Ask HN: What are the good old ideas that still make money on the web?

Re:Ask HN: What are the good old ideas that still make money... by flomo on Sunday February 12, 2012 @01:44PM (#3582554)

Just to add to your excellent list, a lot of verticals have an established software company that's stuck in the desktop world (e.g VB6/Access/etc, CD-ROMs, licence keys, etc) and is often clunky to use or old-fashioned looking.

The difficulty with vertical markets is cutting through all the jargon/assumptions and figuring out exactly what the business logic should be. Everyone knows what they want, but very few people can actually explain it to the uninitiated.

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Re:Ask HN: What are the good old ideas that still make money... by pragmatic on Sunday February 12, 2012 @05:58PM (#3583324)

1 million times yes to this.

Think Power Builder, etc. Our company has purchased software with a Power Builder front end (mid nineties interface) to an Oracle backend for roughly a million up front and $100,000/yr in licensing.

We've subsequently built a web front end to this app in house.

Sometimes there is no good substitute for clunky software.

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