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Here's a thought experiment: let's say you had two billion dollars, household-name level of fame, and a past history of startup success. If you wanted to start
by adastra 14y ago
Here's a thought experiment: let's say you had two billion dollars, household-name level of fame, and a past history of startup success. If you wanted to start a new company, you could no doubt convince some of silicon valley's elite investors to put in money and attract a couple of the world's leading experts in whatever field you were interested in. This will be your full-time job.
For me, here's the list of industries I'd love to try and disrupt, in no particular order: clean energy or clean water, health care IT, public transportation, 3rd-world agriculture, cybersecurity, the US education system.
Or, here's some cool tech areas that I'd love to play in, maybe disrupt something, but at least it would be hugely fun: AI, flying drones, quantum computing/communications, genomics, space travel. Also, see the Yudkowsky Scale [1].
You see where I'm going with this. With all his money and all his talent, Sean Parker has decided to solve the problem of "my random video chats had too many penises in them."
Not everyone can be Elon Musk, but once you've got 2 billion dollars, damn man at least give it a try.
To be clear: I have no problem with software startups that start by solving small problems or by bringing a tiny bit of joy to people's lives. But there's also plenty of people already doing that. I just think the calculus of how you spend your time has to change when you have more capital at your disposal than 99.999% of the entrepreneurs on the planet.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702
- earbitscom 14y agoYou make a great point, and yet, given Napster and now Airtime, do we really want this guy trying to put humans safely on Mars?
- kiskis 14y agotrue and same for dustin moskovitz. dustin with his $3.5B trying to solve what, todo lists? but with these at least you realize that - other than their huge financial fortune - those guys are the same average guys as the rest of us.
- sek 14y agoThat's a little bit unfair, there is no game changing task organisation app out there and it's a huge problem. Trello is the best right now in my opinion. They focused too much on a perfect technical solution for web development. When Moskovitz started he didn't sold his shares yet and they raised not that much money. Parker seems a little desperate for attention in my opinion, being in the shadow of MZ is not easy i guess.
- SkyMarshal 14y agoMZ?
- jdale27 14y agoMark Zuckerberg.
- derwiki 14y agoParker is also a founding member and CEO of Causes, the largest platform for collective activism online (disclaimer: I work there).
- adastra 14y agoThe Causes website says he's chairman of the board, not CEO. That's a huge difference. My comment wasn't meant to denigrate Causes, which is great. By all accounts Parker is full time at Airtime. He has $2 billion of wealth, non-trivial technical and business skill, and another 40+ years of lifespan to tackle one or more of the world's toughest problems. It doesn't exactly help silicon valley's public image when one of its most public faces does a huge hyped up launch for... chat roulette redux. After the unfortunate post-IPO performance of groupon, facebook, and zynga, the perception of silicon valley is in bad enough shape as it is.
- bduerst 14y ago>health care IT It's currently being dominated by Epic Systems, for their enterprise EMR. If you want to disrupt this industry you have to take a stab at that segment. Coincidently, Epic is programmed in Mumps and Cache, and uses Citrix on all the client machines. It could be their Achilles heel.
- SkyMarshal 14y ago>Mumps and Cache Had to look those up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cach%C3%A9_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cach%C3%A9_(software)
- bduerst 14y agoYep. Epic EMR work is in extremely high demand right now - but it's completely worthless work if you're trying to transfer into a different line of work.
- bduerst 14y agoYep. Epic EMR work is in extremely high demand right now - but it's completely worthless experience for any other line of work.
- SkyMarshal 14y agoSean Parker's thing is social. It's what he knows and apparently loves, and few people have had more success at it. I wouldn't begrudge him his passions Also, technical and scientific advancement don't always come from predictable, deterministic sources. Who knows what 'social' experiments like Airtime could turn into.