Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

278 pointsDotOrg152 comments

A few months ago I saw a thread on Hacker News that really lit a fire inside of me. Someone posted a Ask HN thread asking something along the lines of "Does your startup help change the world?"

I couldn't believe some of the responses. There were tons of people saying that their iPhone apps were because they made it easier to find restaurants.. or that their B2B social media marketing startup was because it was improving productivity for marketers. I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of many of the responses. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for people who have successful typical startups. But that said, I think people sometimes are extremely sheltered if they think that those sorts of problems are really impacting lives.

Families who never thought it would happen to them across the United States are finding themselves homeless. My wife is from a small town that just 15 years ago had very high employment. Today the town is rapidly turning into a miniature Detroit after the main employer of the town closed down and moved overseas. Countless numbers of children are going hungry this summer since their primary and often times only nutritious and filling daily meal is their school lunch. My city recently had a free health treatment clinic for one day only. Hundreds of people stood in line for hours and hours, only to be sent home since not all were able to be seen.

And yet, that's just in the United States. Elsewhere in the world, one BILLION people don't have access to clean drinking water. Hundreds of millions of people work 12 hour days seven days a week for in exchange for pennies. People are killed or imprisoned every day just for speaking out against their governments.

I'm not delusional or hopelessly optimistic. I'm aware that these are all major global problems, and they're far more complicated than any one person could ever hope to solve. But what I am interested in is finding out a way that I could be doing something as a career to be a part of this. I don't necessarily think that you have to be a nonprofit or charity to still contribute to these sort of things. SwipeGood and Sparked are two examples of this.

But my question is - has anyone actually built or is working on something related to these sorts of issues? I'm fascinated by stories such as the one behind Charity Water (http://www.charitywater.org/about/scotts_story.php) and reading about organizations like FreeGeek. I'd love to start a nonprofit of my own, but I have no clue where to begin. If anyone has any advice, thoughts, or would like to connect I'd love to hear from you.

View on HN

Please don't fall into the trap of believing that your daily work and working for the greater good are mutually exclusive.

You may not realize it, but you are often contributing to the greater good on a daily basis simply by doing your job. It's sometimes hard to visualize this because we are often many degrees of separation away from the "end user".

You don't actually have to be physically building that home for the homeless or providing food for the hungry; the work you're already doing may be helping someone to help someone else to do that.

I've even thought that the best way to put your technical skills to the greater good is through your day job, not instead of it.

Some of my days jobs have been to write software to ensure that:

  - people get the right prescription medication on time
  - firetrucks and ambulances get to where they're supposed to be
  - parts that go into cars and planes are properly certified
  - prisoners are kept in jail
  - those same prisoners get proper medical care
  - electronic equipment gets assembled properly and on time
  - medical supplies get dispatched to where they're supposed to
  - insurance claims are processed properly
  - quality data is properly maintained for food items

You don't need to do charity work on the side in order to contribute to the greater good.

On the other hand, if you don't think that the work you do during the day contributes to the greater good, then maybe you should consider doing something else with your valuable time.

Do good and get paid. You can do both at the same time.

Wow, that makes one of us. Most[1] of my day jobs over the past eight years have been:

    - Make sure Visual Studio 2005 doesn't look like shit.
    - Make sure Visual Studio 2008 doesn't look like shit.
    - 'Something something, dead Microsoft product.'
    - Make sure we can ship this product in order to get a 'B' round of funding.
    - 'Something, something dead startup.'

And, on that depressing note...

    On the other hand, if you don't think that the work you do during the day contributes to the greater good, then maybe you should consider doing something else with your valuable time.
    Do good and get paid. You can do both at the same time.

Let's sure hope so. I envy you in many ways.

[1] Although I have never directly contributed to a reduction in human misery, I still take a great deal of pride in things like http://cocoacontrols.com, which have, hopefully, made many iOS developers happier and richer, and many end-users generally happier.

I'm sure a kit if people who made great thing with VS are overjoyed that it doesn't look like shit.

Hah, thanks :)

I love cocoacontrols! As does everyone I've referred to it. I'm a regular visitor, so thanks! :)

Great to hear, and thank you! Please feel free to hit me up with any feedback you might ever have. My email address is on CC's about page.

> Please don't fall into the trap of believing that your daily work and working for the greater good are mutually exclusive.

a great talk about it

TEDxWarwick - Noam Kostucki - Making Money From Doing Good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gRaHyHJjrg

http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others...

