| with basic CRUD operations and then will be layering on more
| sophistication going forward.
|
| Check it out here: https://www.webase.com
| mritchie712 wrote:
| what does it do? do you have a video demo?
| harrisreynolds wrote:
| Today it allows you to define data models and then auto
| generates views that you can use to perform CRUD operations.
|
| This is a view of the app editor creating a simple Blog app:
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/cu4hs6fdgabd4wh/Screenshot%202020-.
| ..
|
| After you define your data models, then you can create and
| edit live views of the data model.
|
| Here is a screenshot of the Blog app where I am creating a
| new post:
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/dmxrbr1c44zkp8h/Screenshot%202020-.
| ..
|
| I need to create a video of this to make it easier to show
| off.
|
| The UX is still a bit rough, but the core pieces are there
| for building CRUD apps.
|
| Thanks for asking!
| harrisreynolds wrote:
| Also... I tried to check out SeekWell from your profile but
| it didn't load. Are you still working on it?
| mritchie712 wrote:
| try this link https://app.seekwell.io/
| mritchie712 wrote:
| just saw you were CTO of Shipt, we (SeekWell) had a couple
| users there. Just followed you on Twitter, DM if you want
| to chat some time.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Haven't we been hearing about "software that doesn't require any
| tech skills to build" for 25 years now? It seems like a pipe
| dream. It's built on some innate belief that someone can create
| tools that work for _every_ kind of business possible, which is
| crazy. I can think in the past few years I 've worked on health
| care registration websites, diamond auction websites, oil reserve
| management software - nothing would have been tied together with
| any common tool and all required extensive amounts of custom code
| for their business logic. I think it's time we drop this dream of
| normal "business analysts" writing all the software in a company.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| But a lot of things that used to require custom software ...
| don't, anymore. I think what happens is that the kinds of jobs
| that are stitched together with Iftt/Zapier/Google
| sheets/whatever stop being classified as "software," so we've
| got an ever-moving-target.
|
| There'll always be a frontier that requires deeper technical
| expertise. But that frontier will keep moving.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
|
| I view my career through this lens now: I aim to find things
| to work on that I believe are very likely to remain in that
| frontier that remains classified as "software".
|
| I find this useful when thinking about companies and
| projects. If they seem to be building a CRUD app with clients
| for different platforms, at a small to medium scale, that
| might not be far enough into the frontier for me.
|
| This is purely a matter of taste or personality. Another very
| useful (and probably more lucrative) thing to do is to find
| ways to leverage the ever-increasing ability to build that
| kind of simple but useful application for some domain without
| writing much or any of your own "software". But for me, that
| just doesn't match my interests as well.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's funny: nobody asks for "cars that don't require technical
| skill to build" or "airplanes that don't require technical
| skill to build." Why this need to open up software development
| to people without development skill? As you point out, people
| have been banging this drum for decades! Why is it ok for some
| goods to require specialized skill to build, but for other
| goods the need for this skill is always seen as a problem that
| urgently needs solving?
| petra wrote:
| People want cheaper engineering services, in all fields. some
| work and some companies are working on that. See "generative
| design" in Mechanical Engineering and Architecture.
|
| As for the demand for software tools ? Old startups in that
| field are starting to show good results, there's money
| available, so it looks like a good opportunity for a VC.
| flyGuyOnTheSly wrote:
| How would you feel if somebody said that 50 years ago now?
|
| And you were relegated to writing exclusively in machine code?
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| What we program in now is a thin veneer over machine code.
| And as you point out, it's been 50 years. We're supposed to
| go totally code-free in the next 10?
| mamcx wrote:
| I think is better to say "software usable in 10 minutes" for
| people that is not a full time developer.
|
| Things like excel, access fit there. The big mistake is not
| provide a way out the "click and get a full app!" step. This in
| when things go to fail with this kind of ideas.
|
| ---
|
| I learn foxpro as my first language and is surprising how many
| "non developers" use it in the day.
|
| I think it get loved precisely because was a bit "harder" than
| access: You hit a wall with access/excel _much faster_ than
| foxpro /jupyter, making them for some people HARDER tools than
| the "harder" tool.
|
| Not fun when things are easy, and suddenly, impossible. I say
| that we can give people credit and them could learn some
| complex stuff, as long fit well their use case.
| icandoit wrote:
| Foxpro, visual basic (6 and below), and pre-bad delphi were
| workhorses. Surely, demand for similar tools today still
| exists.
| mamcx wrote:
| I think the same. My side project is to build something
| alike. Programming move out "RAD" tools when the web come
| and making rad for web is near impossible, so somehow that
| translate "and then stop for everything else".
