5 ms·
I agree with your point that you don't read about the "silent majority" on Hacker News and TechCrunch. Consumer internet touches more people's lives so you hear
by econner 11y ago
I agree with your point that you don't read about the "silent majority" on Hacker News and TechCrunch. Consumer internet touches more people's lives so you hear about it more, especially when said founders are 22 and straight out of school. It's a story the media likes to tell.
Google, Cisco, Kiva, HP, Sun Microsystems, Theranos, Yahoo, Trulia, StubHub, Lytro, Coursera, Bonobos, Snapchat, and Instagram came out of Stanford in one way or another. These companies showcase a diverse range of tech that IS useful.
It's unfair too to say that social media doesn't do anything useful. Facebook reports 1.4 billion MAUs and works to bring the internet to more and more corners of the world. Snapchat's social component has given it the platform on which to innovate.
True, many Stanford students are already wealthy. True, there's a recent trend toward social media companies. But, Stanford continues to be a place where students work incredibly hard and remain motivated to do impactful work. Stanford has a storied history of entrepreneurship that begins before Snapchat and will continue after it.
- Retric 11y agoSure there are outliers, but if Snapchat makes your short list of 'useful' innovation I think you lost the argument.
- SamReidHughes 11y agoThere are 11 other companies in that list, so no, disagreeing with regard to one company should not affect your reception of the argument.
- Retric 11y agoPersonally Trulia, StubHub, Coursera, Bonobos, Snapchat, and Instagram also fail to make the useful innovation cut. If 20+ companies do the same thing and 1 one them wins that does not mean the winner is 'innovative'. lytro is actually innovative. It might not be successful, but again that's a seperate category.
- tptacek 11y agoI decided I hate this comment and zorched it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Retric 11y agoWhy? Linux was increadably well managed and great software, but not nessisarily innovative at the outset. Android is arguably much worse as software, but innovative both as a project and somewhat less so as a phone OS. Sure, you can argue that every piece of software is 'new' and thus innovative, but IMO that's a somewhat meaninglessly low bar.
- tptacek 11y agoSorry, I was referring to the comment I'd originally written, and replaced with that text.
- avn2109 11y agoWhen one company in the world makes pants that fit me (Bonobos), I call that useful if not technologically innovative. Though I admit that I may well be in the large-butted minority here, and the slick user experience of their conversion funnel + shipping pipeline is really just icing on the pants-fit cake.
- dang 11y ago> you don't read about the "silent majority" on Hacker News If the stories are out there, this should be easy to fix. Consider this an open invitation to post everything substantive about such things that you can find. I can't tell you how happy we'd be to see them.
- wj 11y agoOff of the top of my head I think You Need a Budget (YNAB) is an example of software that is measurably improving many people's lives. As far as I know they haven't looked for or received VC funding or had any flashy events that would have generated press coverage. Fitbit is another example of a company improving people's lives but not generating a lot of press (though I do imagine they have been featured on HN and Techcrunch from time to time). I use Dashing (developed by Shopify) for a personal dashboard to track things. Every day I use bluetooth, video and music streaming, Kindle, the software utilities use to make sure I have gas, water, and electricity. Sometimes the silent majority is featured on HN but receives less than reasonable responses. An example are the stories on high frequency trading which decrease spreads and thus are a benefit to anybody with a 401(k).