"Just as there is only one best charity, there is only one best way to donate to that charity. Whether you volunteer versus donate money versus raise awareness is your own choice, but that choice has consequences. If a high-powered lawyer who makes $1,000 an hour chooses to take an hour off to help clean up litter on the beach, he's wasted the opportunity to work overtime that day, make $1,000, donate to a charity that will hire a hundred poor people for $10/hour to clean up litter, and end up with a hundred times more litter removed. If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it. And if he wanted to help people, period, he's chosen a very wrong way to go about it, since that $1,000 could save two people from malaria. Unless the litter he removed is really worth more than two people's lives to him, he's erring even according to his own value system.

...and the same is true if his philanthropy leads him to work full-time at a nonprofit instead of going to law school to become a lawyer who makes $1,000 / hour in the first place. Unless it's one HELL of a nonprofit."

(and the comments)

It's funny how many people don't grasp this concept. I've been chewed out before for working at a tech company, because 'obviously I could be doing more good in the peace corp'

Working in the Peace Corps could change your life and your perspective on the world in ways that working in corporate America probably won't.

It's all well and good to plan to work in a high paying job so that you can do good by donating some of the surplus you earn.

But being immersed in corporate culture and being surrounded by people who's aim is largely to make money, to look out for #1, and to value consumerism has a way of corrupting people with the best intentions.

Many start out wanting to make a difference, and wind up fretting over whether their next bonus will be enough to buy a timeshare in Cancun.

Well, the irony was that I was being actively condemned by a girl doing the same thing as me.

But what if your personal value system includes wanting your day job---what you spend 40 hours/wk or more doing---to be directly implementing something you care about?

Sure, that's a selfish choice to some extent, but I think it's a reasonable one. Some people choose to live in one city over another just because they like it, or to work at Google rather than Wall Street because they like what they're building there more. Some people will pass up a job for one that pays 20% less, because it's building an exciting new app they want to help succeed. Wanting to work on a social-justice project just seems like a variation of that; it's quite common and natural for people to want their day job to be something they care about, if they have the option.

I think the argument as given also assumes that charities are currently operating optimally, and there's no room for improvement or disruption. If you applied the efficiency argument to startups in general, it would argue that you should work a well-paying job and pay other people to do startups. When would it ever be beneficial to do one yourself? Only if you think the market is not already efficient, and your personal intervention as a founder could change things more than working your current job and just funding startups would.

I think you're actually in agreement - if you can do more good via your day job than you could going out and doing manual labor, it's objectively better for the cause for you to do it via working more at your day job. It's just saying that it's silly for someone with a ton of leverage to abandon that leverage and volunteer as a manual laborer, rather than using the leverage to do a lot more good.

Thanks for the link to LW, those guys are frequently insightful.

Another thing to consider is consumer choice. Very few people donate as much as they can to charity.

I also think that "good" startups create a lot of social value by improving wealth - the bigger the pie the more to distribute.

One could get wrapped up in logic games all day. For my life, I prefer the general heuristic of "ABC" - "Alway Be Creating" as opposed to destroying or fighting over my share of the pie (which from an opportunity cost POV is actually destructive). This is just a personal preference of mine (and probably most people who read HN), BUT I also think it's prudent economics as someone who is generally creating useful stuff for those around them will be guaranteed compensation of one form or another (hourly wage, salary, startup equity, etc). The obvious exception to this is those who help the disadvantaged since they can't compensate you. And that's where donations (and for non-right-wing-libertarians, tax dollars) come into play.

I agree that people who are capable of doing high level work should do so, but the comparison shouldn't be a high-powered lawyer vs. picking up trash, it should be: being a high powered lawyer vs. being a "high-powered leader" of a social movement. If Gandhi had decided to continue being a lawyer and donating his profits to charity, there's no way that all the cheap labor he could have hired would have added up to the kind of world-historical moment that his life did.

It's more of an encouragement to think about the choices you make than a blanket "don't go doing good directly" warning. Trash collecting for an hour is easy to value compared to an hour of legal overtime, but an hour of "high powered leading a social movement" is much more nebulous.

That benefit has to be offset by the harm. If he is getting that $1,000 to help a logging company gain the rights to clearcut old growth forest, then his additional hour may be net harm, even if he donates the $1000 to help clean up a beach.

