visas / immigration. you're looking at $400-900 an hour for lawyers to point you to the right webpage and tell you whether or not your particular situation fits through a loophole.
corporate setup & startup paperwork of all sorts. also housing rental contracts, contractor... contracts. etc.
patent applications. it's so hard to find good examples and templates. i'd pay to have something that said "type your overview here", "upload a picture here", etc.
college applications. they charge what, $50 per application they look at? save them time, save applicants money. and how many colleges would perfectly suit you that you never heard about?
make school scholarships more transparent and ease the application process.
keeping up with relatives. i feel a little dirty about this one, but i'd love to have a helper manage my familial relationships in a behind-the-scenes fashion. birthday email templates, friendly hellos, status updates, etc. although deciding to pay for a service of that sort would mean acknowledging that you're a terrible grandson/husband/etc.
warranties & mail in rebates. they all turn straight into money and dealing with them is total bs.
The perceived value of immigrating is high enough that the price is not objectionable to many clients. They just want to make sure it is done right. In a market I used to work, by far the most successful immigration lawyer was regarded as a sleazy guy by most of the other immigration lawyers. But he projected WEALTH, and that was perceived by clients as the ability to succeed with a case. So he had plenty of income to maintain the trappings of wealth, and the cycle continued. Most immigration lawyers have enough technique to do most cases, yes, and many clients (if they are good at reading English, which is not a given) could look up laws and forms on the Web and do their own cases themselves, but immigration lawyers trade partly in peace of mind.
Having been through the immigration process myself with a corporate immigration lawyer who used an online system for streamlining I can attest to this.
Lawyers are there to do 2 things, spot anything which might become a problem before it does, when it becomes a problem get your back. No 100% automated online system could do that.
However an automated system could probably reduce costs a lot.
I've needed something for keeping up with friends, since I don't have many relatives. While fb news feeds tell me what's going on with my friends ON fb, the only out-of-band reminder I have is just birthdays.
I thought about this for a long time, and I need it. Problem is, I'm not sure if anyone else really does. And even if they do, people might not admit to using it, which makes for a distribution problem.
A birthday reminder? The guy who made Bebo also ran a birthday reminder service which he has since returned to. According to a TechCrunch article last year, it makes $4M/yr in fees.
Back in the dot-com boom, the startup I worked for built a similar service. It was very popular. In fact, it was so popular we... shut it down to work on a sort of web-based ERP framework. WHOOPS!
But yeah, there's probably room for another birthday reminder service.
hey,were actually working on this at Ramamia.com for keeping up with your family . The goal is to take care of that and be a simple communication utility. Some of the ideas above will be incorporated. Email me if you want to chat: j@ramamia.com
corporate setup & startup paperwork of all sorts. also housing rental contracts, contractor... contracts. etc.
patent applications. it's so hard to find good examples and templates. i'd pay to have something that said "type your overview here", "upload a picture here", etc.
college applications. they charge what, $50 per application they look at? save them time, save applicants money. and how many colleges would perfectly suit you that you never heard about?
make school scholarships more transparent and ease the application process.
keeping up with relatives. i feel a little dirty about this one, but i'd love to have a helper manage my familial relationships in a behind-the-scenes fashion. birthday email templates, friendly hellos, status updates, etc. although deciding to pay for a service of that sort would mean acknowledging that you're a terrible grandson/husband/etc.
warranties & mail in rebates. they all turn straight into money and dealing with them is total bs.
i'm going back to work...