|
| Ironic, because now with mobile it have a good chance!
| rcurry wrote:
| No Code is the Duke Nukem Forever of software development.
| perlgeek wrote:
| > It seems like a pipe dream. It's built on some innate belief
| that someone can create tools that work for every kind of
| business possible, which is crazy.
|
| It doesn't need to work for all every kind of business.
|
| Often it starts with an excel sheet. Which works for
| surprisingly long, but eventually problems with concurrent data
| entry, or more logic / validation etc. really make that
| untenable.
|
| But, going from a highly customized excel sheet to an in-house
| developed custom application is a huge leap; only when you
| start to replace it do you realize just how many Excel features
| you were actually using.
|
| When you start writing a custom application, you need to take
| of authentication, permissions, audit logging, search
| functionality and so. Maybe your web framework helps you with
| some of them, but never all of them, and the missing concerns
| are a huge pain to get right.
|
| I really want something, either a framework or a highly
| extensible application, to let me actually focus on the
| business logic. And at the same time, still let me deploy on
| premise, let me have a functioning CI/CD pipeline and keep my
| code in git.
|
| For a complex project, it will be a programmer writing the
| code, not a business analyst. But they should focus 90% on
| intrinsic complexity, not on accidental complexity. We're not
| there yet, so we need _something_ better.
| icebraining wrote:
| Those exist; the one I'm most familiar with is Odoo. You
| download it, point it at a Postgres server and start it up.
| It shows you a web UI which asks you for a name for a new DB
| and a admin password.
|
| After that, you get a login screen of a typical web app, but
| almost empty, with just a menu to configure users, groups and
| basic company info.
|
| From there, you can create a module (just a folder with some
| basic metadata) and in it write a Python class with a few
| fields (like a Django model), and a menu linked to it. The
| system takes care of generating some views for CRUD: you just
| click the menu and it shows you a list of records, then click
| on a record to see an editable form, etc.
|
| Permissions is just a matter of configuring in the UI or
| writing a CSV file that says which user groups can read
| and/or write which class / model, or you can write more
| complex rules (like users of certain groups can only see
| records created by them, other groups can see all).
|
| (Disclaimer: I worked for a few years for companies that
| developed Odoo modules, but have left the platform for a
| couple of years now)
| msla wrote:
| Excel is programming.
|
| I have to quote rms now, because it's just too perfect:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html
|
| > Multics Emacs proved to be a great success -- programming
| new editing commands was so convenient that even the
| secretaries in his office started learning how to use it.
| They used a manual someone had written which showed how to
| extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the
| secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming,
| weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they
| could do useful things and they learned to program.
|
| Excel is that way now. It's programming for people who do not
| program, and it's no less mentally involved. It's just harder
| to extend beyond a certain point, because Excel is a pretty
| lousy development environment, and it typically doesn't have
| productivity helpers like source control.
|
| It's also hard to port an Excel program to anything else
| because spreadsheets are their own programming paradigm,
| almost, although 'dataflow' isn't a completely alien term in
| the CS world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming
| ehnto wrote:
| > For a complex project, it will be a programmer writing the
| code, not a business analyst. But they should focus 90% on
| intrinsic complexity, not on accidental complexity. We're not
| there yet, so we need something better.
|
| What follows is a tired argument, but hear me out as I'm
| using it as a springboard. The reason you hire engineers to
| design bridges is because they know how to do the important
| engineering bits. If all it took to make a bridge was knowing
| how cars will move from one side to the other, then we
| wouldn't need engineers. So...
|
| We often want our software engineers to do all the business
| logic too, which is why engineers that provide the most value
| to projects are actually people who love building business
| solutions and not engineering software, or some blend in
| between. But maybe that's also why most software sucks and
| costs a fortune (sorry everyone).
|
| Is the issue that we're conflating the two tasks into one? If
| so, is a product that would solve your problem one that
| cleanly delineates between software engineering tasks and
| logic tasks? Or is it one that gets rid of software
| engineering all together, if that were possible?
|
| > I really want something, either a framework or a highly
| extensible application, to let me actually focus on the
| business logic.
|
| I would argue there's already many relevant application
| frameworks that are good at this once you learn them, the
| trouble is the industry moves so fast between tools so your
| business solution specialist programmers spend all their time
| learning new software engineering paradigms.
| petra wrote:
| I don't know if "software that doesn't require any tech skills
| to build" is realistic.
|
| But a lot can be done, much faster, with much less expertise
| required, using modern "low code" tools.
|
| Just a few examples from the OutSystems marketing materials(i
| can't vouch for them, but still):
|
| ------------------------------------
|
| "Eighteen applications are already in productive use, some of
| which have hundreds of users.
