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Make blue apron for food pantries. One summer I volunteered on a kind of food pantry truck; twice a week, we'd load up this box truck with whatever the local supermarkets had donated-- pallets of turnips about to expire, pallets of bread, cucumbers, whatever--and we'd drive to some designated areas, set the food out on tables, and people would line up to collect a share of it. We had to limit based on availability; maybe two loaves of bread, three cucumbers, as many turnips as you want.

The donations we got were usually either past their best or unpopular or both. When food expires, there's a period when it's still fine to eat, but it's best not to leave it too long.

So if you're a single parent working two jobs, and you get home at 7:30 to make dinner and you have a turnip you need to use tonight before it goes bad, what do you do?

Wouldn't it be great if someone with great logistics skill and insight into the stocks of all the area food banks could scrape allrecipes, find the most efficient use of the stock as ingredients, and maybe move some things around so that the people waiting for the trucks could get meal kits with online instructions, rather than just bags of turnips?

Just a thought.

Edit: The cool part of this might end up being the supplier side. I imagine that a supermarket has to work much harder to donate to a food pantry than to just throw out stuff. How could you make it easier for them to donate what was really needed? Could you have finders who go around to stores, enter the stuff to be thrown out into your system, decide what it would be worth it to take, take it, and keep track of yearly donations for the retailer for tax purposes? Could you cut their waste disposal costs and save them taxes and build goodwill?

The bigger idea here is that just because the consumers of your service aren't very focused on new technology doesn't mean that technology can't drive and enable your business model. There are probably many kinds of businesses that provide services to the underprivileged that would benefit from technology in the back office even if technology isn't their product.

I actually had an idea around that - neighborhood cooking. There is definitely some widow grandmother on my block who would love to make some extra money cooking her awesome meals for her neighbors. And I'd love to pay for that service. Unfortunately state regulations for what is defined as a kitchen and cooking for others has huge health code implications, and never took off.

This, what you're saying, is more of a logistics and resource allocation problem, all needing to be done in real time. Very smart, but would require quite a bit of up-front innovation. I'll ruminate on this idea for sure!

I love this idea. I think bringing the idea of blue apron to a lower income market would be amazing, especially if it could take advantage of government incentives. One of the hardest things about cooking healthy is doing all the meal planning.

> I've constantly racked my brain...Am I approaching it wrong?...

I don't think so and I have a similar problem as you. Certain problems have already been solved by other methods and wont yield to digitization. What is needed is simply a transplanting of existing tech to under served sectors.There are many businesses that are profitable without the need for extreme tech innovation.

My peeve for instance, is that in my part of the world certain kinds of farming (rice, oil palm)yield decent and more or less assured profits (>500% over a decade) and there is no need for new technology other than that which already exists. This could logically fall under agriculture. The main barrier is relatively small amounts of capital (<200k - 1M usd) but try telling that to unicorn obsessed VC's looking for the next Snapchat.

Regarding the agriculture you bring up, the real issue here is contracts. Suppose you lend a bunch of Kerala palm oil orchards $1M, hoping to make $5M over a decade. Do you really trust the Communist government of Kerala to enforce your contracts and transfer wealth from poor local farmers back to the rich (likely foreign) capitalists who made them loans?

That's the problem to solve. If you can solve it I don't see a reason why anyone wouldn't fund you.

I would argue that solving the problem of contract enforcement is beyond the scope of any entrepreneur.

However I do see your point and appreciate its merit. By the same token, if YC was unduly worried about that, they would never be able to fund (tech) companies that operate principally outside the west because the problem you allude to has never really been solved satisfactorily.

But here's my point: as YC becomes larger and looks for growth outside its traditional areas, its model must evolve.

Right now it does seem a bit scattershot. Is it a VC or an Angel? What is the place and relationship of charity and the entrepreneurs it sponsors? It claims to invest in founders predominantly over their ideas, but everyone I know who applies, does so with the thought at the back of their minds, that the de-facto situation is one in which an idea which cannot be a billion dollar company is best left at home. Whats wrong with funding a company that has the potential to reach 100M?

I guess what I mean to say is: for the larger mission YC espouses, the funding model is broken; indeed the mission itself is unclear. For those like me who aspire to be funded this creates much frustration

Whats wrong with funding a company that has the potential to reach 100M?

Nothing is wrong with doing such a thing. It's just not the business most Silicon Valley VCs are in. VCs are in the business of taking on large risk in pursuit of a large return, not taking on small (or medium) risk in pursuit of a small (or medium) return.

You don't get mad at a butcher because they're in the business of selling meat and not vegetables. Same thing here.

...they would never be able to fund (tech) companies that operate principally outside the west because the problem you allude to has never really been solved satisfactorily.

That isn't really true. If I build a SAAS based in Singapore, or almost anywhere really, I pretty much expect that I'll get paid. You pay me, I switch on your service, and I switch it off if you stop paying.

In contrast, loans involve giving away money and hoping it comes back. The potential for default is a lot higher.

I don't have anything against agricultural financing - I think it's something the world should have. I just don't know how to solve it. If I did I'd be pursuing it, though probably not via YC.

The first step is to articulate specific problems.

The link does a little bit, but people with minimal savings don't actually care that they are unbanked; paying Walmart $3 to cash a check isn't that terrible a deal (Even if it isn't a great deal).

