Ask HN: Can you help me build a 0 profit venture? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can you help me build a 0 profit venture?

10 pointsclassicsnoot11 comments

TlDr: I want to use a crowdfunding platform + an online campaign to get cheap and effective air filters into low/no income homes in polluted areas in an effort to engender a wider awareness of cleaner air. I want to neither make nor lose money doing it.

1) A few years ago, a gentleman working abroad in China posted his air purifying workaround here on HN (original article: https://scienceblog.com/73679/grad-student-rigs-cheap-alternative-rival-1000-air-purifiers-smog-choked-china/ ). It motivated me to "build" my own version. After many experiments with brackets, hardware, and duct tape i cobbled together a design that cost about $60. Then my Dad came along and cut the price down to $30 by just putting the filter on the back, letting the suction do the work of attaching the filter (the original design i ripped off used a barrel fan + HEPA filter; mine is a box fan + furnace filter).

The thing is amazing. Placed next to kitty litter box it eliminates the smell almost completely. It pulls hair and particulate matter out of the air effectively, helping keep work and leaving spaces fresh. The original Ideageneer tested his to compare it to the very expensive consumer models available and his was on par with their's at a fraction of the cost. I have not tested mine, but using his methods it would be simple to do so. While there is the cost of electricity for running them, as well as the occasional fan replacement and the more often filter replacement, the cost comparison with an expensive Phillips Unit is astounding.

Seems like a good idea. You could start a crowdfunding campaign now, right?

You could reach out to hardware accelerators like Bolt, Dragon Innovation, to see if they would gift you some advice.

I think you should avoid mentioning asthma as caused by smoking and pets unless you have non-anecdotal scientific consensus for it. I don't know what causes asthma myself, though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis seems popular and is in direct contradiction to your claim.

And, uh, wasn't there less asthma around a few decades ago when smoking was everywhere than there is today? Like, it seems like asthma rates have risen dramatically literally while smoking rates were decreasing dramatically. If I had to pick one side of the argument to argue, I expect I'd choose to argue that exposure to smoking actually reduces asthma, if it has any effect on it at all.

That is my fault for being unclear. I mean to say that smoking, pet dander, and particulate matter in general exacerbates breathing conditions like asthma. There are also knock on health effects for the rest of the body from bad air. Nonetheless, your point is a valid one and i thank you for making it. I in no way meant to state or imply that these things cause asthma.

Thank you for the advice. i will look into those orgs. In terms of starting a round of crowdfunding, i am not yet confident enough in the plan of attack and the logistics, hence my posting here. Thanks again.

2) In my travels for work i have come into contact with many low/no income communities. Regardless of country, color, or creed i have found that the children of these folks are numerous and often suffer from easily treatable maladies. Due to various factors (i am going to side step politics here) these kids grow up living with these maladies instead of them being treated. One of the most common i have personally encountered is Asthma. Often, but not always, parents/guardians smoke inside. They also live near factories, highways, and landfills. They almost always have at least one pet. These contributing factors lead to bad air. Factor in regional pollution and we are talking about big, bad particulates in poor, little lungs. These filter fans will not solve poverty or cure long term illnesses, but they would be a positive step towards opening minds to creating healthier environments at low cost.

I am not independently wealthy. I do pretty well for a current student thanks to patrons and family. If i had the money, i would do it myself, but i do not. In crafting this campaign, i looked at the objectives, then the methodology, then the desired outcome. This is no Silicon Valley disruption level event. The requisite pieces are fairly easy to obtain as well as easy to maintenance and replace. I do not want to create a product that makes money on the back of a health initiative (don't think i didn't consider it, but this kind of idea is inherently unprofitable given the constituent parts). What the campaign is about is, to put it rather coarsely, leading horses to water.

3) So, from my perspective, i need to buy fans and filters then distribute them to worthy candidates. The cost of a box fan is a range of $15-30 depending on season and manufacturer. The cost of a filter is a range of $7-15 based on density of fibers. Shipping cost (to the recipient) is ever changing but easily calculated. Assuming an optimistic $10 shipping cost, we roughly land at: 10 + 10 + 20 = 40+shipping. That is pretty expensive.

Excepting shipping, i believe these costs could be brought down by buying in bulk (or getting donations). This is not a frontal assault on bad air with the intention of winning the war. The idea here is to propagate the fact that, for a relatively low cost, parents of any bracket of the socio-economic stack can provide cleaner air for their kids without buying an over engineered consumer product. So what is need is a highly visible, popularly shared event that spreads the message far and wide. This requires 100% transparent accounting of costs and distribution, a simple 1 page document explaining the methodology and supporting data (to be printed and mailed initially but to be shared online in the future), and an online campaign to tie it all together. Most of the pieces are in place. What i need is the bulk materials (fans and filters), the hardware and software required to generate accurate, demonstrable, and repeatable testing, and the support of a well connected and well intentioned community.

Thats at retail though, and doing things like this at US retail prices isn't going to be economically viable. The actual BOM is going to be very low for something like this, its commodity parts all the way down. You'd come out FOB for single digit dollars if you put together an agreement with a manufacturer directly for a design they already have with likely palatable MOQ.

4) So here i am, asking for help. This is not the first community i have reached out to (Imgur is a tough crowd to get support from) so i have little expectation of progress, but i think about it too much and i will keep trying to find support every year or so until something happens. Thank you for reading and please feel free to make any type of comment, question, suggestion, addition, or reproof. To reiterate, should this take off, i want to make sure that at the end of the day it is a net zero venture in terms of money (i am a historian and filmmaker, not an entrepreneur).

May you have clean air and a cleaner conscience.

Have you spoken with any charities about this? Frankly it sounds like your problem of identifying how to distribute it and who to is much harder than the manufacturing problem, and they will of course have ideas on the funding side too.

One problem I can envisage is that the electricity costs of running a box fan are potentially high, reducing the likelihood of a lot of the people that would benefit from having a $30 device donated to them from actually using it. The other question would be how your device compares in effectiveness (amount of air filtered and types of particles removed) with other inexpensive air filters. Does it actually pick up the PM2.5 particles people have most reason to be concerned about?

Do you have any evidence that your device will prevent asthma? Would you achieve the same goal by distributing air filters that you could snap on to already existing fans/air conditioners?

I read all your comments here so far. My problem is that (at least for us here at HN) there is no clear call to action. Maybe you could re-iterate what skills/things you need help with. I would gladly offer my support in these domains: http://generativestuff.com/sparring/

You can buy box fans in bulk on alibaba for ~12$, from what I could see. An air filter is ~6$. That should additionally reduce your cost.

Share the plan online. Have a good write up on how to build it. Make youtube videos. Make it free for all.

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