At the big dollar amounts, are you going to be able to make the ethical choices to only choose cases that do not do net harm? Perhaps, but not guaranteed, and one "no" to one client can lose you a big client and cause trouble getting the next.

It's a waste if one reads the above and not the paragraph following this one.

The Roman historian Sallust said of Cato "He preferred to be good, rather than to seem so". The lawyer who quits a high-powered law firm to work at a nonprofit organization certainly seems like a good person. But if we define "good" as helping people, then the lawyer who stays at his law firm but donates the profit to charity is taking Cato's path of maximizing how much good he does, rather than how good he looks.

When you say "these sorts of issues", it sounds like you're talking about injustice everywhere. You want to fix injustices-- food for the hungry-- instead of "adding happiness"-- better food photos for people with smartphones.

In which case, I FEEL YOU. I'm infinitely more interested in SwipeGood than I am in Zynga. But everyone makes their own choices. Some people just aren't that concerned with injustice. Some people may have the same goals you do, and try a different path; nonprofits/NGOs always have good intentions, but not always good results (have you ever tried fundraising? it's not any easier than just making money.) And finally, it's a heck of a lot harder to fix injustices than add happiness. It's harder to scale, too. Much easier to build that photo sharing startup and be happy. :)

You should figure out what exactly you want to do. Injustice is too broad. Pick something and start there. You can try to pick something where you think you'll have "the greatest impact", but it's a) impossible to predict, and b) it's better long-term if it's something you're passionate about and won't burn out on.

Khan Academy, Kiva, DonorsChoose, and Samasource are nonprofits that are popular/well-known in the tech/startup world. Do any of those interest you? What about them interests you?

Where are you located? If you're in the Bay Area, there's a lot of people working in/on nonprofits/foundations, social enterprises, and other innovative social change efforts. But there are so many problems to solve; figure out what motivates you first. (There's also a lot of crap, just like in tech, and it's probably harder to tell the difference because everyone is just "trying to do good" and there are no easy success metrics like revenue or profitability.)

Good luck! I hope you find something that's meaningful for you and makes an impact on those less fortunate than you.

I get and agree with the point you're making, and like the distinction that you're making, but I'm going to quibble a little about the choice of the name "adding happiness" as the counterpart to "fix injustices".

"Happiness" is a real stretch to describe the thing that a lot of these startups are "adding". "Pleasant distraction" might be a more apt phrase, or even just "pleasure". Or "yet one more goddamn reason to start vacantly at my smartphone, ignoring everything around me", if you're of a cynical bent.

I used to work for Samasource; they're all good people and are hiring a Rails dev if anyone's interested after this thread: http://www.samasource.org/about/positions/RubyEngineer

Stephen Covey gives a useful framework: Do the intersection of your ability, the existing need, your interest, and the important. Ask yourself, "What can I do (ability) that other people value (need), that I like (interest) and that I feel is ultimately important?

Also, before you embark on saving the world, you might want to study a little Austrian economics. A lot of charity work and government programs are inefficient or actually contributing to poverty because they are contrary to economic law. You don't want spend few years of your life trying to solve poverty only to realize that you've been part of the problem.

In general, societies become wealthy when they are virtuous and economically free. Virtue causes them to generate and keep wealth. Economic freedom helps them build wealth efficiently. If you want to make any society richer from a macro level, you might focus on improving one or both of these: help that society become more virtuous and more free.

Regarding virtue, you might work to decrease drunkenness (Alcoholics Annonymous), drug use, and other vices. These activities harm individuals and their families and contribute to poverty.

Regarding freedom, you might work in politics to protect property rights, to have sound money and market prices, to allow people to work without licensing and other artificial restrictions, to reduce taxes. You can also work to spread price information and make markets more efficient (Craigslist, EBay and AirBnB do this.)

On a lower abstract level, you can work to produce some good or service which people value but is in short supply. That is, find a popular, over-priced good or service, and offer it at a lower price and better quality. Khan Academy is doing this for K-12 education.

Can you give links to more information about Austrian economics and how it contributes to poverty?

He made the opposite statement: Austrian economics contributes to ending poverty. If you have time, watch this documentary by Milton Friedman: http://freetochoose.tv

The misunderstanding of economics contributes to poverty. The Austrian economists tend to write about this. For example, the minimum wage essentially makes it illegal for very unskilled workers to work. This was dramatically illustrated when the US government imposed a higher-than-market minimum-wage on the island of American Samoa and decimated the economy.[1]

An economically-naive do-gooder, considering that a minimum wage helps poor people, might work hard for its passage, not understanding that the minimum wage actually hurts poor people.

