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Houston

@HoustonLabs

"Houston, we have a problem!". Find great problems to solve via a weekly newsletter.

 International Space Station (ISS)
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Joined March 2019
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Every Sunday night getting that newsletter ready
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"Buying a car is still the worst commerce experience of all time 🤬" via @ataussig - The main problem seem to be how manual the process is (you need individually call dealerships, ask for quotes, compare prices, etc.)..
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and how inconsistent the experience appears due to the availability of cars across basic characteristics like model, years, color, etc.
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Comparing compensation packages between public companies and startups is too tedious - I was lucky enough to receive two offer letters to join two companies after graduation. One was for a pretty cool startup and the other one is a big public company — both in tech...
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I had a hard time comparing both offers and ended up going with the big tech company because I felt I understood the compensation package better. For the public company, I can see how much the stock is worth, but for the private company, I don’t know what my options will be worth
Splitting bills with roommates is frustrating especially with all of these subscriptions - I started living with two roommates and splitting utility bills and other recurring payments has been a massive pain...
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because one person has to front the money and then nag the others to get paid back. I wish there were one service that we can all log into and pay independently so that I don't have to chase people down.
I wish the startup I work at allowed me to choose my own perks - A lot of the office perks I get at work are kind of useless. I wish that I could choose my own perks like free Spotify and Netflix rather than some obscure “wellness benefit”
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which btw I have to remember to expense to get a reimbursement.
Getting access to cash as a college student is too inconvenient - "I am a senior at a pretty good college, and I have a full-time offer to work at a big tech company (think Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.) this fall ..
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but I still find it ridiculous that I am broke until I start working in September. Like I know that I will have the money but right now I can’t pay for my graduation events and a trip. Putting it on a credit card just seems irresponsible. Are there any better options out there?
Buying office supplies and one-off licenses as a startup is expensive - I think that it makes no sense that no one has created a company that aggregates a lot of the demand that startups have for everyday things (anything from office supplies to catering to software licenses)..
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and just allow startup to quickly jump in and get a better deal if a certain # of startups need it (buying in bulk). This might be a good idea for a YCombinator company because just with the YC companies you have enough volume to make it probably make it worthwhile.
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For TV networks getting permission to use footage is a pain - There's an opportunity not only to solve this problem but also create a marketplace for helping contributors get a royalty/payment for their work.
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"Behind every viral video is thousands of news outlets asking for permission to re-post. There has to be a more efficient process." - via @blakeir
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Finding and cold emailing micro influencers is still a pain - Even though there are multiple solutions apparently "There's are a ton and they all suck. The marketplace model attracts low-quality influencers. It's still a manual process for most brands." via @sariazout
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"Managing interns is such a pain because you have to spend so much more time per intern than a full-time employee. If you have an intern class, you need to recruit them, help them figure out housing, do intern activities to keep them engaged, etc...
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It’s basically like hiring a batch of full-time employees and running a summer camp simultaneously. At my company, I would pay for a service that takes at least several parts of this process.
The rise of no-code tools has created a need for ways to educate workers on these tools - The rise of a lot of no-code tools will simultaneously create the need for training knowledge workers on all of these different tools...
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We can “teach people Retool / Airtable / Zapier / Figma / Clay on one end of a marketplace and create easy ways for companies to hire these people as freelancers and onboard them into existing systems for projects (could even be done through API) on the other end” via @aashay
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