Saturday | February 04, 2012
Have a Hunch?
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By
Benjamin P. Levy
14 June 2010
Hunch.com wants to know. They also want to help you figure out your next decision. Looking for a dog? Maybe something more serious like choosing a stock to buy. Hunch.com is trying to map the preferences of internet traffic. I found that the dog for me is a Besenji -the “bark-less” dog. Right now I have a Miniature Schnauzer which could be called the “Bark-full” dog so perhaps I was leaning a bit the other way.
The idea behind Hunch and many of its kind, Trip Advisor and YELP! come to mind, is that there power in the collective opinion of each of us. What’s different about Hunch is that it helps you narrow the choices to find the one that’s right for you through a series of questions.
Hunch’s description of itself:
Hunch is designed to soak up collective knowledge and then organize it in a useful way to offer you smart recommendations. Hunch proposes custom recommendations for you that it wouldn’t necessarily give to somebody else. But at its core, Hunch’s recommendation algorithm is just a mathematical framework. It’s the users of Hunch who give the algorithm proper training and personality by contributing to it and making it clever, funny, and nuanced…. but most of all very useful in helping everyone to get smart, efficient recommendations.
Get a hunch on everything from how to punish BP to hairstyles.
Hunch attempts to drive consumers to purchase the product in question and receive a referral fee. It seems logical that they are also going to drive revenue by selling the data (anonymously) to the consumer focused companies mentioned in some of their hunches.
Read more at Hunch.com
Read Crunchbase Company Profile of Hunch
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I can empathize with your new client. As a child, as for many years as an adult, I had no real confidence in myself, regardless of accomplishments. When I was a child, my parents tried to teach me the lesson of the ‘Little Engine That Could.’ As you recall, it could because it though it could. Whenever they told me that, I say: “but I don’t think I can”, as that was a far as it ever went.
When I was in college I read a science fiction novel in which the main character (if I recall, I don’t really remember the details) was consumed by fear. So he learned this small poem, which I memorized and said it over and over to myself:
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”
Recently I looked it up. It is from a book by Frank Herbert in the Dune series. Regardless of its origins, it really helped me; it helped that I memorized it and repeated it to myself a million times a day.
Well, there are other things that helped my in conquering fear and in ability to be confident, but that was one of the first steps.