Ask HN: Does Your Startup Improve Lives?

My company, Legend, improves lives in a very tangible way. OneVoice is our iOS app that helps anyone who can't verbalize their thoughts "speak". Though not the first in the space, I focused on great design and it being very easy to use. So far it has been very well received.<p>I get messages every day from parents who are now able to communicate with their autistic children, grandparents who have suffered strokes who can now "speak" to their families, and many other great stories.<p>Link: <a href="http://thinklegend.com/OneVoice" rel="nofollow">http://thinklegend.com/OneVoice</a><p>Though it is very expensive for an iOS app ($199), it costs a fraction of the main competitors. Currently devices like the DynaVox ($7k+) are the most commonly used so OneVoice, including the iPad, is less than 10% of the cost.<p>It has been a joy to work on and I am looking forward to seeing how I can continue to improve it over the years to come.

I'm a co-founder at Training Mobs (<a href="http://trainingmobs.com" rel="nofollow">http://trainingmobs.com</a>), an online health and fitness community that makes it super easy for people to find an awesome workout near them. We believe that providing a strong social component keeps people motivated to work out and keeps them coming back - our members tell us that it feels less like a workout and more of a social outing, since everyone is sweating it out together and having a great time. Anybody can post a workout (which we call a 'mob', after the Flashmobs concept but for fitness), and anybody can join it.<p>Right from the start, our core vision was to improve the health and lives of people by making awesome workouts accessible. Its free to join, and about half of the workouts are totally free. We also work with small, independent studios and personal trainers to provide our members with a great selection of workouts at really reasonable prices, often below the drop-in rate.<p>Phew, okay, corporatey schpeel over. But yes, we do believe that we have made some progress towards our vision of fun, accessible workouts that actually make you want to keep doing them as opposed to burning out and giving up. Search for us on twitter and read some of the tweets :)<p>Oh, and unexpected side-effects? It turns out that working out with 30 other people bonds you into fast friends surprisingly quickly! Strong friendship groups within the community also makes it all but certain that a member will continue to come to the site and workout with their friends.

This question is an "eye of the beholder" one -- it's not only subjective, but oftentimes an equal number of people could argue that a startup does not improve or actually detracts from peoples lives.<p>Take facebook as an example. A lot of people would argue that it detracts from peoples lives (degrading the real-life experience of interacting with people), but a lot of people would also argue that it improves lives.<p>Now take finance. Forget about blankfein's "god's work" remark. In general, most parts of finance improve lives (though most HNers would disagree). Look at market making (providing liquidity for other traders). There's an intrinsic demand for liquidity from funds which try to manage an index, hedgers, and speculators. The goal of market making is to provide liquidity to facilitate those other traders. And yes, there's a small premium for the service, but the fact that the premium is shrinking over time reflects a lower cost for the rest of society.

My aim with Ping Brigade certainly is to improve lives. Servers go up and down all the time. It is actually quite shocking what you find when you start monitoring one 24/7. Ping Brigade is affordable (or free), and dead simple to set up server monitoring. I believe that helping more websites stay up for the price of two lattes a month is a good thing.<p>Link: <a href="https://www.pingbrigade.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pingbrigade.com/</a><p>EDIT: Before I added the monitoring piece, Ping Brigade just had the latency measuring component. One of the users contacted me reporting a bug: sometimes Ping Brigade would tell him that his site was down when he could see that it was not. It turned out he had set up round robin DNS with four web servers and on one of them, apache was misconfigured. I know that this was tiny and anekdotal, but it was nice getting an email from the user saying thanks for helping him figure it out.

Just in the last week, I started informally helping a renewable energy startup, as they move from testing their new generators into seeking funding to deploy them across South America.<p>We've got one built, being put in place in the Amazon right now, and have plans to deploy 50 more installations over the next 1-2 years.<p>Our stated intent and goal is to bring sustainable energy to 3rd world countries, with minimal environmental impact.

We developed Genius Scan, a small scanner app for iPhone. The intent of the app was to make it easy for people to scan documents and send documents when not close to a physical scanner.<p>One of the best rewards we have is some of the users comments. - "This app simplifies my life and it actually works like it says it does (weird…)." - "My wife went to the hospital and I needed to send my in-laws her diagnosis and discharge papers(They are both M.D.'s) It worked like a charm. It saved me from buying a scanner and going to kinko's!" - "As a student, this app has saved my butt a few times." - "Saved my company over $1100 in courthouse copy fees last month alone." - "When needed to have a document but no copy machine nor fax, it saved me, got a mortgage with with the bank!!! (had to send a few documents)" - "I've used this app for the past year and it is so helpful. I am able to post assignments for my students and copy their worksheets while still in class with them. I do not have a fax machine and this has saved my butt a few times! Yea!!" - "As a traveling sales rep, I have to fax my figures through to our interstate office each night, when staying in motels this can get quite expensive, now I just scan and email. No more horrendous fax costs!! Thanks guys!!"<p>One of the best emails we received just contained: "FYI genius scan saved my ass on Thursday and now I will graduate in may all because of genius scan!"<p>So while in the first place it's hard to think an iPhone app can really improve people's life, a few comments tell us that Genius Scan can have a small positive impact on some people's lives. Also, it's interesting how many uses people can find for this app we would never have thought about.<p>Link: <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genius-scan/id377672876?mt=8" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genius-scan/id377672876?mt=8</a>

