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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

No, he made a significant observation - the industry was operating at a high price point which was no longer justified due to advances in technology. That's a classic opportunity.

The incumbents in the field won't want to drop their prices by an order of magnitude, even if the technology allows it. Especially if they have an expensive in-house sales force. This is a huge advantage for a startup.

This happened to copiers, computer printers, personal computers, graphics cards, word processing software, CAD software, point of sale software, encyclopedias... Up next, hearing aids.

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John you make a very good point. Look for industries where the current market has not kept up with advances in technology due to the business structures of the incumbents. Even if they want to change they can't (e.g Kodak).

Hearing aids might fall into this category, but unlike the others on your list you need to deal with the FDA. The FDA should really be called the IPA - Incumbent Protection Agency.

For hearing aid industry disruption, see iHear.[1] Unfortunately, they run on Kickstarter time. (Like mañana, but without the sense of urgency.) They just slipped their delivery date from Q1 2016 to Q2 2016.

[1] http://www.ihearmedical.com/

I suspect this slip is due to having to deal with the FDA. If you look through their FAQ and look at the regulation rigmarole they have to deal with just for their hearing test product you will see why this is not an easy area to innovate in. The one thing you can give the medical industry is they have built an amazing system for maintaining the status quo.

Just look at Pharma (subset of medical)... if there is a more disreputable industry, I'm sure it's only a fraction of the size.

I'd love to see someone make a device that's sort of the opposite of this.

Compact in-ear selective audio filtering. For example, block all noises except human voice.

Or a simple noise attenuation mode that can be controlled from a smartphone.

To be honest, I wish the FDA was tougher. They're so many drugs, we are currently taking, that are just slightly better than placebo--and that's with fuzzy statistics, and a bunch of questionable studies.

I took so many pointless medications over the years. When I was younger, I just figured if the drug/devise was FDA approved; it must be efficient? I was wrong!

I actually wish the FDA was far less strict. One of the reasons we have so many ineffective drugs is that the FDA values safety over everything else. The ideal drug to get licensed is a sugar pill that due to statical chance (or fraud) shows a slight effect. No side effects and you can sell it to everyone. Of course it wouldn’t do anything, but it would make you a lot of money.

If the FDA was less strict then drug companies would develop drugs that actually worked, but also had side effects (basically we would tip the balance back in favor of effectiveness over safety). While it would always be ideal to have a drug that worked perfectly without side effects, it is always better to have a drug that works than one that doesn’t. You can always choose to not take a drug because of the side effects, but if the drug is not sold then you don’t have a choice.

Phase III drug trials compare new drugs to the best available treatment, not just placebo.

There are also huge classes of drugs that are obviously effective and beneficial (pain killers/nsaids, antihistamines, blood pressure medications, antibiotics,).

> Look for industries where the current market has not kept up with advances in technology due to the business structures of the incumbents.

TI graphing calculators for high school students?

Not happening until you get the ETS and teachers on board.

Lots of students already use Wolfram for graphing, the problem is use in proctored environments.

Could a company manufacture a device in China, and sell via the internet (also from China) and completely ignore the FDA? I suppose the unapproved devices could be "banned" and shipment could attempted to be blocked, but is that not damn near impossible with the amount of mail coming in from China on a daily basis?

I can appreciate what the FDA does, but sometimes there comes a point where it is preferable to provide warning and education to consumers but let them choose which product they wish to use.

They would just seize them at the border. This is basically the same as international pharmacies selling pharmaceuticals.

You would also want to never plan to travel to the USA ever again - the penalties for ignoring the FDA are not minor.

I'm not American but I went on Amazon and there seem to be loads of cheap hearing aids from about $25 eg http://www.amazon.com/Walkers-Game-Ear-Ultra-Pair/dp/B001FT3...

Which implies the FDA doesn't ban them. If the quality of $25 aids is not good that's another issue.

Technically the FDA is not responsible for seizures, but they do deal with infringements. Sure you can get things in that should not come in (after all cocaine and other drugs get in). It is still not a wise idea to start doing this.

They'd get them via banning the financing, not via stopping the product in the mail.

>The FDA should really be called the IPA - Incumbent Protection Agency.

the Theranos story i think clearly shows one more time why such protection from "disruptors" is necessary. Unfortunately we still don't know how to do it more efficiently though.

My personal favorite here is FAA - who basically stalled to the complete halt the aircraft development for the last half of century, yet even here i understand the rationale behind it.

It wasn't the FAA. It was all the lawsuits that made the liability of general aviation airplanes completely unprofitable. Aircraft development is still going strong in other countries around the world.

Um, he may have made a significant "observation" as you call it, but it wasn't his idea to research VOIP, to go out and get a device, or even how to implement it in a functional way to enact the advances in technology in a meaningful cost-savings avenue. It's right there in the article:

>And I had the good fortune of Tooter, The Machine and my former boss eventually rallying around my vision with their considerable super powers. To this day, I’m so thankful for each of them.

So in this particular instance, he's much more akin to a record producer creating a hit by lifting samples from other artists and then rapping about himself over the track. You might see it differently, that's fine. I just don't buy the self-directed, "Look what I made" narrative being put forward as fundamental here. Oh sure, it's his "vision" and all, but vision without talent and skill is just daydreaming. So he got some real people do to the hard part, that's a great "leadership" example I suppose.

> So in this particular instance, he's much more akin to a record producer creating a hit by lifting samples from other artists and then rapping about himself over the track.

Only in this case, it was an employee of the same company. His job as the CEO was to get the best out of his employees. He succeeded in doing that. I think that deserves appreciation.

I agree. The first sentence of the article pretty much sums the guy up and the figure is hardly inspirational. Tenacity and the ability to sell as well as to manipulate/exploit others: sure he has those, just like any typical street market peddler in Beijing - only Beijing street peddlers aren't lucky enough to have the opportunity scale of Silicon Valley. But, do these qualities make them inspirational figures? Not in my book.

Sales skills are among the most portable across industries.

Your understanding of music is obviously poor, and detracts from your analogy.

Not really. This is exactly what happened in the 80s and 90s with Vanilla Ice stealing from David Bowie and Freddie Mercury[1], and MC Hammer stealing from Rick James[2]. It even happened outside of rap with The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony stealing from "The Last Time"[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Ice_Baby [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Can%27t_Touch_This

It's not stealing if you add value - see Kanye West, Daft Punk, etc.

I'm curious, what do you think is new in hearing aids?

edit: Just looked at iHear. I'm skeptical: There's a reason pretty much all hearing aid researchers advocate outside-of-ear hearing aids. But I didn't look into it much so maybe there's something I missed.

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