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Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund (2008)

242 pointsby evsamsonovover 7 years ago

33 comments

abaloneover 7 years ago
My take (just the first five):<p><i>1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom.</i><p>Spotify &amp; Apple Music. Pay $10&#x2F;mo for unlimited access to most music. Took the wind out of music piracy. (TV &amp; film are undergoing a similar transition to subscription models, more slowly.)<p><i>2. Simplified browsing...Grandparents and small children don&#x27;t want the full web...</i><p>Apps. Remember this list is from just one year after the iPhone launched, so everything was still &quot;the web&quot;. It was almost unthinkable that native, installed apps would have such a resurgence. But the iPad is exactly this, a simplified computer that young kids and grandparents love to use.<p><i>3. New news.</i><p>Still in flux. Nobody has figured out a business model. Over the past century consumers were trained to expect free, ad-supported news. Surprisingly, online ads have not worked out well for publishers.<p><i>4. Outsourced IT. &amp; 5. Enterprise software 2.0.</i><p>AWS. There&#x27;s a lot of higher-level SaaS packaged services too and it sounds like that&#x27;s what pg was envisioning. But the real hero here is AWS and its &quot;primitives&quot;-based, bottom-up approach to outsourcing all computing.
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lr4444lrover 7 years ago
Fix news? <i>it was enough to keep writing stories about how the president met with someone and they each said conventional things written in advance by their staffs</i><p>Yeah, we now recognize that as propaganda. Maybe the web is finally helping people wake up to the fact that news was never really working.
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ghaffover 7 years ago
It&#x27;s interesting to read the list and contemplate among other things the ideas that have arguably been solved (or at least partially solved) but in ways that weren&#x27;t obvious.<p>For example, #1 about RIAA, I&#x27;d argue that it was never solved but with streaming stations in particular, it&#x27;s just not such a pressing issue today.<p>Some certainly haven&#x27;t happened (e.g. fixing news).<p>The list also seems to assume a lot more replacement of incumbents (Craigslist, Ebay, Wikipedia) than has been the case.
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CodeSheikhover 7 years ago
For #8. Dating, it has progressed pretty significantly with the likes of OkCupid, swipe-based apps (Tinder, Bubmle, Hinge), CMB to name a few. Heck it has done so well that IAC spun off its dating group as a separate business entity with its own IPO of The Match Group.
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BerislavLopacover 7 years ago
My main problem with this list is that in most of the cases it&#x27;s basically asking for &quot;faster horses&quot;. Most of the items are not problems themselves, but traditional and long existing solutions for problems: news (for the problem of being informed), dating sites (for the problem of meeting romantic partners), auctions (the problem of buying and selling unwanted items), advertising (for the problem in making money when publishing content) etc. The WebOS, really? Sir Tim solved that long ago.
pascalxusover 7 years ago
I solved #16! If you are &quot;searching&quot; for a food or recipe based on it&#x27;s nutritional contents (for example: I want foods&#x2F;recipes high in potassium and selenium, but low in sodium), check out <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kale.world&#x2F;c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kale.world&#x2F;c</a> You can search by over 20 different nutrient types, weight them, and filter them to your hearts content.
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curoover 7 years ago
pg is Nostradamus, this list is amazingly prescient<p>- #5 explosion of upstream SaaS<p>- #6 tons of higher-res components of CRM software<p>- #9 instagram<p>- #11 google drive<p>- #22 smartsheet<p>wonder if the few on here that haven&#x27;t been solved (wrapper for customer service) are simply unsolvable, or something has to shift for the economics to make way for them.
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markivraknatapover 7 years ago
#17 New payment methods - Cryptocurrencies
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seanalltogetherover 7 years ago
I would love it if someone tackled the auctions market better. Ebay continues to focus more on being a marketplace, and promoting buy it nows. A real auction house should extend the time limit as long as people are putting in bids.
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nathan_f77over 7 years ago
I&#x27;ve been working on something related to 7. Something your company needs that doesn&#x27;t exist.<p>I built FormAPI [1] because I used to work at a company that needed to fill out a lot of forms. (Gusto [2])<p>Turns out there&#x27;s not a huge number of programmers that need to fill out PDFs. But there&#x27;s a big market for things like online forms and electronic signatures, so I&#x27;m looking into some different directions. But I think 7. is a great place to start.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;formapi.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;formapi.io&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gusto.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gusto.com&#x2F;</a>
alantover 7 years ago
I wonder how this list changed in the past 10 years. Time for a new list PG?