[1] Peter Schiff gives an excellent explanation of the result of the minimum-wage on American Samoa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25U_7mx9jU

Well, a problem with the Austrian framework in this context is that there are things we need to finance as social goods (desired outcomes by society at large) that can never be structured to be profitable.

This is, incidentally, the classical economic case for both governmental provision of public goods, taxation, and regulation.

You can take the idea of non-coercion and private property pretty far, without even considering the role of charity. See Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty(1) for ideas of how it might work.

Also people are naturally motivated by more than commercial self-interest. This is why charities exist.

1-http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

This might be an unpopular opinion, but a nonprofit/charity will never make as big a difference as a true for-profit vehicle that is pointed at the same problem.

Nonprofits are ultimately financially unustainable; they survive on donations and government grants (tax) rather than direct contributions from customers. As such they usually can't scale to employ many people or make a worldwide impact.

There are exceptions in the information age; Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and perhaps over time Document Cloud. But these too are only useful for people who have computers, not people who lack food.

In general countries only drag themselves out of poverty through capitalism and industry. India and China had decades of foreign aid before they turned to capitalism; now there are many industries in which they are net exporters.

"This might be an unpopular opinion, but a nonprofit/charity will never make as big a difference as a true for-profit vehicle that is pointed at the same problem."

It's certainly not an unpopular opinion on HN, home to hordes of corporation-loving, free-market worshiping libertarians.

I have downvoted you because your comment is an unwanted personal attack on this sites users.

If you disagree with his, in my opinion correct, assumption then please argue such so that we can all be smarter.

Thank you.

I didn't read it as a personal attack. The OP's post is not that "unpopular" on this site because this website is full of libertarians. pg is one, I believe. Most entrepreneurs of course, support capitalism and free markets. In fact the proposition that "a nonprofit/charity will never make as big a difference as a true for-profit vehicle that is pointed at the same problem" likely resonates with a majority of users, although I can't really provide a figure, this is from my general experience with the site.

I don't think that the parent post is supposed to be an attack on the opinion, but pointing out that it's actually popular.

Agreed.

Also, the nonprofit is not under evolutionary pressure to actually solve the problem. They are just under pressure to make people believe they are doing a good thing.

Corporations dont tend to rationally shut down when their market goes away either, there are inefficiencies in the corporate model. Charities do change as demand changes though.

Eventually the corporation will be bankrupt, though. Still, I don't claim that corporations are without fail.

It is still necessary to think about "morals" (I don't like morals, because I think they are only necessary if you don't understand what is really going on). Otherwise, why not join the Mafia and make millions selling drugs?

It's a similar failing: there's a gap between the ultimate good provided by a non-profit and its metric for funding (which is why grant-writing is a much more sought-after skill than most programmatic work).

For corporations, there's often a gap between financial performance (particularly short-term) and real shareholder/owner value.

It's ethically important to see not just private gain (compensation) but also try to honestly assess one's positive impact on the world (though this does not discount, for example, donations to charitable causes, or the contribution to public goods through taxation).

pg has an interesting essay on the subject: http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

The green revolution , in agriculture , which saved an estimated billion files , was made by a non-profit.

Paul pollack , and his non-profit IDE, got 20 million people out poverty by offering radically affordable irrigation technology and building private markets for such products.

There have been new kinds of non-profits that combine a non-profit goal + financial sustainability. They appear to work better in some cases.

For those who are interested in sucssesful non-profit business models and organizations, nextbillion.net is a good site.

"a nonprofit/charity will never make as big a difference as a true for-profit vehicle that is pointed at the same problem."

Different domains of problems: a NFP (not for profit) org may not be as _efficient_ as a FP org pursuing the same goal, but you are ignoring that many goals will never be pursued by a profit-seeking entity.

Provision of many "social goods" like shelter for the homeless, health care for poor children, or help for people with severe disabilities (components of the "safety net") will simply never yield a profit margin by virtue of the nature of the underlying problem. This is precisely because if we want to provide such services for people who lack the _ability_ to pay for it, there will be no demand for it.

