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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

(tjcx.me)
851 points swyx | 2 comments | 18 Jan 21 20:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.625s | source
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eightysixfour ◴[18 Jan 21 21:50 UTC] No.25827086[source]▶
I remember reading this the last time and it was posted and I still think the core failure is that the author didn't actually recognize the issue he was solving. He thought the problem was choosing the most effective medicine when the real problem was decision fatigue looking at endless shelves of things that all seem to do the same thing. Those two problems sort of look the same, but the latter cannot be resolved by selling the tool to doctors in their offices.

The tool should have been designed (IMO) as a consumer tool, either a kiosk at CVS/Walgreens/pharmacies to assist with OTC med selection or possibly as a website with ads/referrals. I would absolutely choose a pharmacy over another as a result of them having something to help through that process, especially when I have a headache.

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1. angrydev ◴[18 Jan 21 23:55 UTC] No.25828227[source]▶
> The tool should have been designed (IMO) as a consumer tool, either a kiosk at CVS/Walgreens/pharmacies to assist with OTC med selection or possibly as a website with ads/referrals.

Sure but... would you really need any clinical data to make this valuable? A pharmacy could just make a decision tree with some common symptoms and do the same thing based on their own recommendations. Including data from studies is a neat enhancement but not necessary IMO.

I think perhaps there's greater value in the platform or methodology the author built for doing this type of meta analysis for medication. Could it be applied to other research fields I wonder. Could the software be licensed?

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2. eightysixfour ◴[19 Jan 21 00:00 UTC] No.25828268[source]▶
> A pharmacy could just make a decision tree with some common symptoms and do the same thing based on their own recommendations.

Sure, and I’d go to a pharmacy who did this based off of science instead of whoever paid for an end cap advertisement that month.