Ask HN: What's a radical company more people should hear about | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a radical company more people should hear about

27 pointsiameoghan40 comments

Pretty much as per the title what's a really amazing company that more people need to hear about, and why?

For me there are a couple that I find hugely impressive.

Buurtzorg [1] - a nurse-led model of holistic care that revolutionised community care in the Netherlands. Everlade [2] - Transparent pricing [3] on their garments Lemonade [4] - I don't know how to describe this other than revolutionising insurance for the 21st century.

What are the other business that are disrupting traditional business, either with their business model, or via a disruptive customer experience?

[1]https://www.buurtzorg.com/ [2]https://www.everlane.com/ [3]https://www.everlane.com/about [4]https://www.lemonade.com/

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Semco [1] It is not a new company but they are still miles ahead when dealing with transparency, work-life-balance and many others well being attributes for its employees and future generation.

I would love to see and know more radical companies in terms of methodoligies and personal evolution as examples as well, not only tech.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_compan...

edit: clarification

Thanks for this post. You saved me the embarrassment of writing something like "that company that ran everything in a much more humane way and benefited for it that a friend told me about years ago but I forgot the name".

I was hoping I see someone mention Semco. They were the outliers before that word was coined. For me, it's still a dream to work in a software company which is run like Semco.

I remember seeing them before - thanks for reminding me about them.

Shameless self-promotion here; but I think it meets your requirements.

Hexafarms (https://hexafarms.com/ )- an indoor farming startup which can match a throughput that will enable us to grow food in the urban pockets at an efficiecy between 10-200x (depending on what you're meauring).

The website is a bit flashy and not very detailed. Also it is only this month I'm gonna be working ~full time hours on it. Here's why it's radical:

* A empty single-floor 2000 sq. ft. space can produce ~200k KGs of produce. Hence also the idealization of distributed and small farms and not those 10-storey robot driven ones. * Possibility of growing 'crafted-produce', say low-sodium lettuce for diabetes, bitter and juicy lettuce for kids (apparently they like it), very high oil content mint plants so you get same amount of mint oil from half the weight. * All of this greatly affects (and positively) the current supply chain. * It's heavily data driven. And this is not just because it's cool. Think of it as openAI GPT, but for X produce.

This is rad but want to hedge that this sort of farming is only viable for some leafy greens and herbs. The site for instance only talks about lettuce which is rad but nutritionally void.

The sun is a lot cheaper at scale than LEDs unfortunately.

It may solve some specific urban farming issues but we haven’t got endless sunlight beat yet.

Link that works: https://hexafarms.com/

Do you have any images of how the setup would look? Also:

> A empty single-floor 2000 sq. ft. space can produce ~200k KGs of produce.

Per which unit of time?

Thanks for fixing the link. That's another little known thing- an average field (max) produces three harvests of lettuce. I don't have actual data, but based on my experimentations I think a realization of 13-20 harvests is possible; actually there's literature on this as well. How exactly? Just a basic application of the queuing theory. A lettuce needs to sit in the main hole for max 20 days. Before that, within the same 2k sq. ft. that I mentioned, keep it in separate 'incubator'space which will take much less volume.

In the coming weeks I'll add pictures too.

That's exactly the kind of stuff that I'm into. I'm not an authority but that sounds hella radical.

TypingDNA [1] recognises people by the way they type, and provides typing biometrics (aka keystroke dynamics) as a service via an API. This is currently used for Multi-Factor Authentication in industries like Banking and Education [2].

Don't take my word for granted, see it with your own eyes and even try it with a friend (can somebody else replicate your typing pattern?) [3]

There are free accounts provided to developers, so you can easily call the API yourself [4]

[1] https://www.typingdna.com/ [2] https://www.typingdna.com/authentication-api.html [3] https://www.typingdna.com/demo-sametext.html [4] https://www.typingdna.com/clients/signup

Google's CAPTCHA also captures keyboard biometrics; https://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-no-captcha-adtruth...

Thank you for sharing this, very interesting! Although a bit old (2015), the article raises some questions on privacy & transparency, which are more important than ever (eg: the increasing legislation like GDPR, CCPA).

Luckily, the TypingDNA solution is secure and compliant, in accordance not only to the Privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA), but also to other kind of legislation like Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) required by the EU Payment Services Directive (PSD2)

Maybe not radical, but I'm have a really good experience with https://www.future.fit/

They pair you with a personal trainer who comes up with a detailed workout plan just for you. Each workout arrives as a set of videos, showing ever exercise or stretch stitched together. You just follow along the video, but it's based exactly on what you want to achieve. (E.g. 'lessening pain from sitting and getting active'.)They send you an apple watch to track heart rate and ensure you're active.

B/c you text with your coach, and they see you're activity, you have a ton of accountability. So I've been working out more than ever while locked at home :)

Yes, it's a little expensive. But far cheaper than in person personal training. I'm benefiting from it!