So, instead, NFPs make a value proposition to _philanthropists_ who want to provide the goods there is no market incentive to provide.

In the public sector corollary, politicians make value propositions to voters, and whichever programs they like (through the mucky, revealed-preference process we call democracy), and the social goods demanded via that process are then implemented through public financing (spreading costs among everyone).

It is the underlying problem -- not the organization type -- that governs whether a venture can be profitable, or even sustainable.

I'm late to this thread, but I'd like to add that just doing your job very well is a great way to give back to the world.

I design database software. I do it because I think it's cool, and I think it's important to have easy to use software that solves IT problems. My software is now being used in rural hospitals in Africa to update patient records, and in disaster areas to help reunite lost children and parents. I had nothing to do with those things, I just design and write database software, but they built on my work, because I did my job well.

Doing your job well can inspire, make people happy, provide a base, provide stability, etc. It can help others do those things that put a happy tear in your eye, that you know made a profound difference in someones life, you don't need to be the actual hero to do good in the world, to make a real difference.

We'd love to have anyone passionate about changing the world of education apply to Khan Academy.

http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs

^ Education is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Short of inventing the next evaporation fridge or water purification straw for developing nations, this is going to be one of your better bets if you want to directly help people.

Love this comment. The Internet is probably the fastest way to scale education and ideas. Getting Internet access to those who don't have it is just as critical in my opinion. Internet literacy will be key to a good education in generations to come.

Working in Education doesn't always have the same instant gratification as other projects, but if you can help people learn then you're going to have a very strong and lasting impact over time. And imagine if you created a product like, Khan Academy, that would increase the knowledge of 1% of the population by 10%. I think that's a worthy goal.

Improving education doesn't have the same immediate benefits, but the way I see it insufficient education is at the root of most of the world's problems. With improving education, you make a ripple which turns into a huge wave.

Immediate and long term results are both worthy and needed. It's just a choice: do you want to work in the world's emergency room, or in patient education?

Sorry to hijack OP's post, but I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you a few things about Khan Academy. All I know about is based on a piece that appeared in Wired US august issue.

To me, your method relied on a)having kids learning a lesson at home b)drilling exercises.

On a), I must say that it surprised me much. It means that kids must all have computer available at home (which is clearly not the case, even in western countries) and it also means that their home is sufficiently stable so that they can listen to a lesson (which is probably not doable if mom & dad fight each other every night, whereas doing small exercises is doable in between fights?).

Then, there's this part about creating a school, costing upwards of 10k$ a year. Call me a socialist or whatever, but seriously, paying 10k$ a year to get primary education, wtf?? Shouldn't a not for profit org seek to open such a school for free?

Please do not see this msg as completely negative: you're doing stuff to find other/better ways to teach kids, which is definitely awesome.

The current model is that 20-30 kids who want to be moving around and interacting with each other are forced into seats and restricted from moving for hours while teachers talk at them until they get distracted and zone out the teacher to think about other things. And then they go home with an assignment to complete which they may or may not do depending on how motivated they are. When Khan Academy flips this, they make much better use of the situation. There's no reason for everyone to be lectured at together, but there's every reason to allow students to interact and work together while solving problems. There's very little motivation to go home and complete a rigorous assignment when you can be playing outside or watching TV, but watching a couple 10-20 minute videos is enjoyable and completely digestible.

Personally, I believe that the act of working through problems is often more important to learning and development than watching or listening to lectures explaining how to work through problems. If a student's conditions at home are so unstable that they cannot concentrate on watching a single video, then they are clearly never going to be able to put a reasonable amount of effort into homework assignments in the normal education system. I would rather they fail to watch Khan videos at home and interact and explore exercises in class than listen to lectures in class every day but never put those skills into practice because they fail to do homework at home. However, yes, availability of computers at home is an issue. It would be great if Khan Academy were the cure-all for education and would be perfect for everyone, but this is never what has been claimed; unfortunately, for the time being, Khan Academy is not a viable solution for those without computer access.

I'm not sure if the phrasing of drilling exercises was supposed to imply something negative, but the goal of KA's exercises is not to drill students on a question until they can answer it as quickly as possible (this is what I think of when I think of a drill). The goal is to allow students to explore and advance at their own pace, proving mastery of a concept covered in a video and then feeling confident to move onto a more advanced topic. We try to make the exercises as modular as possible (which may make them outwardly resemble drills), but we do this so a complex problem can be broken down into many smaller and easier problems. Instead of making a staircase with huge steps that would take a giant to leap, we're making a staircase with small steps; that way, everyone can advance at their own pace.

