Ask HN: What would you pay $10,000 for right now?

25 points by marcamillion 8 years ago | 59 comments

What service have you always wanted someone to provide, product have you always wanted someone to build, skill you have always wanted someone to teach you, that you would pay $10,000 today for?

Please don't say random things, especially if you don't have $10,000 to spend right now. The whole idea of this question is to try to potentially discover value and to price out those that want "Snapchat for dogs for $500".

Edit 1: Requests like "Lifetime Access for" also don't qualify as viable responses....for obvious reasons.

gubsz 8 years ago |

I'd pay $10k to figure out what exactly is wrong with my body. I've had constant injuries or issue with my shoulder, knee, and back for the past 5 years. Feels like I'm falling apart due to old age but I'm not even past 25 yet.

fillskills 8 years ago | |

I would pay $10k for fixing my health problems or my wife’s. I have been sick for nearly 6 months now. My wife has had her symptoms for nearly 2 years now. Both are slowly getting worse over time. But it’s not bad enough that doctors care enough

DoreenMichele 8 years ago | |

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/21811497_The_coloni...

Maybe get tested for kissing bug disease (assuming you are American). It can significantly impact the joints and is seldom tested for.

If you have it, I take PayPal.;)

caser 8 years ago | |

If you're in or around NYC (or can get there), go see Kevin Paretti - Kinephys.com. I was in a similar boat, had surgery, saw 10+ PTs over 4 years. Within 6 months of seeing this guy I was back to full contact sports. Hands down 10x better than anyone else I saw.

WingH 8 years ago |

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me the Linkedin company updates for any single company.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me real-time Asian news (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) content that matches a keyword.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that classifies an article into a topic such as politics, tech, etc.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that shows me the annual/monthly trends for FB likes, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, and App Store downloads for public companies that are in the equity market so I can analyze these companies and buy/sell prior to earnings.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me a stream of Instagram updates that have a certain keyword.

I would pay $10,000 for an API that gives me the social metrics, given an Instagram handle.

And yes, I work in the social marketing industry :)

marcamillion 8 years ago | |

Hi WingH, Can you update your profile with contact info, for anyone that would like to contact you about potentially providing any of the above.

Thanks.

ztratar 8 years ago | |

I don't feel like any of these ideas are worth $10k to most people, to be perfectly honest.

10k for a LI api to a company page? I don't get it.

jonknee 8 years ago | | |

The question wasn't directed to most people which is a good thing because I don't think most people would spend $10k on anything other than a car or a home.

WingH 8 years ago | | |

You are most likely right, but OP was asking what was worth $10K to me personally, not what I thought would be worth $10K to others :)

Just giving my domain-specific 2 cents.

cjalmeida 8 years ago | |

>I would pay $10,000 for an API that classifies an article into a topic such as politics, tech, etc.

That's fairly doable at decent accuracy with using current NLP techniques. At that budget I guess you can find a smart freelance dev to do the job (wink ;)

wgator 8 years ago | |

Want to exchange information? I can provide at least 3 of those APIs almost immediately. Working in the same industry, pretty solid technology.

WingH 8 years ago | | |

sure email me at henley dot wing at gmail.

thedirt0115 8 years ago |

This is super niche, but a service that takes a video upload (or youtube link) of a professional pool/billiards match and generates overhead shot diagrams for every shot of the match. Why do I want this? Diagramming shots is the most tedious part of making a book where you analyze shots from pro matches -- this has been done by hand before and sells for ~$50 -- https://www.amazon.com/Capelle-9-Ball-Archer-vs-Reyes/dp/096... . I've played with this a bit, taking photos of a table, doing transforms to get an overhead layout (with OpenCV perspective transforms and Hough detection), but it's never come out quite right. I also want motion tracking of balls so you can generate arrows for where the balls went, but honestly, just the static "balls at rest" diagrams would be worth it.

manglav 8 years ago | |

Do you have any contact info? I'd like to give this a shot as a pool player and a computer vision engineer.

thedirt0115 8 years ago | | |

Awesome, I'll email you!

romeoEtJoliet 8 years ago |

I'm aware of luxury services that provide similar services, but I would pay 10k for a matchmaking service that could guarantee a lifetime connection with partner.

It could be a service that goes the extra mile in terms of discovery to find someone compatible in terms of values, interests and hobbies, etc.

caser 8 years ago | |

No one can guarantee a lifetime connection. Relationships take work, and people are complicated. They change over time. All one can do is put in the work and appreciate the time when it's going well.

muzani 8 years ago |

I do a lot of freelancing but I have difficulty dealing with clients while doing the heavy lifting of tech work. Programming can be emotionally exhausting, and it's worse when dealing with clients who are manipulative.

I'd gladly pay $10,000 for someone who could just handle sales and customer service for a project that pays $20,000 or more.

marcamillion 8 years ago | |

When you say handle sales, do you mean handle product development for each project that you have landed? So basically an account manager? Or do you mean someone that goes and lines up new sales? Just want to get specifics, so everybody understands what is being discussed.

muzani 8 years ago | | |

Someone who manages what we promise to the client and how much they pay for it.

A huge part of the role is just deciding requirements. Whether this thing is possible, how much it costs, keeping the client from sneaking in something impossible, and lowering the costs to us when we can't deliver something that is too expensive to build.