|
| The company has succeeded in its aim to make research
| scientists self-sufficient, so that they can build and deploy
| mobile apps for high-speed experiments, without clogging-up the
| central IT development team."
|
| https://www.outsystems.com/case-studies/citizen-developers-b...
|
| ------------------------------------
|
| "We don't even have a UI designer--we use templates that
| OutSystems provides." - for a consumer facing app.
|
| https://www.outsystems.com/case-studies/oakland-transforms-c...
|
| ------------------------------------
|
| "Using the platform proved so easy that three of the people who
| develop Allan Bros. mobile apps are actually warehouse
| employees, includ-ing a shipping clerk and a fruit sizing
| manager." https://www.outsystems.com/case-studies/optimized-
| field-proc...
|
| ------------------------------------
|
| Now of course complex apps will require developers, but it will
| take much less time, and many apps aren't that complex.
| chupa-chups wrote:
| Programming shouldn't exist. Problem solving, algorithm
| development and logic decomposition/recombination should exist
| instead.
|
| To me, and I presume to the author, "no code" doesn't mean no
| engineering but the exact opposite: do away with mechanic
| vocabulary to vocabulary translation work and focus on the
| actual skills, which are decomposing requirements into atomic
| units of work and (re-)combining them in a manner making the
| domain understandable if expressed as code.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| Was this published in 2019 or 2020? There's a line pretty far
| down the page in the Enterprise Dabblers section that says "As of
| today (January 2019), we see a half dozen pitches a week for
| automation software"
|
| Maybe that was a typo? Or maybe this is a slightly updated
| article from a year ago?
| rokhayakebe wrote:
| Privacy
|
| Judging by what people are posting on IG, FB, and what I hear
| they are posting on SNAP, I have come to the conclusion that
| Privacy is a niche product.
| keithwhor wrote:
| Everybody in this specific social group of investors continues to
| list Developer Tools as, effectively, an Evergreen space.
|
| What's baffling to me is that the amount of innovation in
| Developer Tool businesses (not tools, businesses) is
| _surprisingly_ small. There are three factors that influence
| this, IMO:
|
| (1) The OSS community has trended towards an insular culture
| incentivized by OSS popularity where stars and Twitter followers
| are status signals. In this world, it's hard for talented
| engineers to stop seeking "star status" and transition to the
| business ecosystem where they're bottom rung of the ladder.
|
| (2) The space is extremely sophisticated -- with longer R&D
| cycles -- and VCs routinely incentivize suboptimal growth
| trajectories when they've identified apparent winners and miss
| opportunities with more practically iterative companies.
| (Expecting growth at all costs in a space where continuous
| delivery + R&D is the norm.) This blows up some companies early
| and prematurely kills other promising technologies. I think the
| 18mo expected cycle time probably needs to be adjusted for these
| companies, _especially_ early stage.
|
| (3) Founders are heavily pressured towards exits. Long R&D cycle
| time, the pressure cooker of VC growth expectations, and the
| rarity of high-ownership, customer-oriented developer tool +
| engineering talent makes early exits extremely attractive for
| both founding teams and acquirers.
|
| How do we fix this? Between Daniel, Elad and a bunch of folks who
| keep writing this stuff -- I think it's time for a new developer-
| oriented fund, backed by the people and companies passionate
| about the space.
|
| I've been a major sponsor of Vue.js for years. I'd like to do
| more to help talented developers start businesses in the future,
| when possible. If anybody thinks something like this is
| interesting, give me a holler.
| mamcx wrote:
| Yeah, this hurt. I think you could find many talented
| developers with high interest in advance the state of art, but
| then remember need to put food in the plate and that is.
|
| ----
|
| My dream is to build a foxpro/access kind of tool (starting as
| a relational lang), but this is purely a side of a side project
| that I still keep alive by purely fun. Having in the mind that
| the chance of being financially good is near zero and with more
| pressing needs, is hard to make it.
|
| I could totally take a small investment just to get "survival"
| for months, but who will invest it?. I think even much more
| skilled developers like http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/ will
| not get funds for a startup for dev tools, that is look to me
| anyone in the field must work for big corp to hace a chance to
| see it.
| reggieband wrote:
| There was a recent post here on HN for a medium article "Get
| Rich Slow And Steady" [1]. It seems like this is a space
| attracting the attention of investors. I think the developer
| tool business overlaps with the type of SaaS businesses
| described in the article.