@rubergly handled the drilling comment well, so I'll just quickly add:

1) We do want kids to learn lessons at home so that teachers are freed up to do more project-based learning and...well...teaching (instead of lecturing). This doesn't mean the world falls apart if kids aren't watching videos at home. As @rubergly says, computers in the classroom allow for individualized instruction and solid data, which humanizes the kids' experience by helping teachers address individual needs.

2) On the school front -- there are lots of ideas floating around when thinking about the future, but I can assure you that our primary focus is exactly what it says on the website: "providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."

Thanks for your answers

Indeed, I used the word drill in precisely that meaning.

I think I might have been biased by wired's piece. Maybe it's just me or maybe they failed to render correctly what your org really is.

If you want to do something meaningful, do not start a charity. Charities will not give all the unemployed people jobs. Start a company.

It doesn't matter if the company makes frivolous garbage, as long as it employs 30,000 people in Detroit. People in Africa are not starving because you don't have a charity that gives them free medicine. They are starving because there is no one in Africa starting a company that employs 30,000. It doesn't matter what that company does, as long as it does something other people want to pay for, and it is able to provide employment for people.

Innovation feeds the economy. Even if that innovation sounds as frivolous as web advertising. That frivolous company may be the next Google, they may employ 30,000, and they may even help people who don't have clean drinking water.

Yes, I did. An open hardware building system called the hexayurt.

I started in 2002, and went through years of working with shelter charities, the US military and various other groups to get the technology into the field. There are experimental units in Haiti and Sri Lanka right now!

On the way I learned a hell of a lot about how the entire mess works, and why humanitarian innovation is so slow. There's a couple of talks on the hexayurt web site which might give you useful context: "Ending Poverty with Open Hardware" and "Enabling Humanitarian Innovation."

Please feel free to drop me a line if you have specific questions, and do check out Google Image Search on hexayurts to get an idea of where they're being used most right now!

Vinay

I've worked primarily with human rights focused non-profit organizations for the last 15 years or so. I'm a generalist who can do a bit of design, tech, management and strategy so I offer a good mix of skills for organizations.

idealist.org is a good place to look for tech or design work with non-profits. I also got my start just cold-calling groups I respected. Most didn't know what to do with me, but all it took was one or two projects before word-of-mouth referrals started to spread.

If you are serious about starting a non-profit, the NOLO books are a good mix of legal and practical advice and often include the forms you need. Check nolo.com. But I recommend volunteering as a board member or advisor, or working with an existing non-profit so you can get a closer look at the mechanics before you dive in. If you have a very specific idea for a charity or project, perhaps get an hour consultation with a lawyer who specializes in non-profit corporations.

Feel free to drop me an email if you have more specific questions.

Mother Theresa once said: "When I look upon the masses I can do nothing. When I look upon the one, I can do something."

Find someone to help. Help them. You have then changed the world for the better. Now do it again.

Another Mother Teresa quote: "Never despair at being but a drop in the ocean, for without it the ocean would be one drop less."

Completely agree. In a related note, I think a hypocrisy that many people who help "Humanity" commit is to be condescending and cruel to people around them. That makes me suspicious that they are helping Humanity at large for their own self glory, not to really help other people. I guess they are still helping, but...come on...

I think it's too easy to focus on specific problems (food/water/medicine), rather than focusing on the cause of these issues. There are many countries that have the resources to take care of themselves, but lack the social and political structure to do so.

Someone needs to take care of these problems in the short term of course, since there are people suffering today, but it is also important to focus on how to reduce their needs.

There's no technological magic bullet to solving political and social issues, but there are ways to reduce them. One major problem in some parts of the world is corruption. I'm not thinking of the white collar corruption that can be found in the western world, but basic corruption such as having to bribe your child's teacher so that he will let your child in. In some cases you even have to bribe health personnel for the right to "free" health care or other forms of aid. In some countries the corruption is everywhere and is hurting the society.

If someone could find a cheap and reliable way of reducing corruption you would do a lot of good.

I've been toying with the idea of an organization along the lines of Engineers without Borders ("Hackers without Borders"?) or something to that effect where developers lend their talents to causes all over the world. Not saying that an iPhone app can solve everything, but I'm sure there's quite a few ways where simple apps here or there could make a big difference.