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shafyyover 7 years ago
#13: &quot;One route would be to start with test prep services, for which there&#x27;s already demand, and then expand into teaching kids more than just how to score high on tests.&quot;<p>This is what we&#x27;re trying :-)<p>Especially the paragraph:
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golergkaover 7 years ago
#1 Spotify #2 Facebook #3 Facebook, Buzzfeed #8 Tinder #9 Instagram #10 Alibaba? #12 Facebook #13 Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy #14 Fitbit? #17 Stripe, crypto #19 AWS #27 IoT #29 WIX
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symboleproabout 7 years ago
Read this post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=250704" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=250704</a>
notjustanymikeover 7 years ago
For #26, we got chatroulette. Be careful what you ask for.
eliblockabout 7 years ago
I&#x27;d say that almost everything besides #1 has been well addressed by new companies or the big 5 since 2008. But the RIAA is a symptom that went away - the problem is still there, and streaming is only part of the answer. Spotify may seem like a solid solution to end users, but artists can&#x27;t earn much from their content alone, and that means less people can work on creative projects.
g5095about 7 years ago
I have the answer to #3, New news, I really do. It&#x27;s been percolating in my mind for 12 months now, I know how to build it too. However I am not a business man and I have a family to feed so I&#x27;m working on someone else&#x27;s software to put the kids through school. - every-dev-ever.
nugiover 7 years ago
Still largely unsolved, or poorly solved issues. Seems less precient than timeless.
jamestimminsabout 7 years ago
For bad customer service, I&#x27;m curious if he meant services that the corporation can pay for to outsource quality CS, or a concierge approach where the user calls the concierge, who then messages the relevant company.
hal9000xpover 7 years ago
About &quot;8. Dating&quot;. I think over last 10 years, online dating has not been solved at all.<p>Here are typical problems which nearly all dating sites run into:<p>1. Women got way more attention than men. Such environment stimulates aggressive strategies on both sides. Men must spend a lot of effort to reach as many women as possible. Women must filter out males as hard as possible. Men are discouraged to carefully read profile of women because probability of particular woman responding a message quite small. By the same reason, men are discouraged to write personalized first message. Such economics create hostile environment for both genders. Men got upset that women don&#x27;t respond them or respond lazily (i.e. on your long sentence or question, she may just say - &quot;nice&quot;). Women got upset that they have inbox full of messages from men but nobody seems have deep interest in them. And I didn&#x27;t even mention the case when lots of sexually unsatisfied men may harass women because it&#x27;s cheap (i.e. no consequences). And just banning those men isn&#x27;t viable long term solution. An apps like Tinder, where you can&#x27;t write a message till you get mutual likes don&#x27;t change dating economics at all.<p>2. Both genders are encouraged to participate in aggressive photos contest. I&#x27;ve had countless personal disappointments on the first date when I&#x27;ve seen completely different woman in real life than on pictures. They can use Photoshop, they can take selfies under specific angle. It&#x27;s very often that pictures does not show real person at all.<p>3. Similarly, I&#x27;ve had countless personal disappointments because she turned to have completely different character in real life. The problem is that you used text messages in order to know each other. Dating is very subtle area and you cut off a lot of information if you rely only on text messages and 2D photos. There are much more information in non-verbal communication about your possible compatibility.<p>I&#x27;ve never seen a single serious attempt to solve this problem. Tinder doesn&#x27;t even try to solve these problems, they just used mobile apps hype in order to get traction. I&#x27;ve seen the same model (mutual match before you can write message) in 2006.<p>Dating is area full of stereotypes and political correctness. It&#x27;s easy to take side. Either feminist side and blame men for being sexual predators or you can blame women as being harsh filtering out men without giving any second thought.<p>Instead we should think for game theoretic data driven approach.<p>Now, we have advanced ML algorithms and big data. We can use ML, we can use game theory. Why not create online dating startup which encourages people to know each other well. And discourages aggressive behaviour on both sides. In other words, we should create totally different economics of online dating.<p>An online dating site which promotes quality over quantity and personalized behaviour.<p>P.S. I have no idea why I gather downvotes as problems with dating sites are very obvious. They are pretty hard to solve but it doesn&#x27;t mean these problems do not exist.
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evsamsonovover 7 years ago
This list is worth to recall and consider because it is actual in our days.