> Part of the problem is they aren't tech savvy the way the HN community is - so what works for our community doesn't exactly work for theirs, or that they even use technology to the extent that we do (i.e. does technology even solve this problem?). > The other problem is revenue/profitability...this population is inherently cash-strapped, so trying to create a technology solution that likely lies in the Tech-meets-Consumer Discretionary industry, well, who among these people can (and will) afford such services?

Maybe we should be looking at a different "group" as the users of the services we could provide.

For example, the government. Governments spend billions on social services, so perhaps we could be creating technology that could improve their efficiency and reduce their costs, which in theory would lead to more/better support for undeserved communities. Not saying that's much easier, but it's another way we can try help.

> Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve these kinds of problems?

Redistribute advantages, using that term in a broad way. That's what the underprivileged actually need. The US government will likely never solve it, so the best I can imagine is a platform that connects the poor with successful, wealthy people who meet with them semi-regularly and actually give them money upon completing plans that they design together. If a successful person was willing to enter your life and give you money if you worked with them to achieve some goals, you would be in a significantly better position. At scale it would change society.

> Most techies aren't also veterans or single mothers

Hire them. They're cash strapped and need money. You're knowledge strapped and need insight.

There's bound to be a way to make those two facts work together so it benefits both parties.

Good luck finding them - most of us go to inland state schools and fly under the prestige of the likes of Stanford and UC Berkeley.

EDIT - For clarity, I'm a veteran graduate of a state school.

Am I reading correctly that you think single mothers and veterans will refuse to work with techies that lack a Stanford pedigree?

Other way around - I could have done a better job of phrasing that.

Not many Stanford undergraduates are veterans or single mothers, and members of that startup talent pool are unlikely to go looking for them.

Ah, that makes more sense.

What if you're also cash strapped? :)

My first thought on that entry was a way of distributing earnings more frequently than weekly or fortnightly. Are people more inclined to blow their paycheque on entertainment if it's a bigger lump sum? And maybe a way of automating a certain type of withholding to build an emergency fund, or pay for bills.

We grant concessions for retirement savings. Maybe the same for certain types of saving for essential bills? Water, gas, etc.

I don't really trust many services not to fleece their customers though.

I'd be really interested in this as a concept - a regressive pre-tax deduction for basic utilities. As you say, the issue will be for utility companies not to jack prices to take advantage, but offsetting some tax revenue from income would lead to an increase (potentially) from VAT/sales tax because of more discretionary income?

I agree that it's harder to solve a problem that you're not experiencing, but, by the same token, underserved communities will tolerate an even lower threshold of quality as long as you're helping them :)

For the approach on how to solve their problems, the main goal is empathy.

Look at the Design Thinking theory: first step is to emphatize.

When I was taking a marketing course, they told us to shadow a consumer. You have to "walk a mile in their shoes" For example, I've been very impressed by the use of artificial impairments to simulate the experience of people with real disabilities.

Once you -really- understand their problems, I'm pretty sure any sharp mind here will come up with interesting solutions.

Edit: Design School

http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/

Look for the Bootcamp material too:

https://dschool.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/...

HOW to empathize To empathize, you: - Observe. View users and their behavior in the context of their lives. As much as possible do observations in relevant contexts in addition to interviews. Some of the most powerful realizations come from noticing a disconnect between what someone says and what he does. Others come from a work-around someone has created which may be very surprising to you as the designer, but she may not even think to mention in conversation.

- Engage. Sometimes we call this technique ‘interviewing’ but it should really feel more like a conversation. Prepare some questions you’d like to ask, but expect to let the conversation deviate from them. Keep the conversation only loosely bounded. Elicit stories from the people you talk to, and always ask “Why?” to uncover deeper meaning. Engagement can come through both short ‘intercept’ encounters and longer scheduled conversations.

- Watch and Listen. Certainly you can, and should, combine observation and engagement. Ask someone to show you how they complete a task. Have them physically go through the steps, and talk you through why they are doing what they do. Ask them to vocalize what’s going through their mind as they perform a task or interact with an object. Have a conversation in the context of someone’s home or workplace – so many stories are embodied in artifacts. Use the environment to prompt deeper questions.

Empathy might help you find and understand their problems; the problem seems to be how to finance the solution. When selling to a well-to-do middle-class professional, you're probably competing for cash that would otherwise go to purchase some toy or extra night out. When selling to the working-class, you're often competing against rent and food.

Essentially, how to sell to someone who has no discretionary income?

I grew up in an underserved community and in poverty, so this is a situation that is near and dear to my heart.

I am also an advocate of internet privacy and against big companies selling my data to 3rd parties, but I believe a trade off is needed here.

Google and Facebook are free, but they sell your data to advertisers and 3rd parties in exchange for your usage, I would imagine that a startup that caters to those without discretionary income would need a similar business model, at least in the early stages.

Maybe, but who has a particular desire for the data of people without discretionary income?

The advertisers that buy Google/Facebook data (or more accurately consume that data when buying ad space) are trying to target potential buyers, typically those with disposable income.

I fear that the businesses that would want the data on lower income earners would be payday lenders and the like which is not an appealing prospect.

> Maybe, but who has a particular desire for the data of people without discretionary income?

That's the big question, maybe government agencies and other non-profits who want to connect with these underserved communities, unfortunately, I'm not sure how feasible that is.

Amen.

We try to do this at Blue Ridge Labs. Our incubator just closed it's applications for 2017. We'll be opening applications for the fellowship, meant for individual engineers, designers, product managers and experts to do the research, interviews, focus groups, prototyping and testing to develop new tech products that fight poverty.

https://labs.robinhood.org/