Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by damosneeze 3158 days ago
Pretty good, but also quite niche. I think many people who build fences are not doing it just to keep things out, but also to keep things in, mark territory, provide security against more than just deer, aesthetics, etc.

However, on the fence industry, I could see a shake-up of fence estimation software. Perhaps one that uses ML to take the data necessary for an estimation (geographic data based on asker's location + parameters, materials & prices needed for the job, labor, etc) and create an estimation at the click of a button rather than from human input and calculations? Could help to bring your fence cost down (marginally, but still).

My dad was in this business his whole life, and said the software in the industry right now is shite. Ripe for disruption.

2 comments

I knew a guy who made a shitload of money with a software program he wrote for carpet stores/installers to optimize cutting different carpet pieces to minimize waste.

It sounds simple and boring, but if you can save people a lot of money, they don't mind sharing it with you.

I remember when I was a catastrophe insurance adjuster, I used Xactimate. It was pretty great at the time, but I think the underlying tech (i.e. getting material pricing) could be greatly improved, especially dealing with things like shortages and increased prices due to demand spikes.