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Zakabout 7 years ago
As I was on HN in 2008 and paying attention to these sorts of things, I&#x27;ll pretend I&#x27;m qualified to offer opinions.<p>1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom - Streaming, both paid and ad-supported seems to be the answer here. It&#x27;s prone to monopolies and music streaming doesn&#x27;t seem to pay artists very well, but Netflix is producing quite a bit of original content.<p>2. Simplified browsing - mobile ate this.<p>3. New news - appears largely unsolved. A few big national newspapers are are doing serious reporting, some newcomers (blogs) are doing the same without a print version and local newspapers are still mostly bad. Social sharing of news mostly hasn&#x27;t made things better.<p>4. Outsourced IT - &quot;the cloud&quot; hasn&#x27;t replaced everything, but increasingly, companies do seem to like software that stores data on someone else&#x27;s server and gets delivered by a browser.<p>5. Enterprise software 2.0 - not a field I have enough contact with to comment on.<p>6. More variants of CRM - as above, I&#x27;m not very qualified to comment. I know there are startups doing things in this space.<p>7. Something your company needs that doesn&#x27;t exist - kind of too vague to respond to. AirBnB was an example of this.<p>8. Dating - Tinder is the main winner I&#x27;m aware of. I&#x27;m not quite sure how they solved the chicken and egg issue, though it appears they were helped by Facebook-based login and doing their initial release to students at a small set of universities.<p>9. Photo&#x2F;video sharing services. Instagram seems to be the biggest winner here. Imgur, started as image-hosting for reddit is trying to offer reddit-like features and keep the users on its own site.<p>10. Auctions - I think this one missed the mark a little. People don&#x27;t want to <i>auction</i> things for the most part, they just want to <i>sell</i> things. As an online marketplace accessible to individuals, nothing has really displaced Ebay. Facebook is doing a bit for some niches with sale-oriented groups and built-in payments, and there&#x27;s Etsy. It&#x27;s possible to sell on Amazon as an individual, and a few people do, but Ebay still dominates.<p>11. Web Office apps - Google ate this, and Microsoft has entries in this space too.<p>12. Fix advertising - Facebook and other social platforms have at least made the problem <i>different</i> by having businesses interact with customers directly and paying for reach. This is not a solved problem by any means.<p>13. Online learning - massive open online courses are improving access to education, but the fact that a lot of situations still demand credentials from more traditional educational institutions is keeping this approach from being too dominant. I expect more development here long-term.<p>14. Tools for measurement - this seems like a feature more than a product. A lot of productivity tools have metrics built in, e.g. github.<p>15. Off the shelf security - there seem to be some things available here, but nothing really dominating the market.<p>16. A form of search that depends on design. I&#x27;m not certain, but I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s anything here. What people seem to be more interested in is something that&#x27;s not big, scary and delivering tailored results. That&#x27;s not a huge market, and DuckDuckGo seems to have most of it.<p>17. New payment methods - Paypal is still big, Facebook handles payments now, mobile OS makers and device manufacturers are doing things. Stripe and Square helped with credit card processing, but that&#x27;s not really a new payment method. Cryptocurrency is a thing, but nobody&#x27;s been very successful actually using it as a payment method.<p>18. The WebOS - stuff like Zapier and ITTT are providing some plumbing, but nothing very OS-like.<p>19. Application and&#x2F;or data hosting - &quot;the cloud&quot; is obviously huge and dominated by AWS and Google.<p>20. Shopping guides - I&#x27;m calling this a miss, with most of the exceptions being niches too small to be more than supplemental income for one person (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;flashlights.parametrek.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;flashlights.parametrek.com</a> is a neat example, and the creator has an account on HN by the same name). Most people just shop on Amazon. There&#x27;s low-quality content&#x2F;affiliate marketing in this space, but that&#x27;s arguably just SEO spam.<p>21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses - I&#x27;m not sure what&#x27;s going on in this space. I haven&#x27;t heard about anything making big waves.<p>22. A web-based Excel&#x2F;database hybrid - Unless Google Sheets counts, I don&#x27;t think this has panned out yet.<p>23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia - Deletionists still seem to rule Wikipedia, and nothing has displaced it.<p>24. A buffer against bad customer service - I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s been much movement here. I suppose you could use something like Taskrabbit to hire someone to talk to Comcast for you.<p>25. A Craigslist competitor - Facebook groups have displaced Craigslist a bit and Ebay has experimented with some local marketplace stuff, but I think that&#x27;s mostly it.<p>26. Better video chat - Google and Apple built better Skypes. There&#x27;s appear.in, Discord offers video, etc.... There&#x27;s a lot happening here, but it seems essentially evolutionary, not revolutionary.<p>27. Hardware&#x2F;software hybrids - smartphones ate a lot of the applications for this, but Arduino and various single-board computers enabling DIY projects are cool.<p>28. Fixing email overload - I&#x27;m not seeing a single overarching solution here, but things like Gmail priority inbox, in-browser notifications and such seem to be chipping away at it.<p>29. Easy site builders for specific markets - I&#x27;m sure there are a few of these that are more niche. Shopify is kind of Viaweb 2.0. People in some niches seem to prefer to just have accounts on social media and have little interest in standalone websites.<p>30. Startups for startups - I probably haven&#x27;t been paying attention to the right things to list these. A lot of stuff that&#x27;s not very startup-specific like CRM, &quot;cloud&quot; services and finance software can, and probably does make inroads by being startup-friendly.