|
| There is still space to tackle getting from a no-revenue idea
| to a stable cash-positive subscription service. My eyes water
| when I see ideas attracting 10+m in _seed_ capital before they
| even have a viable product. I remember pitching an idea with a
| friend for a slow burn SaaS startup (in real-estate). We wanted
| under 1m and we were laughed out of every room. Everyone wanted
| to back a potential unicorn and not waste their time on guys
| thinking so small.
|
| Maybe things have changed but it seems right now there are two
| categories: startups with huge ideas that can get substantial
| venture capital to take moonshots and stable existing SaaS
| business that can slow burn on existing subscription revenue.
| I'm just not sure there will ever be a market for "Give us 1m
| and we'll build a company that generates 250k/year of profit".
|
| https://medium.com/@tom.kubik/get-rich-slow-in-software-5700...
| mamcx wrote:
| Heck, you could start ideas with much less. Here in colombia
| you can do US3000/month * Dev to do whatever you say. But
| even the people here that give funds not do that!
| christiansakai wrote:
| I find it amazing that people can find many small niche ideas
| that are profitable enough like this. I must have my head
| entirely in the wrong cloud.
| reggieband wrote:
| Well, to be fair, some (or even most) small niche ideas
| won't be that profitable (if they are profitable at all).
| That is the reason why I feel that the market for those
| small investments will never really flourish. The downside
| is the same, you lose all your investment. The upside is
| completely underwhelming, you recoup your investment after
| 4 or 5 years after which hopefully you see a profit.
|
| This is traditionally the space for friends-and-family
| investment or bank loans. If I was an investor then I don't
| think it is a space I would get into.
|
| It also explains why the article I mentioned is focused on
| _established_ and profitable SaaS businesses. That means
| the filter for crash-and-burn has already taken place
| allowing investors to change their ROI calculation enough
| to make it viable.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Isn't it harder to compete on established and profitable
| SaaS business? What can a small dev shop, or an indie
| developer do to compete in a space like this?
| reggieband wrote:
| To be clear, the article isn't advocating for investing
| in companies competing against established/profitable
| SaaS businesses. It is advocating investing in the
| existing companies that have already achieved
| profitability.
| mperham wrote:
| I'm the guy behind Sidekiq, also mentioned in the article.
|
| One person can still built amazing, successful tech with a slow
| and steady approach and little to no funding. My trick was to
| charge something reasonable ASAP and get to a sustainable
| "default live" state.
| sansnomme wrote:
| Also more importantly: monetisation is hard. There has only
| been one Jetbrains.
| keithwhor wrote:
| I think monetization is difficult IFF you don't think about
| asking for money from the get-go. I'm actually of the opinion
| that open source projects are _not_ well-equipped to build
| companies around, but can serve as an early guide to nascent
| market demand.
|
| Monetization looks difficult because people keep building
| free things and then trying to figure out how to charge for
| them. From my perspective, the better bet is to build a free
| thing, prove the market, and then figure out what the paid
| thing might look like -- even if totally different.
|
| I think there's a decade ahead of us where developers can
| start asking, "how can I turn this {useful tool} into a SaaS
| product?" We've been seeing this for years, I just think
| folks can start getting more ambitious about it. :)
| dsalzman wrote:
| "3. The New Meme: Enterprise Search "Enterprise search" is
| shaping up to be in 2020 what RPA was in 2019. A startup idea
| that hits the seed ecosystem like a fashion fad, with a
| surprising number of founders suddenly all wearing the same
| ripped jeans. I've seen about a dozen teams and companies working
| on next-generation enterprise search in the past few weeks.
| They're all attempting to build the same thing: a
| search/feed/discovery product that helps you find things amongst
| Slack, Gmail and Salesforce clouds.
|
| I've yet to see anyone properly tackle the more rudimentary,
| "boring" and lucrative approach: an on-prem search appliance,
| similar to GSE, that indexes internal intranet, wikis as well as
| email. On-prem software is annoying to build, something many
| founders shy away from."
|
| At my old startup Pinecone, we built something similar called Ask
| Pinecone. It would index everyone's emails and internal wiki's on
| premise. Then you could send an email with a question to
| ask@youcompany.com some Bayesian based modeling would then
| forward the email to the most appropriate person at the company
| based on the contents of their inbox and your email.
| citilife wrote:
| > I've yet to see anyone properly tackle the more rudimentary,
| "boring" and lucrative approach: an on-prem search appliance,
| similar to GSE, that indexes internal intranet, wikis as well
| as email. On-prem software is annoying to build, something many
| founders shy away from."
|
| It's hard because you need to access the documents and from a
| security perspective that's not ideal. We took a different
| approach which actually builds a search graph based on what's
| discussed (plugs into email, slack, etc.):
| https://insideropinion.com/
|
| Works very well and doesn't need access to the source document
| (so more secure), although that'd improve the search.
