[margorczynski]

I think the problem with startups (from a business perspective) is that they're ego-driven and instead of looking at the business reality in an objective fashion they mostly try to "revolutionize" and "make a difference".

It isn't as sexy as doing the next Facebook or disrupting global healthcare but just copying an existing archaic & expensive product and doing it better can yield a great and stable business. There's a plethora of software products (offline & online) which cost way too much and work like crap - all you need to do is do it better for a more reasonable price (where those old companies have a big headcount and lots of mouths to feed producing a hard price floor for them).

[abanana]

> the problem with startups is that they're ego-driven

100% agree. This looks like another case of nothing more than arrogance - another case of somebody thinking they know it all, can revolutionise an industry, even though their experience within that industry is basically zero. Some of the choices of wording in there, e.g. "potential for venture-backed disruption", say it all.

It's not far from being that typical problem where someone, without domain knowledge, has that common simplistic thought: "why don't they just..." because it's always so obvious from the outside! In this case, why don't they just buy our software? Turns out it wasn't so obvious after all.

It feels like I've seen several stories on HN from people seduced by the idea of being called an entrepreneur. (Or more accurately, wanting to call themselves an entrepreneur.) Sometimes they keep failing, and just try a different industry instead of taking stock and changing their approach to one that starts with some real learning. Their blog posts make it clear that creating a startup is/was their goal. No understanding that to be successful, your business is supposed to be a means to an end, not the end in itself - do enough research first to create a viable solution to an actual problem. Though it seems in venture capital funding, businesses tend to get funding regardless... it's another world.

[duped]

> I don't want to make a little money every day, I want to make a fuckton of money all at once

- Russ Hanneman

The thing that distinguishes a startup from a small business is that the goal is growth - not being "great and stable." That said, I've worked at startups for years and I would not agree that good startups are "ego driven." They may seem that way on the outside if you take LinkedIn posts at face value or only read blog posts by people trying to hack it through publicity. They often have more understanding of the business reality of the markets they're trying to enter (or create) than anyone else, the value they add is by saying "fuck that" to a particular set of assumptions everyone else in the market might live by.

Sometimes that set of assumptions can't be discarded, but if it can and the startup is right, the backers stand to make a fuckton of money all at once.

[FloorEgg]

Most startups fail, and most startups are run by founders driven by ego and vision rather than by disciplined market research or curiosity or understanding of the market.

The successful ones will either have gotten very lucky, or know lots about the market as you say. In fact the first main success hurdle is to understand the market well enough to know it's actually a market, and that it can be monetized.

All that to say, I agree with both you and OP.

[_fat_santa]

> There's a plethora of software products (offline & online) which cost way too much and work like crap - all you need to do is do it better for a more reasonable price (where those old companies have a big headcount and lots of mouths to feed producing a hard price floor for them).

Our startup is basically doing this right now. Our thesis is basically if we can make a product marginally better than our massive competitors and be able to peel away just a sliver of their customer base and get rich by virtue of having just 2 people and not 2000.

The business itself it not sexy at all but there are still loads of interesting technical problems to solve from building the app to marketing.

I would say our biggest strength right now is just having me and my co-founder and no other folks to pay. When your burn rate is your monthly digital ocean bill (which runs ~$50), you can burn practically forever.

[c_hastings]

As long as you remember to pay yourselves too!

[6stringmerc]

Interesting! My concept isn’t a startup as a culture because the problem I am to solve isn’t a technology or hardware or access issue - it’s a content issue. AI can not begin to touch what my human brain can do to add value via consulting with a specific company in a regulated and legally sensitive business process. I can potentially teach another human being how to replicate my methodology, but as it stands, I’m going to fill a niche for a large market by providing an inherently subject service: talent.

[belinder]

Now where to get a list of such companies and products to decide what to build...

[razakel]

People constantly moan about their jobs, stupid processes, broken software and tools... listen to them and build something better.

[bombcar]

The problem is that usually the moaners are not the loaners - they're not the ones making the purchase decisions.

That's why you either get in via very small business (where the owner is the buyer and user) or guerrilla (like Slack et al).

[Zambyte]

The people moaning are the ones building things that can be built better, not the ones that you should try to sell to.

[pavel_lishin]

I'm a moaner, but I'm not building anything.

The software my school uses to communicate with parents is fucking awful. Based on digging around their website & linkedin, I suspect they have a team of offshore developers - which is fine - but my money is that they don't actually have a team, they're paying a company that gives them supposedly-fungible engineer-hours instead of an actual cohesive team that works on the product and is proud of what they've made. They just eat requirements and shit something approximating software.

But what am I going to do? Say I build a competitor, solo, for cheap. (It can be done. The software doesn't do much. The hardest thing would be ensuring the emails actually get delivered.)

Now I get to play salesman. I have to sell it to my school. Now I have to maintain it. Our school isn't rich; a local school paid $130k for an unrelated hardware+software solution, so I'm at most going to get that, and now I'm on call 24/7, now I'm training the teachers & administrators to use it, now I'm fielding support emails, etc., etc.

Fuck it. I'll keep moaning.

[bombcar]

This is a perfect example. The school is suffering, but has nearly no budget. The users suffer, but have no say. Nothing changes, everyone cripples along.

[dazh]

Is this true? I've tried for months to get people to talk to me about their problems and the most common answer I get is "everything's... fine?".

[madmask]

A decent 3d CAD and multiphysics FEM (cheap comsol) would be a good start

[ph4evers]

Yes but the industry is so rooted and vendor locked that it is extremely hard. People pay for Autodesk, Ansys, comsol etc. because it is proven and engineers are trained to use it. I would not be eager to use something new if I’m a constructor or car manufacturer.

[nradov]

Sure, a new startup will never get any market share in large, stable businesses like those. They would have to sell to other startups. New auto parts manufacturers pop up all the time.

[qazxcvbnmlp]

Yep, decent 3d CAD is expensive. Competition in this space would be fantastic

[mickael-kerjean]

A dirty secret I recently learned about: look for public contracts in your area, to find some of those, google "contract register filetype:pdf".

Tons of crazy shit in there waiting to be disrupted. The tricky part is to get the right financials to bid on the interesting stuff, a good pathway there is to combine multiple companies together and make a shared bid, reach out to me if you're interested.

[bagpuss]

there's neoseed.io that sends out emails weekly with "ideas you can replicate"