The startup I head up tech for, <a href="http://latakoo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://latakoo.com/</a>, is designed around a strong social mission (that also happens to be a solid business model). In fact, it arose from a separate attempt to find a new commercial model for local investigative journalism.<p>We allow anyone to send high quality video very quickly - and then store it in a web-based archive for search and later retrieval. All you need to do is drag your video into our tool and click "start", and it uploads it to the cloud. (There's an API for integration, obviously, and we've got some interesting video sharing ideas up our sleeves.) Our payment model is like a cellphone plan: you pay for minutes of video sent every month, and even get rollover minutes.<p>A lot of the people who find the greatest value in this are video journalists. They can shoot some footage and send it back to base faster than they ordinarily could, significantly cheaper than hiring a satellite truck or other comparable Internet products. They can also use the web archive and pull down other footage to create an edited piece in the field.<p>I think improving our infrastructure for news has a tangible impact on peoples' lives: access to information is a requirement in a functioning democracy. And of course, we're directly improving the lives of anyone who needs to move high quality video around.

My latest project, LiberWriter is a lot of fun for precisely that reason. I mean, it's not a world-changer, but many of my customers are writers who want to publish their work on Kindle and are <i>very</i> frustrated by the process, and having a system to make everything better makes them very happy. So, yeah, in its own small way, it's something that improves people's lives by taking away a source of frustration and anger.

While there are some startups that aim to make big, obvious improvements in people's lives (biotech, for example), any startup that hopes to find lasting success must be based on creating value for users. More often I think that it may be in a seemingly small way that your service or product helps improve people's lives - but for those users who really need it, it may not seem so minor.<p>For example, my current project, <a href="http://inthatbox.com" rel="nofollow">http://inthatbox.com</a>, aims to help people organize their storage boxes/containers/etc.[1]. That may seem like a minor improvement in a user's life, but if you've ever moved a house with dozens of identical cardboard boxes or if you've ever spent hours searching through a closet or storage unit for something you know you've got somewhere, our product won't seem like such a small help any more (we hope!).<p>[1] Currently just an iPhone/iPod touch app, but very soon we'll have an integrated web app, an iPad app, and then eventually an Android app as well.

Here's what I took away from PG's "life improvement triangle":<p>It's very difficult to change the processes people learn. If someone has been throwing a ball a certain way for their entire life, it's an uphill battle getting them to change. Similarly, if someone has been filling out a paper TPS report in the same way for the past 10 years, it's tough to get them to fill out that report online.<p>It's not impossible to change behavior, but it's an uphill battle.<p>The best businesses (ie: those with the highest value) supplement and <i>improve</i> the lives of people rather then changing their behavior.<p>In the Bloomberg video, the interviewer asks PG about his opinion about Groupon. The smarter question would have been "did Groupon improve the lives of people?" The answer is yes. They took something people were doing and made it better.<p>The best businesses don't often reinvent the wheel, they make the wheel 150% better.

Great question. I was going to write an article based loosely around the thought that startups could have a strong mission statement of directly improving people's quality of live.<p>We at <a href="http://wisdio.com/" rel="nofollow">http://wisdio.com/</a> believe we do it. We want to quickly deliver answers for people's questions in a variety of topics, including professional and hobbyist knowledge. Unlike Quora, which we're being usually compared to, we don't focus on creating a hyperspace of perfect questions with some answers, but rather on matching a question with an expert able to answer it, in a smallest possible time.<p>We believe that this has a chance of changing the model of advertising for small businesses, for example. Instead of directly investing into ads, one can invest his time into answering the questions in his domain and lift himself as an expert. This can have an effect of building a massive trust for potential customers. We think of it as it would be a more "humane" alternative to ads. Of course this is not our only goal, rather one of possible byproducts of using our service.<p>The service wisdio.com is in closed alpha now and we're getting positive press here in Poland. The service is bilingual - English and Polish - so any of you can start using it right away. Most of the content so far is in Polish, though, and you won't see a mixed-language content as it wouldn't have any sense. So at the moment the English content is minimal and is created mostly by polish users using the service in both language versions.<p>Of course we plan to change that and gain a broader audience, as well as some recognizability outside of our country, during our CEO's trip to the US this summer.<p>[edit: cut some tech info, sorry for drifting from the original topic]

