

Ask HN: know an industry well? - haliax

I'm looking for startup ideas, and feel like there's a nice market to be had in many of the industries that aren't consumer facing or household names - and hence get less attention from the tech community. Does anyone on HN know a specific industry - and its technical/technically solvable bellyaches? I'd be interested to hear about it / collaborate.
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run4yourlives
Insurance, Insurance, Insurance.

Specifically Health and P&C lines. Although Health Insurance is starting to
see some innovation in the US.

Reasons:

1\. Perceived high barrier to entry, yet that isn't the case. 2\. Major
players are tech dinosaurs at best. 3\. Small brokers (potential customers)
dominate the landscape. 4\. Legislation keeps markets small because there is
little in common from one area to the next - everything is niche. 5\. SV
thinks it's boring, so you don't need to be the second coming of Steve Jobs to
be very successful.

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haliax
Would you be up for an email/AIM chat about this?

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run4yourlives
Sure, my username at gmail.

Be warned I'm in Canada though, so my knowledge about the US market is
limited, and the two countries are very different in the health insurance
sector, as you can imagine.

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paulhart
I asked a question recently in relation to an industry I know well:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396541>

I'm specifically looking at providing a video-based training service for a
very-well-known vendor's product that many companies in this sector use. Not
really a technical challenge, more a knowledge transfer challenge.

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haliax
Do you think that tech training is a decent market in general, or just for
this one industry?

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paulhart
I think you're most likely to succeed if you can provide a quality service in
a constrained market.

In my specific case, the choices available are to either go to the vendor and
pay more than 100k to get all the training for 10-15 people simultaneously, or
to find someone who's been through it already and mind-meld. I've found one
other group who is doing something similar to what I'm thinking, but their
offering is laughable (machine voiceover!).

I believe I could easily charge 1k-2k per month for site licenses of well
constructed materials. Maybe quite a bit more, especially if I offer custom
materials for clients. The foundation would be shared across all though.

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rdl
Defense contracting (communications, deployed software systems).

Medical software (PACS/RIS in radiology primarily; some automated lab and
pharmacy experience, medical paging. Limited EHR/EMR experience).

Firearms (retail, wholesale, and manufacturing of small arms)

(plus crypto/security and some datacenter/cloud/etc. stuff, but that's better
covered by existing startups)

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zmmz
Industry: IT side of stock exchanges. Quite a space to explore as it is one of
the last parts of the sector that is not widely covered by conventional
financial media (FT etc.) and has no commonly used resources on the web.
Barriers: End users (traders) usually have no say in the choice of
platform/software, extremely secretive industry, most solutions are tailored.

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tirrellp
I know a specific industry, and I have a deep understanding of the current
technlology as well as better solutions: Petroleum controls and automation.
Ripe for the picking.

Unfortunately, like most 'enterprisey' industries, the long sales cycle will
eat you alive if you are not well funded.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Are you talking on the production side (refineries) or consumption (fuel
dispensing)? I used to sell a product that was on fuel trucks and have always
wondered what else I could do with it.

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tirrellp
I am talking about the downstream side of production as far as mass metering
and additizing. Specifically, where the fuel goes after it has been refined
and traveled through the pipeline to the place where the tanker trucks take it
to your local gas station. That also includes massive movements by rail and
barge.

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mschaecher
Read Clayton Christensen

