Ugh, what a rancid, judgmental article. His arguments about changing the world are stale. The problems of a Silicon Valley person are quite different from the

Ugh, what a rancid, judgmental article. His arguments about changing the world are stale. The problems of a Silicon Valley person are quite different from the problems of someone in an emerging market, such as rent of like $3000/month, and so it makes no sense for someone in Silicon Valley to address an emerging market that has no chance of covering costs of living back home. The people in the emerging markets are quite capable of helping themselves, and don't need privileged, naive Americans to step in and show them how backwards they are (ironically, most other societies are more socially advanced, even if they are technologically backwards, and could teach the Americans how to actually achieve quality of life without technology). [And if you are going to step in, please read Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful", and pay attention to his arguments for intermediate technology (i.e., you don't dump differential equations on someone still learning algebra).] If showing someone how to best locate the nearest cupcake shop makes customers happy, then that is a virtuous reason for a startup to exist. It is silly and judgmental to say that people are wasting their talents because they focus on the materialistic first-world problems rather than desperate emerging-world problems. It is about making customers happy, employees (and founders) happy, and investors happy. The question should be: are the founders actually happy doing the work they have chosen? If not, then it is a mistake. Perhaps what the author is really trying to say is that people are focused on getting rich quick off trivial business plans, which will be easily commodotized, or will have hardly any market, causing failure and loss of the investor's money. There is some merit to this sentiment given some of the examples he gave.