Self-promotion, but our company Greywing (https://grey-wing.com) automates Covid-19 assessments and crew changes for maritime.

Over a million seafarers are still stuck on vessels around the world as governments refuse to let them in, and we're trying our best to bridge the gap with software.

Apeel Sciences: https://apeelsciences.com/ I don't work for this company or have any affiliation but they are up to some really cool stuff in the food space. They develop a plant based coating for fresh produce that keeps it fresh for longer minimizing food waste and making produce easier and safer to distribute.

https://andela.com/ is another company that is really awesome and doing some cool stuff with helping make technology jobs more accessible to people all over Africa.

Syapse here! We are a real-world data company working across life science (pharma), hospitals, and with the FDA. We want to use real-world evidence to improve the outcomes of cancer patients. When many think of Health IT, they think primarily of patient tools, which are important. However, lots of decisions are made between pharma, hospitals, regulators and health plans that effect us; and aren't always grounded in what happens in the "real-world". We are hoping to help those decision-makers make better decisions for oncology patients using data, analytics and expertise.

https://nius.tv is a next-gen news aggregator that uses an AI anchor. The mobile app will be released in October.

For now you can check out news videos here, https://twitter.com/nius_tv or subscribe to their website to get newsletters.

There is also a Medium post detailing the tech and motivation, https://medium.com/@calufa/converting-news-into-video-storie....

This article about Everlane [1] and OP mentioning the company makes me wonder if we (outsiders) are capable of truly judging a company of being “radical” and deserving of free marketing by us outsiders / customers.

Of course we can look at financial results, but OP seems to be asking about something more intangible.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/fashion/everlane-employee...

Some companies I'd put on the list:

1) Okta – Single Sign-On as a service

2) Snowflake – Cloud-native data warehouse as a service

3) Crowdstrike – Cloud-native security as a service

My company uses Okta now, and it's been the only SSO service I've used that's truly SSO.

Every other SSO service I've used only worked for certain accounts, or only for first party company accounts, or for specific things. Okta is the SSO that actually does what SSO stands for, and I've been loving it because I don't have to think about it.

I'm a N00b - what makes this so special?

It worked.

Other SSO systems I have used were not entirely SSO.

A little on the nose, but check out RADiCAL (https://getrad.co/). 3D Motion Capture from your phone. It's already pretty useful in the entertainment world, but once they bring down their rendering times, the possibilities are pretty exciting.

That's pretty cool - thanks for sharing.

BluWave-AI [1] applying ML to modernize power grids. Not flashy, but revolutionary behind the scenes work.

[1]https://www.bluwave-ai.com/

What makes it revolutionary? Sounds amazing btw but I would already expected grids to be using ML for surge detection etc. Is it not the norm?

Radical is a hard bar to get over but I routinely tell people fly.io is the most interesting infrastructure company out there right now.

If only I had time to build all the things on it I want to.

That look uber cool.

Why is Lemonade radical?

I tried setting up new insurance for a couple properties I own. It took 4 or 5 phone calls and the insurance agent just kept talking so much. Sometimes I just don't have time for all the banter. I have kids, a full-time job, etc. I don't want to spend my free time talking to some stranger on the phone. I kept telling him to email me the details and he would call anyway and "it will only take a minute".

If there was a lemonade for insurance broker type deals then I'd use it in a second. (i.e. I want to bundle my landlord insurance, personal home insurance, and auto insurance)

It's online-only, chatbot-driven, no sales associates in offices to visit. You just snap some pics on your phone and you're insured.

Gotta be honest, that sounds dreadful. What happens if you need to talk to a human?

edit: lately I've been able to sign up for insurance (car/contents) online-only anyway

i get my renters insurance through geico and i didnt have to take any pictures at all

Same, when I was a renter I applied online. Same for when I became a homeowner. My car insurance was also setup online.

This doesn't seem that radical. Most places have online and picture based insurance. They also have the added luxury of talking to a human if needed.

My experience with them was really positive. Metromile is another good example of a company like this.

Oh wow - metromile sounds really interesting. Any others like this?

Personally, I find these companies dreadful. I tried it just to see and got flustered by the 5th question or so(renters). Typically, I just call a company, choose a coverage amount, and am done in all of 2 minutes.

Wing, or Wing Alpha, is another that attempted this, to do number porting via chatbot texting back and forth. No thanks.

Out of curiosity would you classify yourself as a digital native or a non-native?

Mostly native, I guess. I would have been 11 or so when I got a computer/internet. 18 when I got a cell phone. But in a lot of ways, perhaps not. I absolutely hate texting as a replacement of a phone call, for example. Texts are fine for a notice, not a conversation. And that's coming from someone who doesn't like talking on the phone.

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