If you think this thread should be started only every other Sunday or monthly, please state it in your comment.

A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.

(PLEASE upvote if you like this post to be seen by more people, as someone in the previous Idea Sunday mentioned the post with less points than number of comments will be penalized in ranking. Thanks.)

A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.

Is there any replacement for that thread? Any website? Or shall we reactivate this thread?

Thank you in advance,

I've seen the idea pop up a few times past week, are you interested in picking this up again?

We've got every kind of hacker on here (eng, biz, data, mkt...). Let's start a project and collaborate.

We can wrap up Idea Sunday with a poll of the top 10 ideas (via comments in Idea Sunday thread) and all vote on one project to build as a community each week.

Who's in.

From the previous one: "A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on." -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910

Links to some interesting Idea Sundays happened earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7541601

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7582077

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7616910

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9165278

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654771

EDIT: Well, HN admins don't see this adds a good value to HN core. More on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693640

Together we can strengthen our ideas by exposing them to others and introducing them to the world.

Go!

A cursory Google reveals no one doing this, but I reserve the right to be wrong.

Instead of a "profile-centric" dating site, i.e. a site that essentially just displays/matches profiles, then leaves it up to the users to arrange meetings, I'd like to create a "date-centric" dating site.

The site would have specific, pre-fabricated dates. For example, if you were in LA (as I am), one date might be "Friday at 6PM: A stroll through Universal City walk and drinks at Saddle Ranch (don't forget to ride the bull!)" Another could be "Sunday at 9AM: A morning hike to the Hollywood sign followed by pancakes at Roscoes."

The dates would fill up on a first-come, first-served basis (think poker sit-n-go's).

As you can see, the idea is to be a little less focused on creating perfect matches and a little more focused on creating fun dates.

To that end, many of the dates could be double or even triple dates. A group of two or three guys (or gals) could sign up for something they always wanted to do and have a few members of the opposite (or same) sex show up to join them.

Perhaps profiles could put some limits on the type of person one would like to date (age, hobbies, etc.) but overall, the dates themselves would probably be a pretty good filter. The type of person that shows up for the "sushi and night club" date is likely different from the person who shows up for the "hiking and picnic" date.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

1. They don't seem to display in order so new comments coming in can appear anywhere making me have to scroll through all the comments again just to find the new ones (even with browser plug-ins that highlight new comments).

2. There is no way to just view top level comments (yes, I have a browser plugin that allows me to collapse comments, which I think HN should do on its own, but I'd have to manually collapse each one just to read the top comments). Ideally I'd like a fast way to view all top level comments by default

Some threads where this immediately becomes applicable are threads like "Who's Hiring" and "Idea Sunday", etc... I'm sure there have been other popular threads where comments just grow out of control and I wish there was a better way to manage this.

But apparently no one has stopped to analyse this paradoxical result. Because no system whatsoever creates more work the less it operates. So how do people break physics?

The hilariously obvious reason people are more productive with fewer hours is because of sleep. Every 24 hours we start afresh and hopefully rested. Every 24 hours we top up in caffeine, affection, calories, and get a few more chores out of the way. So it makes no logical sense to cram as many hours of work in a single day if you can leverage the restful effects of sleep and having a circadian cycle.

Taking this idea to its extreme, why do we even have weekends? Why do we cram all our creative efforts in 5 days and hope that we recover over two of them? This is not how our body works. I posit it's just a concept borne from modern employment structure and the Judeo-Christian idea of the Sabbath and Sunday, not an actual physiological need.

I know many of you with families or salaried employment have good reasons why you might want to have some time for yourself over those two days but, assuming you are working for yourself and are free from the strict rules imposed by an employer, my question is:

Would it not make more sense to spread your work over the full week, and have more free time for everything else every single day, rather than fit work into 5 days a week and then fit all your hobby and family time into the remaining two days?

Would it not make more sense to work 8-1 every day, have time for your hobbies, the shopping and quality time with loved ones, than 8-4 (with 1h lunch break) Monday to Friday? Would one not prefer having one hour for their favourite hobby every day rather than binging on it only on weekends?

Any search result for "work a little every day" or "work 7 days a week" is totally useless to explore this idea further.

Lets talk about our current pain in side project/ hobby/ business/ work.

It can be small or medium thing, for what is not easy to find or buy solution of the shelf due to not availability or price.

Looking forward hearings from you HN.