The person has to be good at not overpromising things. Or managing client expectations.

Many clients prefer waterfall because it's easy to estimate project costs but it tends to be extremely costly to both parties. So someone who can educate the client in how to work from an agile perspective, suited to their budget restrictions.

There's the legal landmine to maneuver. What happens when things go wrong.

There are also many unethical people, especially in large companies, who are experts at pushing people into those landmines. They ask for impossible things then refuse to pay when those conditions are not met.

So the ideal person or service needs to be good at reading clients and avoiding these kinds of contracts.

caser 8 years ago | |

You should check out Toptal / Gigster.

xchaotic 8 years ago |

I would pay $10k for a share in an honest, low fee property investment. I can't afford losing liquidity to buy another whole property, but I'd like to invest a proportion of my savings against rental/commercial properties, as directly as possible, with as few intermediares and with many safeguards for bad times.

dmeeker 8 years ago | |

If you're an accredited investor and willing to make it $25k instead of $10k, this is totally available right now on CrowdStreet and similar sites (although CS is the clear front-runner in quality and quantity of offerings).

Sponsors looking to raise equity to purchase a property pay a fee to list their projects on the site, CS does some amount of due diligence on both sponsor and project, and when you invest you're buying an equity stake in the entity that will actually purchase the property.

If you want "safeguards for bad times" you'll have to do your due diligence and dial your risk tolerances appropriately.

agitator 8 years ago | |

Yeah, I want to do this as well. When Tesla announced the gigafactory in Reno, I really wanted to pool together with others to buy an apartment complex or something.

xchaotic 8 years ago | | |

Did the property prices spike up as expected?

xchaotic 8 years ago | | |

something similar could also work when Amazon announces HQ2

ibdf 8 years ago | |

You should check out fundrise and similar sites. It allows you to invest on real state without buying a whole property.

fludlight 8 years ago | |

Have you considered REITs?

xchaotic 8 years ago | | |

I have looked at a few, the fees and the opaque structure scared me away. I would like the control, of being able to sell my share on the open market at any point (at close to face value, obviously) and being able to benefit from a proportion of rental income where ROI < 20 years.

hitsurume 8 years ago |

I'd pay $10,000 per eye to fix my crappy eyesight, its so bad that Lasik isn't an option for me.

I'd pay $10,000 for a self driving car, because I have crappy eyesight and can't actually drive a car.

thedirt0115 8 years ago | |

You should consider flying to Japan/Korea to get Toric ICL if it's an option. It's not FDA approved for the US yet, but I've had friends that did it, and not one of them have any regrets. It's been a couple years since, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had even newer/better options available.

secabeen 8 years ago | | |

Do you have references for doctors there that focus on medical tourists?

bernardino 8 years ago |

A few things I suppose:

- A mentor: I guess what Mark Hanna was to Jordan Belfort - I'm an undergraduate and just starting out my career, it would be cool to have a good, close friend who has experience, has a large network, etc, and would be willing to show me the ropes

- A financial advisor: A bit similar to the latter, a good friend who shares knowledge with me about finance, is open to endless questions, helps me with my finances (investing, etc)

ponyfleisch 8 years ago |

Extremely competent, perfectionist healthcare. Ideally the money would directly fund studies and the program would offer opportunities to participate in studies as well. Focus should not just be on acute issues, but the smaller quirks that a lot of people have. As an aside, most medical doctors i've encountered have a very bad confidence/merit ratio.

cm2012 8 years ago |

Leads I can resell for $11,000. Sounds like a copout answer, but I basically pay Facebook $XXXk a month to do just that.

marcamillion 8 years ago | |

Definitely a copout :)

Can you explain a bit more....do you have a way of gathering those leads now? A way that can potentially be automated?

cm2012 8 years ago | | |

Zapier for $150 a month solves my needs very handily. My lifetime value to them is probably going to be 10k.

ocrcustomserver 8 years ago | |

Like leads "locked" in pdf documents?

cm2012 8 years ago | | |

Not sure what that means?

skate22 8 years ago |

Lifetime unrestricted high speed data plan with global coverage

marcamillion 8 years ago | |

Partially a cop-out. All "lifetime access to" responses, aren't realistic responses.

xchaotic 8 years ago | | |

Depends on how you define 'lifetime'. Sadly I've seen many SaaS businesses dia and with htem the 'lifetime' access. Otoh my Plex Pass value is still holding strong. Finally if we're talking true lifetime, it can be averaged out to the median lifespan of subscribers, in my case $10k 'lifetime' it would work out to <$25/month

gesman 8 years ago |

Link analysis visualization

marcamillion 8 years ago | |

Care to expound on this further?

gesman 8 years ago | | |

Well designed .js based, interactive link analysis functionality capable of taking feed of external data and showing links and relationships between nodes in a way that does not look like a mess on the screen.

Don't confuse it with Google page links to each other. It's not about SEO. It's about having an ability to visualize relationships between entities.

(A)->(B)->(C)

      |

      v   

     (D)->(E)

None of D3.js can do it properly

monitorman 8 years ago | | |

I believe he used one of those marketing phrase generators when he came up with this response.

CyanLite2 8 years ago |

A universal flu & cold vaccine for me and my family.

grover_hartmann 8 years ago |

1 BTC.

1812Overture 8 years ago |

$10,001

jriot 8 years ago |

Farm land.