3 ms·

It's okay that the marginal successes don't upend the world, the writer simply is asking if those of us in the valley are "disrupting" the right problems for th

It's okay that the marginal successes don't upend the world, the writer simply is asking if those of us in the valley are "disrupting" the right problems for the right populations. A marginal amount of time-savings for a high-income earner in having their car parking woes solved might be economically more viable than working on a problem that is less sexy but potentially has significantly less impact on actual improvement to people's lives.

aetherson 10y ago
The "right" problems for the "right" populations is a silly formulation. First of all, the implicit idea that the founders of these companies are all like, "Oh, hey, I have ten really highly functional business plans for bringing an app to profitability, and I'll reject the ones serving population X because I think it's 5% less profitable than the ones serving population Y" is dumb. Second, the idea that that writer can identify the "right" populations and problems is risible. And, to be clear, she absolutely is complaining that people are attacking small problems instead of global warming. She explicitly calls out rising sea levels. And while a few of the services he identifies are targeted to a rich userbase (such as: locating rentable yachts, and probably the drone filming service, and the valet parking one), plenty of others aren't. The one about renting driveways is probably mostly enabling people who are relatively low-income for the area they live in to monetize an unused asset. Getting a new toothbrush addresses a need everyone has. Getting killed by the police is a problem faced disproportionately by lower-income people and minorities. There are lots of false steps towards progress, and like I said, probably most or all of those will fail. But we've seen time and time again that top down direction to only focus on what some member of the cultural elite deems important is a recipe for disaster.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  First of all, the implicit idea that the founders of these companies are all like, "Oh, hey, I have ten really highly functional business plans for bringing an app to profitability, and I'll reject the ones serving population X because I think it's 5% less profitable than the ones serving population Y" is dumb. Isn't that precisely what VCs do when assessing the viability of a startup? But we've seen time and time again that top down direction to only focus on what some member of the cultural elite deems important is a recipe for disaster. NYT writers may be part of the cultural elite, but software engineers in San Francisco, by dint of their economic power and education levels, are arguably part of it as well. The VCs and startup financial and management classes are definitely so.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    No, what VCs do is try to figure out "Does this thing have any chance of making a big business." And they're mostly wrong. And not every tech idea is or should be VC-backed. Software engineers are clearly in the cultural elite. And if any software engineer was in the business of telling people "I know what the right population and right problems are," they'd be idiots, too. Note that that's distinct from, "I have AN idea that I think I can turn into a successful business, by targeting problem X of population Y" which says nothing about the universe of ideas.

aetherson 10y ago

The "right" problems for the "right" populations is a silly formulation. First of all, the implicit idea that the founders of these companies are all like, "Oh, hey, I have ten really highly functional business plans for bringing an app to profitability, and I'll reject the ones serving population X because I think it's 5% less profitable than the ones serving population Y" is dumb. Second, the idea that that writer can identify the "right" populations and problems is risible. And, to be clear, she absolutely is complaining that people are attacking small problems instead of global warming. She explicitly calls out rising sea levels. And while a few of the services he identifies are targeted to a rich userbase (such as: locating rentable yachts, and probably the drone filming service, and the valet parking one), plenty of others aren't. The one about renting driveways is probably mostly enabling people who are relatively low-income for the area they live in to monetize an unused asset. Getting a new toothbrush addresses a need everyone has. Getting killed by the police is a problem faced disproportionately by lower-income people and minorities. There are lots of false steps towards progress, and like I said, probably most or all of those will fail. But we've seen time and time again that top down direction to only focus on what some member of the cultural elite deems important is a recipe for disaster.

Apocryphon 10y ago
First of all, the implicit idea that the founders of these companies are all like, "Oh, hey, I have ten really highly functional business plans for bringing an app to profitability, and I'll reject the ones serving population X because I think it's 5% less profitable than the ones serving population Y" is dumb. Isn't that precisely what VCs do when assessing the viability of a startup? But we've seen time and time again that top down direction to only focus on what some member of the cultural elite deems important is a recipe for disaster. NYT writers may be part of the cultural elite, but software engineers in San Francisco, by dint of their economic power and education levels, are arguably part of it as well. The VCs and startup financial and management classes are definitely so.
- aetherson 10y ago
  No, what VCs do is try to figure out "Does this thing have any chance of making a big business." And they're mostly wrong. And not every tech idea is or should be VC-backed. Software engineers are clearly in the cultural elite. And if any software engineer was in the business of telling people "I know what the right population and right problems are," they'd be idiots, too. Note that that's distinct from, "I have AN idea that I think I can turn into a successful business, by targeting problem X of population Y" which says nothing about the universe of ideas.