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nickpsecurityover 7 years ago
No 1 isn&#x27;t a startup problem: it&#x27;s regular political corruption. An industry cartel looking to preserve or expand on billions in revenue paid politicians to ensure that with stronger copyright laws. That&#x27;s on top of their business practices they control. The combination keeps them rich on monopolies in an industry they control rather than the artists the laws are supposedly there for. Similar claims can be made for US patent system as well with big companies suppressing innovation with them or trolls draining the economy. Similar concepts. The people did nothing to counter these with many not even knowing companies were paying for these laws or with what effects. One result among many on copyright side is the legitimate buyers of content might have to deal with the experience in the link below since it can be a felony to do otherwise.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;4.bp.blogspot.com&#x2F;-1ToS1gYD3wQ&#x2F;TlxUHSp-uKI&#x2F;AAAAAAAAFwg&#x2F;ZkvyGKqZRws&#x2F;s1600&#x2F;funny-graphs-pirates-vs-players.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;4.bp.blogspot.com&#x2F;-1ToS1gYD3wQ&#x2F;TlxUHSp-uKI&#x2F;AAAAAAAAFw...</a><p>So, the solution to this very political problem might be one of the following:<p>1. Creating non-profit organizations that collect dues to lobby on behalf of voters against corporate interests. They&#x27;ll need to have focused legislation and marketing to reach a lot of people. They&#x27;ll need a lot of money to outspend the plutocrats who have piles of money. The competition will at least be happening where the root problem is to eliminate some things like bans on reverse engineering, the severity of punishment for filesharing, or changes to copyright itself that limits labels control over business models. The rest will follow after root causes are solved at level of corrupt politicians introducing them.<p>2. They eliminate all politicians doing that in ways that cause consumers harm. This might take a combo of political campaigns for replacements plus media campaigns about harms predecessors were&#x2F;are doing. Copyright&#x2F;patent system would be but one. Might also try to get the new politicians to pass laws limiting donations by private parties with corporate ones eliminated entirely. Taxpayers themselves will pay whoever wins a fortune plus subsidize various stages of the election process so they work for us. Bribes will be felonies leading to life in prison.<p>This is all kind of like how we say certain things like governments banning encryption are political rather than technical problems. The people&#x27;s action in legal system and media are needed to solve them. Lawmakers that will constantly do what&#x27;s in incumbents&#x27; interests, even imprisoning innovators making alternatives, have to be fought at their level for best results. I mean, do combine as many methods of resistance as possible. Just startups or tech alone aren&#x27;t the solution if problem starts with laws paid for with bribes.
vinchucoabout 7 years ago
A 10-year followup to this could be interesting.
dzinkover 7 years ago
We are fixing 12 (Advertising) all the way down to the fundamentals, with sprinkles of 16 (A form of search that depends on design) and 20 (Shopping guides) in the mix.
itronitronabout 7 years ago
for hi-res CRM I encourage people to look at Tenfold, which is a startup in Austin
itronitronabout 7 years ago
just realized this was originally posted 10 years ago...