Does anyone know of something like this out in the wild already? Seems like an obvious idea.

There is http://codeforamerica.org/ although that doesn't exactly fit your description.

I would be very interested if someone knows of something more along the OP's lines.

I don't know of anything in particular, but this is a topic I have been interested in as well. I've recently been thinking that the training new developers around the world might be the best approach. Don't try to make the apps or programs yourself; train the locals in developing software and then let them apply those skills to solve their own problems. I would really be interested in something like this.

There's Random Hacks of Kindness (http://www.rhok.org/):

"Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges. Random Hacks of Kindness was founded in 2009 in partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank."

Johnny Long founded Hackers for Charity in 2008: http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ - see announcement talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CWrzVJYLWw

Hack for Change (http://hackforchange.com/) might be interesting as well.

Geek Corps. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Geekcorps

Not sure if the group is still active though.

This is a great question and something I struggle with everyday. All I know is that the typical answer of.

"Well, I am going to do this thing that makes money and then when I am rich I will give back"

Is bullshit. You either give back or you don't. It's not a question of time and money.

I try and do as much local charity work as I can, I try to be present when listening to friends and family. I try and treat my wife and my family as the most important people in the world so that they can bring that love to other places, but I hear what you saying.

I want to be working on things that change the world. I think at some level, we all want to be.

Thank you for asking / sharing.

Kent

First of all, I think, you are greatly underestimating the role of productivity growth in fighting poverty.

Apart from the forces that directly increase productivity (science, markets, entrepreneurship, etc), I think, the most important factor for creating broad based wealth is transparent, evidence based, predictable governance and a functioning legal system. It's not about low taxes or high taxes or small or big government. There are very low tax countries that work and very high tax countries that work and everything in between.

So if I was going to do non profit work, I would look into ways of creating transparency, shedding light on areas that affect many people but suffer from lack of good data. Try to connect new sources of data related to poverty and make it available to the public, to economists, social scientists and governments. Or try to make money flows visible to fight corruption or misinformation. Things like that.

I'm currently in India working with an NGO building software for surveying, rebuilding their website, and trying to work with a group at IIT who are building an open source GIS software.

There are plenty of NGOs who could use your skills. Governments are coming to expect computer work, GIS maps, survey data etc. This puts NGOs who are behind the times at a real disadvantage for getting funding and getting on with their projects.

There are plenty of things you could do outside your field aswell. Some research and finding some people in the know is all it would take. Have a look at Engineers without borders.

There are some great NGOs for hackers that do awesome stuff: e.g. the Sunlight Labs in the US, MySociety and the Open Knowledge Foundation (disclaimer: associated) in the UK. They build apps for government transparency (also international aid transparency) and participation. I believe that these are the hackers who actually make the world a better place.

The solution is to create a successful business. It doesn't matter what the business does, as long as it makes money you're guaranteed to be making a positive difference. Not only are you creating enough value somewhere in the world to make that kind of profit on your work, but you're also providing a sustainable income for yourself and all your employees.

I'm of the opinion that it's hard to say that a good deed done in a dire situation is ethically superior to a good deed done in a less dire situation. Rather than address the problems of less fortunate people elsewhere in the world, I work to make my own world better.

My favorite way to justify my work is that I'm interested in making things and events that make life worth living.

While I do this, I try to minimize the extent tow which my actions are connected to the exploitation of others. When it comes to computers and other complex technologies, I try to "concentrate firepower", which means to use high-tech tools only in situations when it will have a significant effect. Otherwise I use simple tools.

A good friend of mine has a startup called SmallAct whose goal is to provide software that lets non-profits better engage with their donors through social media. It is a nice cross between the types of projects traditionally attacked by your typical silicon valley startup (they're based in DC however,) but instead of using that type of technology to support rampant consumerism or sharing cat pictures it's instead focused upon indirectly helping the global problems you mention.

www.smallact.com

Also, I work for Etsy, which is providing a way for people to become more self-reliant and giving consumers a way to form a more human connection with the people they purchase goods from. We're in NYC.

www.etsy.com

My issue with non profits is that lots of them actually just use it as a cover. Someone may still be getting rich slowly.