| [deleted]
| pascalxus wrote:
| LOLZ: >"Now Instagram has too many ads and finding a genuine
| phone charger on Amazon requires a degree in investigative
| journalism."
| skinkestek wrote:
| Here's one non-abstract idea that you can get for free, even
| though I might try myself as well:
|
| Give Confluence a run for its money.
|
| Confluence is so bloated that a clean install takes longer to
| start than it takes to boot my laptop and log in.
|
| Plugin SDK documentation is a mess.
|
| As far as I can see it only sells because of the brand and
| because of network effects.
|
| If anyone could manage to create a real wiki (remember, it means
| quick!) and market it they might have a chance at some nice cash
| that would otherwise flow to a company that keeps wasting peoples
| time.
|
| End of rant ;-)
| drywater wrote:
| No company will buy products just because they are better. They
| buy the brand, the support, the advertising.
| ska wrote:
| I would adjust this. No company will buy products just
| because they are a bit better. You have to completely knock
| that out of the park to be compelling.
|
| OTOH, I'll grant if you really fail on support etc. you will
| probably fizzle out anyway.
| frandroid wrote:
| What support does anyone need to use Confluence? How many
| people _use_ that support?
| frandroid wrote:
| I've bumped into two organizations which use Confluence for
| developer reference rather than Github's own repo-based wikis.
| Why??? In one case a manager even made us move an extensive
| github wiki to Confluence. After that, developers stopped using
| the reference and that had an impact on code quality. WTF.
|
| There are already some good general purpose wiki providers out
| there, too!
| mosburger wrote:
| Sounds a bit like Tettra? https://tettra.com/
|
| Our company uses Quip for this sort of use case, but that's not
| really the same thing as what you're asking for.
| andygcook wrote:
| Andy here, co-founder of Tettra. Just wanted to say thanks
| for the shoutout. A pleasant surprise to my day as I was
| reading this thread.
|
| Happy to answer anyone's questions about Tettra and the wiki
| space in general here.
| eitland wrote:
| Is it available for on site installation?
| ajsharp wrote:
| > While consumer privacy might be overrated, enterprise
| ephemerality is underrated.
|
| Yep, this is the core assumption underlying Sharesecret -
| https://sharesecret.co.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Well, thanks for introducing me to Vayyar at least ;)
|
| If I understand their value prop, they provide a single sensor
| solution that is essentially a black box. And the output is the
| wide-range 4D point cloud. Power consumption is ultra-low. But
| the fidelity is still very high. It's up to the partner to design
| the software that consumes the data. Vayyar just provides the
| black box.
|
| If it works. The total market here seems on order of "replacing
| cameras" in retail, manufacturing and surveillance!
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/vayyar-nabs-109m-for-its-4...
| a13n wrote:
| More like "VC Compatible Startup Ideas 2020"
|
| It's totally feasible to start a successful company outside of
| these ideas. I think this list is helpful because they answer the
| "why now" question that VCs are looking for.
|
| In other words, this list is helpful if you're trying to start a
| $10B company today.
| keithwhor wrote:
| Not to be too cheeky, but this is mostly a list of trends
| dictated by companies started three or more years ago.
|
| Meaning it's actually "VC Compatible Startup Ideas 2017."
|
| Outside of Developer Tools (I'm a fan!) I would say your advice
| -- it's feasible to start a company outside of these ideas --
| is probably _exactly_ where you want to be looking if you 're
| _starting_ a company today. Daniel 's an investor, so he's
| casting a net for startups / founding teams he hasn't heard of
| yet. Content marketing is dealflow 101. That said, if you're a
| founder in one of these spaces, he has a fantastic reputation,
| so you should absolutely reach out. He wouldn't have posted it
| if he wasn't looking for awesome people!
| a13n wrote:
| Yeah good point, if you're starting one of these today you
| might already be a bit late.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Re: the first point, Amazon is terrible now. I'm afraid to buy
| things because of all of the fake reviews. How are you supposed
| to buy products sight-unseen with fake reviews abound?
| mosburger wrote:
| I wonder if a curated, moderated Amazon could work? Probably
| wouldn't scale very well, but perhaps if there were more live
| humans involved in the process of choosing which items were
| available for purchase, it'd work a little better?
|
| I sorta feel like the future is in smaller more boutique sites
| for specific things. Like Wayfair for home furnishings or Chewy
| for pet supplies. A bit like going to the local pet store
| instead of Walmart for your dog food.
| dbenamy wrote:
| I've increasingly been using https://thewirecutter.com for
| this.
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