I see hindsight bias lurking. Now we see it as a "waste," but I dare you to make and publicly post predictions about a bunch of startups, and prove you are more accurate than VCs.
Where's the compelling drive to grow an industry? Where's the compelling argument for making money with a real capitalizeable asset? How do these projects fundamentally grow an area of the economy, put people to work, so they will want to buy these things. make life better and make investors more money?
This kid is what we should be investing in: https://qz.com/909614/a-cameroonian-17-year-old-won-the-goog...
Putting this kid to work is what we should be doing, not goofing around with some stupid ass Mindfulness app in SF. This is exactly the plan I'm working on. If somebody doesn't scoop this kid up, I will at some point.
Africa and South America each represent 6% of the world's app revenue. You want to make some money? Help these continents compete. Help the governments involved learn how to manage their information and build out their IT infrastructure. Help bright kids like the one I linked to use their talents to help you make money and grow their local economies at the same time. That's what I'm interested in.
If vc's in the US have been reduced to investing in yet another goddam coffee machine to sell to the US market, then I'd suggest silicon valley has exhausted their strategic thinking, and have been reduced to daddy and friends giving college grad something to do. It's a waste of money that could be so much more strategically spent.
Until they are identified, I don't think VCs will put their money at risk. (They may already exist; I'm pleading ignorance here.)
They're already putting money at risk by investing in startups that are obvious flops. Or even startups that do stuff that won't fly even with western-style legal framework (Theranos).
You might want to take a look at this project: https://www.kountable.com/
I'm quite proud that I once was a part of the team working on it.
What we should try to do is invest in opportunities that get them to the point when they can take a stab at building a startup around whatever they come up with.