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It always seemed to me that the prevalence of LEGO problem startups, or in other words endless companies doing endless variations of "cat picture sharing webapp
by Jach 15y ago
It always seemed to me that the prevalence of LEGO problem startups, or in other words endless companies doing endless variations of "cat picture sharing webapps", was a reason to discount the total effect a startup can have on humanity and a reason why you should go work for BigCorp. We all more or less agree that NASA problems are more beneficial to humanity than LEGO problems, but in terms of money gained, both options are equally viable. Microsoft started as a LEGO problem, Google started as a LEGO problem, Facebook started as a LEGO problem. Now they're gigantic corporations that can see and manage and fund NASA problems, or buy up and piece together enough LEGO problem startups, who individually were doing NASA problem R&D possibly without realizing it.
- nkassis 15y agoI don't think you can classy what Google did as a LEGO problem. At the time they started, indexing the web and comming up with pagerank was a hugely complex thing to do. And you can see how it impacted their future direction as a company that seems intent on attacking larger world problems. Microsoft did not get huge deal. Sure writing a BASIC interpreter wasn't something super complex but that isn't what made them successful in the end. When I look at company like Dropbox, I don't really see a lego problem since building the infrastructure for what they are doing isn't easy. But it's not stopping people from competing with them as this article claims it would.