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Our problem was how to create a reality tv show with Justin Kan wearing a camera on his head. Is that a good problem?

Are you arguing that startups shouldn't ensure they're solving an important problem?

Creating a reality show out of Justin's life probably wasn't an important problem to solve, but drawing some conclusion based on the successful Justin.TV -> Twitch pivot would be selection bias.

at least we were solving our own problem....

It's impossible to know how many inspiring companies started with a primarily financial motivation. Every company has a bias toward telling a romantic, non-financially motivated founding story, so we can only have a lower bound.

Why so? What if I have an okay solution to a okay problem but see an opportunity to monetize the market gap and band together some folks to create a business around it? Does it have be "inspiring"?