This is borderline satire. You don't need some crazy new idea to do a startup. You need to execute well on something people want, and if you're out looking for ideas, your best bet is probably to enter an existing market and cater to a subset of it better than others are doing.
Most animals are way more expressive that the average person is able to easily understand and pet tech would easily be a billion dollar market.
EDIT: I would also be happy to do this startup if YC adds me to the next batch; already offered to do one for the “Social Network for Children”:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15715865
> more expressive that the average person is able to easily understand
The average person can understand way more than you are giving credit.
And anyway, if the average person can't understand some communication, than it's something completely out the league of current AIs. It's the one thing we are good at.
> than it's something completely out the league of current AIs
I beg to differ[1]. The average human isn't autistic, but there is still significant value in using AI to tell us what we are doing wrong (and wrap the product up so it doesn't make us fell like crap while we are doing it).
Behavior modification bots would be incredibly useful for helping people see their own shortcomings (cognitive science research shows us that we frequently see the flaws in others but are systematically blind to our own).
>Most animals are way more expressive that the average person is able to easily understand
Is the market the average person though or the person willing to spend several hundred dollars on tech for their pet?
My guess is the latter would mostly consist of people who have spent decades in close contact with pets and are able to reliably read the body language of a dog with rather extreme accuracy and nuance.
If you've never owned a dog they're rather difficult to read. If you've been around them as long as you've been around people you can almost immediately discern a lot of information about them based on a glance.
It's not so crazy if you apply it to babies. I'm sure a lot of new parents would very much appreciate knowing why their baby is crying now. What's that old quote about babies and the same error code for many different problems?
Parents usually figure this out after a few weeks. Also kids needs change over developmental time. So crying is just language for communicating based on emotion: Hangry, tired, hurt, potentially dirty diaper.
While not babies, a lot of parents have problems communicating with pre-verbal and basically non-verbal infants... but it's also been found that infants can actually learn and effectively use signs (not to be confused with ASL or a distinct sign language) to communicate.
We did this with both our kids. Our youngest, who is only 8 months old, can already sign in makaton for 'more', 'milk' and 'finished' - and we only started teaching him a few weeks ago!
It really is incredible what they are capable of at such a young age.
Other parents tell me all the time about how their kids are getting frustrated because the can't communicate verbally - I really don't know why signing for babies isn't more popular.
How do the other parents react when you tell them about signing? I wonder if it's related to a perception of signing as "for handicapped people" or something, or a worry about it replacing speech.
People's first reaction does indeed tend to be worry that it would somehow delay their childs' speech. I have to admit that, out of ignorance, that was my own first reaction too.
However, it's been the exact opposite, signing has only reduced frustration, taught the benefits of communication, and encouraged spoken language.
This is something people want. With the right approach you could actually improve the happiness of hundreds of millions of people. The existing market is tremendously huge.
This is borderline satire. You don't need some crazy new idea to do a startup. You need to execute well on something people want, and if you're out looking for ideas, your best bet is probably to enter an existing market and cater to a subset of it better than others are doing.