I've had enough.

Hear me out. I've spent the last 5 years of my life slaving away on startups and new business ideas and I'm failing, bad. So tonight I've come to the conclusion that I clearly have no fucking idea what I'm doing. I've lost pretty much all my friends because of the time I've spent trying to make my ideas work. I have spent money I can't afford on ideas that have never came to light. And now it's 2:31am on a Sunday evening and my girlfriend is in bed wondering why I won't come give her a cuddle, but I can't. Because I know I have to wake up tomorrow morning and hit the repeat button on my life again. I have to work all day just to put a roof over our heads. She wants to travel and damn I want to take her so bad, but I can't. I hate what my life has become.

But I have a solution, because I know complaining won't change this. Truth is, I have no idea about business. That's why I can't do it. I come from a working class family, I have working class friends, no one I know has any idea about business or even any interest in the topic. I've read a lot though: on business, development, management & self help. I can do it, I know I can, I just need some guidance. So here I am; asking for guidance. I have about $5000 and I'm willing to put that into an idea, and I have some of those too. So who's ready to play ball with me? I can guarantee the technical skills, could you guarantee the business skills? Maybe together we won't need to press the repeat button on our alarm clocks next Monday.

Let me know,
hnineedhelp [at] gmail.com

Every once in a while, I like to offer my time to help other passionate people be a little more successful with their goals. If there's anything I can help you with, just ask here. No strings whatsoever.

If you'd like my help: Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish...your goal. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out.

I've done this before a few times now, and it's worked out well for everyone. Check out some of the previous "No strings" sessions I've done to get an idea of how I can help. (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mikegreenberg)

Cheers

PS: If you'd rather give than receive: Go find someone else to do something nice for...like give them a back rub. Those are fantastic! Or spend two minutes helping me validate a market. http://bit.ly/pmhS0U (Thank you!)

PPS: I will try to help all requests made before tomorrow afternoon or so and will attempt to complete by the end of Sunday. Be patient and check back. Also, I thought it was rude to mention before so I removed it, but I please keep requests to tasks I can do in ~15 minutes. I'll spend more time willingly, but smaller requests lets me help more people! Thanks. :)

PPPS: You guys are totally welcome to help each other out, too! (Request-maker, be sure to tip helpful replies!)

Based on some of the advice and information I received I decided that imperfect action was better than no action at all, so I went to my local San Diego Ruby meetup. I had some lengthy discussions with some of the folks that I met and concluded that as non-programmer attempting to manage full time hires was not practical and that subcontracting vs. full time was an appropriate next steps.

I then asked for recommendations, and along with a trusted and experienced PHP programming friend did some interviewing of the local talent. With the average cost estimates, timelines projections and learning curves - I figured it was time to expand my search rather than risk it with the two person companies that I was finding in San Diego.

I reached out to every provider listed on http://rubyonrails.org/ecosystem plus a list of people that they recommended to simply schedule an initial call.

My result, I was able to speak to 6 of the 17 providers that I called or emailed - the others did not even respond.

A few of them "disqualified me" during the initial calls as not having the budget, they suggested other trusted providers and sent me on my way. They did not get out of bed for less than $150,000 on a rails app and an additional $60,000 for the iPhone component. I certainly do appreciated them not wasting my time.

I had three fantastic conversations over the next two weeks and one of them said they said it was an awesome idea however they were not inspired to work in XYZ industry, but again I asked for the referral and called another set of providers.

After each of the calls and rejections I learned a ton about the vernacular and language of communicating my ideas to development teams and what is expected from the clients perspective in order to work effectively in an Agile environment.

So I refined my Keynote presentations, update my strategy and then something huge happened - I realized that part of the reason that I was not inspiring the providers was that I was not talking to them in the language that they wanted to hear....I was pitching business cases and they wanted 'user stories'.

So with the help of youtube / google I was able to get an immersive indoctrination into the distinctions of user stories, story carding, the differences between agile and waterfall / scrum and about 7 other Evernote notes full of info. After a few hours I was actually able to pick up the concepts and I have been giddy ever since.

Now I am not saying that I have ANY experience with the process, but it most certainly made sense! So I ended up building story cards and calling the providers back and communicating with a common language. What a difference that has made.

