Ask HN: A niche area that is in need of innovators After reading the "How I Created a $350M Software Company Knowing Nothing About Software" post, there are probably other areas / business processes waiting for enterprising individuals. Anyone willing to share their experience / insight about these? Please post reasons and/or a piece of information that provides insight as to why that areas / business processes is ripe for disruption. |
For example, as recently as about 5 years ago (when I left), freight prices were sent by brokers on Yahoo Chat to a fresh grad who could then rapidly quote prices when traders needed it.
There's a bunch of things associated with a trade that need to get done - the futures position (it might be worth structuring something interesting, instead of just going for vanilla - the market makers in that space are WAY behind equities/fixed income/currencies), the FX hedging, compliance, etc. Market risk is another are just filled with opportunities - the key is to focus on UX, or they'll stick with Excel.
These processes are not, or badly, automated because the IT departments are large, political animals and the traders (who run the companies and are the major shareholders) are the type of people happy to deep dive into a war zone and have kalashnikovs pointed at their belly in the hope of a 20-30% discount, or who can trek 10 hours in the jungle to meet and charm the extended family of the man responsible for a country's grain exports, thus impressing him and securing a monopoly for life.
Still, since the work is by its very nature extremely human intensive, saving any time from the trader point of view, even for work that is traditionally passed down to the new guys, is very valuable, and the companies make enough money not to need to worry about the size of the bill, if the product is of a good enough quality. Adding reliability is another great angle. Catching a mistake on the FX hedging (traditionally one of the biggest sources of mistakes amongst the less technically inclined) as it happens, rather a few months later when the trade is unwound, might mean a few years' salary saved.
Of course, that would require gaining the trust of the traders. Good luck with that. Half a decade working closely with them should do it... and then you're up against the CTO defending his domain. Trust is way more valued than skill, although both are important.
Great industry though. Meritocratic, fast paced, high stakes, really interesting people. I miss it often.
What in life have you personally been frustrated with? What made it frustrating? What it didn't have to be that way? What would the better version of the world look like?
If you can't think of anything, then I'd get out and live more and study some along some tech-related path. The first will help you understand more of the world is and the second will give you more ideas about how the world could be.
The author of the article was working within a call center and got to see how it could be disrupted, price.
Not a perfect formula, but you can start to see areas that need improvement. Also make sure companies are willing to pay for it.