peter303over 7 years ago
Cloud may have done some these like 4 5 7 9 11 18 22
beefmanover 7 years ago
<i>1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom.</i><p>Music became irrelevant.<p><i>2. Simplified browsing.</i><p>The web became irrelevant. Replaced by Wikipedia, Amazon, and Facebook (none of which YC funded).<p><i>3. New news.</i><p>Journalism never covered itself in glory, but approximately half of the separation between the NY Times and Weekly World News has been erased since PG wrote this. Reddit probably didn&#x27;t have anything to do with it.<p><i>4. Outsourced IT. 5. Enterprise software 2.0.</i><p>These two items seem to be the same. It&#x27;s one area where I would say startups have been tremendously successful. If you can call thought-terminating technologies like Slack successful.<p><i>6. More variants of CRM.</i><p>Interacting with customers hasn&#x27;t got much better.<p><i>7. Something your company needs that doesn&#x27;t exist.</i><p>I&#x27;d say this has been a success. Everything from corporate formation to payroll to office space is now plug-and-play.<p><i>8. Dating. 9. Photo&#x2F;video sharing services.</i><p>The iPhone existed when this was written, but that the smartphone represented a shift at least as large as the original PC revolution is nowhere on the radar.<p><i>10. Auctions.</i><p>Everybody hates them. The last 5 times &#x2F; 5 years I&#x27;ve used Ebay, it&#x27;s been with the &quot;buy it now&quot; feature. I can remember at least two smartphone apps that promised to get rid of unwanted stuff through auctions, which no longer exist, but I can&#x27;t remember their names.<p><i>11. Web Office apps.</i><p>The Windows desktop world was already looking dire in 2008, and its slide continued. Web apps, mostly from Google and Microsoft, picked up some of the business. Rich text documents (Word) are also a lot less important today.<p><i>12. Fix advertising.</i><p>I&#x27;ve been blocking them since this was written, so I&#x27;m not sure. In general, I&#x27;m skeptical that &quot;paid human discourse&quot; is something that can be fixed.<p><i>14. Tools for measurement.</i><p>I think he means SEO, aka &quot;machine learning&quot;.<p><i>15. Off the shelf security.</i><p>Doesn&#x27;t exist, but a lot of it is sold. Did YC get any of that action?<p><i>16. A form of search that depends on design.</i><p>?<p><i>17. New payment methods.</i><p>Apple Pay has potential but has so far been disappointing. Same with cryptocurrencies.<p><i>18. The WebOS.</i><p>Nope.<p><i>19. Application and&#x2F;or data hosting.</i><p>Sure.<p><i>20. Shopping guides.</i><p>Stores are so 2008.<p><i>21. Finance software for individuals and small business.</i><p>Mint was acquired I guess, but nobody uses it.<p><i>22. A web-based Excel&#x2F;database hybrid.</i><p>There was a good try at this, which existed when this was written: Dabble DB. It went under in 2011. Silk shut down in November,[1] leaving Airtable and Fieldbook...<p><i>23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia.</i><p>Doesn&#x27;t exist, and at this point we&#x27;re lucky to have Wikipedia. It&#x27;s clear to me that our society could not presently create it from scratch.<p><i>24. A buffer against bad customer service.</i><p>While good customer service is not more common than in 2008 (see #6 above), really really bad service is much more rare. Not sure who gets credit for this. Twitter and other platforms that let word about bad service spread easily may deserve some credit.<p><i>25. A Craigslist competitor.</i><p>Pretty much every startup ever. Still no overall competitor for the general case (online classifieds) though.<p><i>26. Better video chat.</i><p>Video chat is too intrusive for many applications. Apple Facetime, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Skype own the market.<p><i>27. Hardware&#x2F;software hybrids.</i><p>?<p><i>28. Fixing email overload.</i><p>It wasn&#x27;t fixed but email has become less relevant.<p><i>29. Easy site builders for specific markets.</i><p>Again, websites are less important now. Squarespace isn&#x27;t more specific than Weebly.<p><i>30. Startups for startups.</i><p>See #7 above.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.silk.co&#x2F;post&#x2F;167155630197&#x2F;its-time-to-say-goodbye" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.silk.co&#x2F;post&#x2F;167155630197&#x2F;its-time-to-say-goodby...</a>
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Klunyover 7 years ago
Use words, not list numbers, people. You&#x27;re not doing yourself any favors.
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gregorymichaelover 7 years ago
&gt; 22. A web-based Excel&#x2F;database hybrid.<p>Airtable founders: &quot;Hold my beer.&quot;
kayallover 7 years ago
&gt;2. Simplified browsing.<p>Midori is the simple browser I have ever used.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;midori-browser.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;midori-browser.org&#x2F;</a><p>&gt;17. New payment methods<p>This one has certainly come true! Cryptocurrencies have absolutely exploded.<p>&gt;28. Fixing email overload. A<p>Astro tries to solve this problem. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helloastro.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helloastro.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;</a> Know what to focus on and what to clean up<p>Astrobot’s AI-powered Insights remind you to follow up on important emails, questions, time-specific requests, and @mentions.<p>Plus, Astrobot makes suggestions about lists to unsubscribe from, emails to archive, and emails to move to folders.
bencollier49over 7 years ago
Arguably, things like DoNotPay are a response to 24 (&quot;A buffer against bad customer service&quot;)