It may seem simple to those of you that do this for a living but because I did not want to use something as complicated as Pivotal Tracker and I needed to build cards really efficiently that I could sort and that the providers could have access to. I was unable to find any templates for the tools I already had so I build my own version in Keynote. (the template is located here if it would help anyone - http://bit.ly/i1phXs)

I am talking to my preferred provider tomorrow to see if we can hash out a plan and I have put my investor on hold until we all know what we are in for - both in time, and money.

I recruited the CFO of a company that I used to work for to build a financial model based on some projections and API costs and things have really come together nicely. I have also been following the advice and formatting of the "applying to ycombinator" - not because I intend to apply but it does ask some very important questions and provides great insight into the getting to the "why" of the project. (who knows, I might just click the submit button on Sunday after all of this effort)

This has been an amazing four week I have learned a lot - but it seems like a lifetime of experience 36 years :-) are really coming together to move mountains.

Thanks to HN for all the great insight and articles. As things progress, I will most certainly let you know.

Every once in a while, I like to offer my time to help other passionate people be a little more successful with their goals. If there's anything I can help you with, just ask here. No strings whatsoever. I've done this before a few times now, and it's worked out well for everyone. Check out some of the previous "No strings" sessions I've done to get an idea of how I can help. (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mikegreenberg)

A few requests: Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out. I will try to help all requests made before the end of today and will attempt to complete by the end of Sunday. Be patient and check back. Please keep requests to tasks I can do in ~15 minutes. I'll spend more time willingly, but smaller requests lets me help more people! Thanks. :)

An idea of some of the things I've helped others with recently:

- Led an interview for a non-technical entrepreneur looking for a tech co-founder

- Advising two startups-to-be who currently have no technical lead (pro bono)

- Helping my dad how to use the internet to teach his skills to others

- Regular feedback on projects that people are working on in my local community

I feel like I should do something a little special for this one since its the holidays. So the person (other than me) who helps "most generously" in this thread will get a copy of Eric Ries "The Lean Startup" shipped to them from Amazon. (If you already own the book, I'm happy to substitute it.) This will be subjectively chosen by me, but I think you all know how to be generous. I'll use any information in your profile I can find to contact you for delivery info. If I can't contact you, I'll broadcast on Twitter (@mikegreenberg) to try to reach you there. If you're not listening and I can't reach you, I pick someone else.

Cheers!! (And happy holidays!)

PS: If you'd rather give than receive: Go find someone else to do something nice for...like give them a back rub. Or leave your $0.02 for someone in this thread.

PPS: If this sounds too good to be true, here are some of my thoughts on why I do this: http://nobulb.com/2011/10/on-manufacturing-your-own-serendipity/

We interviewed for YC summer 2008, where we presented a similar vision of Classlet.com, but with a very different plan of attack. We were not accepted, but pg and team encouraged us to keep at it. Their expert opinion? "[Ultimately] what put us off was the difficulty in selling it to universities. This is one of those cases where existing solutions suck for a reason."

At the time, we both had well-paying fulltime job offers on our desks and graduation was fast approaching. We accepted them so we could bootstrap, but it also forced us to move to opposite coasts. Life got real busy real quick, but we kept working at it.

In October, I went to Brandon with an idea for a simpler approach with the explicit goal to initially sell to teachers directly. Long distance collaboration significantly slowed things down, but one Sunday at a time we built Classlet Assignments.

I'm now planning on moving to Seattle near Brandon to make bootstrapping easier and we are going to apply to YC again this fall. Whatever happens, we'll keep at it, but would appreciate any feedback you guys have.

Thanks.

It's that time again! Every once in a while, I like to offer my time to help other passionate people be a little more successful with their goals. If there's anything I can help you with, just ask here. No strings whatsoever. I've done this before a few times now, and it's worked out well for everyone. Check out some of the previous "No strings" sessions I've done to get an idea of how I can help. (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mikegreenberg)

A few requests: Be specific about what you're trying to fix/solve/accomplish. The more details you provide, the better I can help you out. I will try to help all requests made before the end of today and will attempt to complete by the end of Sunday. Be patient and check back. Please keep requests to tasks I can do in ~15 minutes. I'll spend more time willingly, but smaller requests lets me help more people! Thanks. :)

Cheers!! Mike

PS: I'm organizing my first workshop in South Florida at the end of the month (topic: Arduino for Newbies). If you know anyone who might be interested in participating, PLEASE pass this along! I'm investing a lot of time to make sure it rocks! Details at http://hackthisarduino.com