Based in NYC, a friend and I founded Grripz™ in April of this year (<a href="http://grripz.com" rel="nofollow">http://grripz.com</a>). The idea is simple, eliminate sore hands caused by carrying grocery and shopping bags. It was provoked from my personal experience and the idea moved into development when my friend who runs a hackerspace called Alpha One Labs (Brooklyn) became enthusiastic about partnering to develop the product.<p>The product has improved our lives and we have sold them in-person where we had many encounters with people who immediately loved the idea ranging from kids, the elderly, a psychologist working on a PHD on post traumatic stress disorder, and many other New Yorkers. We have seen people a second time who bought a Grrip who told us "thank you!" Selling them in-person was very encouraging and reinforced to us how important such a simple addition to one's life can be...every little bit counts when it comes to reducing un-needed stress.<p>Grripz™ Comfort Handle™ is the quick, cheap and easy way to make your life easier when carrying bags or other materials.

My product (not a startup, and not a project, since 2003) <a href="http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper" rel="nofollow">http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper</a> helps everyone get started with creating and developing (and hosting) websites.<p>I have people that don't understand what a file system is running an Apache, PHP, and MySQL web server, installing and working with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc, with a few clicks.<p>I also have just as many professional web developers and businesses using the product.<p>It simply makes their lives easier. They get to skip the headache and pain of downloading, matching runtimes, configuring, setting up, creating virtualhosts, reading forums and blogs, etc.<p>There are free alternatives (xampp, wampserver, etc) to WampDeveloper, but I really don't compete with them in any way... Full control panel, 1 click website creation, local DNS, auto webapp installation, uses advanced features of the NTFS filesystem such as junction points and hard links, keeps Apache, PHP, and MySQL up-to-date, professional support, and quite a bit more.

Improving lives? What a lofty goal!<p>It's strange whenever I think of my company's product in such terms, since my product doesn't reduce global warming, improve international relations, or anything like that. However, it DOES accomplish the much more modest goal of facilitating an aspect of time management (<a href="http://www.domador.net/two-click-reminder" rel="nofollow">http://www.domador.net/two-click-reminder</a>). I did set out with the goal of making people's lives easier when I developed this program, and I hope that's what it accomplishes, even in a marginal way. I definitely want my programs to improve lives. I shudder at the thought of ever running or working for a company with an extremely selfish motivation, a company obsessed with its own benefit and indifferent to the effect its actions have on the rest of society.<p>I am just getting started, and it's too early to tell if my product is having beneficial side effects. I haven't gotten much feedback yet.

The startup I co-founded Lifemall, I think improves lives. We help people sell things they don't need. We help other people buy second-hand things if they can't afford to or choose not to buy new.<p>Since we're relatively new, I can't comment on whether or not it's improving lives and any side effects, however it is our intent to improve people lives.

With our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd events (<a href="http://www.EntrepreneursUnpluggd.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.EntrepreneursUnpluggd.com</a>), we're looking to help entrepreneurs succeed.<p>From my own experience, I've found that being around like minded people who support you, help you, and believe in you makes entrepreneur-minded people happier, which in turn can lead to better family life, etc., and ultimately, improving lives.<p>We hope to create this atmosphere at each of our events and help entrepreneurs move forward with their work.

Our company was created with the aim of putting people like myself out of a job. We're working hard to make small businesses much less reliant on their IT guy.

Yeah I believe we do. I started out as a project to improve my life, as I wasn't satisfied with any of the budgeting software I'd used myself. I made an iOS app called Ez Budget and it has worked great for my wife and I. Currently working on versions for iPad, Android, and Mac so people can stay synced on all their devices. <a href="http://ezbudgetapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://ezbudgetapp.com</a>

Yes. As compared to the incumbent ($RATE) in our space, we allow consumers to get information faster in a transparent way. There are very few sites in our space that do this. We are the largest.<p>As for our new mobile personal finance community, we expect that people's lives will benefit, simply because we're a conduit for connecting consumers with a common goal. (financial success)

Yes.<p>My startup - <a href="http://www.motivapps.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.motivapps.com/</a> creates a series of apps that inspire and teach people. For example one of them is a workshop for setting life goals, and another one is an app that helps people to write love letters.

Absolutely. Our startup <a href="http://feefighters.com" rel="nofollow">http://feefighters.com</a> reverse-auctions down credit card processing fees for businesses, giving small and medium businesses the negotiating leverage of much larger entities.<p>We've changed lives in saving countless mom-and-pop bookstores and coffeeshops several thousands of dollars a year. It feels awesome - we get lots of "love-mail"<p>As a side benefit, we've taken money away from the shady characters that were ripping them off. Win win win.<p>And yeah, it was always our plan to improve lives. We have owned small businesses in the past and were tired of getting burned by these guys and wanted to do something for the little guy.

If you're someone who builds websites, then yes.