All three of my favorite non-profit tech charities are hiring programmers:

Kiva - http://www.kiva.org/jobs DonorsChoose - http://www.donorschoose.org/docs/software-engineer.htm GlobalGiving - http://www.globalgiving.org/aboutus/jobs/software-engineer-f...

Everyone wants to do something to make their life meaningful. The time that takes to discover that something is the most crucial of times and the deciding factor of what we are going to do. For example, I want to invent something that makes life easier and probably do few patents around it. The question is 'where do I start?'. There are innumerable fields that I can choose among and do my research.Having realized that it is a very long term goal, I started to dig to see which field can bring the spark in me. I might probably reach to a conclusion in five years, but I will. That's only an example.

You have mentioned that you would like to start a nonprofit of your own. So do I and most of our friends here. The question again is where do I start? Then, there are innumerable ways that help can be passed. We have to start digging as to what, when existent now, can do the delta the world needs.The simple answer here is to start helping in all ways you can - volunteer and meet people. Charity Water also didn't start within a week. The man left his life and joined a charity organization(Mercy Ships), met people and got to know their problems - It all fit in a line, but took several years of hardship to him, but at the end lies all the satisfaction, right?. Then he has seen a solution and found the best ways to fill it.

One wise man said that "Every great idea is the result of a moment's inspiration". True and in addition I feel that every great organization is the result of hours of hard work on that idea. So, what you have felt is inspiration and what you need is time to find your great idea and then start working on it. Good Luck!

Its not that black and white. Just cause your startup isnt directly fixing the world problems it doesnt mean that one day it might not. Either directly or indirectly.

I hate to say it but i think in more cases then not the kind of startups that most of us imagine doing (ie web startups) have a hard time doing anything to solve the worlds problems directly (the worlds problems that you mentioned more specifically). Not saying there isnt (i seen a few that raise money and help schools execute projects for instance but there are only a handful) but for the most part they do not tackle for example educational problems DIRECTLY such as say OLPC does.

I really love sal khans khanacademy stuff, its truly awesome but it isnt getting to the kids that dont have a roof over their school let alone an internet connection and many of these schools could really use his material.

This material might one day with the help of a very rich successful individual who is willing to purchase computers for the less fortunate parts of the world to then be able to view khans stuff. I think this applies to ALL web startups that isnt directly raising money for the problem parts of the world.

BUT what can be done is, the success (monetary or influential) we get from allowing people to find restaurants that are near them, or allows people to search for data easier <insert startup goal here> can be put to good use.

Maybe even purchase those computers for some unfortunate part of the world that will then allow them to view sal's, standfords or any similar educational content that will actually change the lives of those kids.

Companies that do good are becoming more and more popular as companies like TOMS shoes and Ethos water prove the value of cause based marketing. Also, incorporating giving into an existing business is becoming easier. My company, CherryCard, connects charitable giving with everyday purchases by enabling companies to give a percentage of their sales to the charities of their customers' choice. We believe that whenever money changes hands a little bit should go to charity. You'll get 25 cents to give to the charity of your choice for free when you sign up at CherryCard.org so that you can try it out and get a feel for the service. I feel very strongly about the importance and potential of incorporating giving into business, which is why we have built CherryCard to give companies an effective turnkey cause marketing solution and built incentives for companies to give more. If you ever want to chat about the place for giving in business shoot me an email at noahfradin@cherrycard.org. Oh and you should definitely all sign up and give your free 25 cents to The World Food Program. They need the money right now and 25 cents can give a starving child a meal.

Similar thread from a while back mentioning charitywater http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822610 Spammy?

And I'll start with my old answer here.

I'm suspicious of attempts to solve problems in the developing world that aren't part of an all around solution. Making it easier to grow food, get water without a simultaneous plan to lower population size is a dangerous game. I think the old school approaches to charity are very wrong and if you want to do something useful for humanity, they are the last place to do it.

Yes the responses about making it easier to market crap being useful to humanity are funny and cruel. But they hint that we in the developed world don't care about poverty. We've seen many shocking ads with starving children asking for money and now we are disillusioned because charities haven't delivered after decades. In the US, well intentioned programs implemented in the 70's made the problem much worse.

Poverty in poor countries won't end until developed countries let them into the global economy on fair terms. That's how China got where it is and now we market their crap on iPhones. Is that a better world? Not exactly.

You should take a look at "Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism" by Muhammad Yunus. He won the nobel peace prize in 2006 for his groundbreaking work on Grameen Bank. I really like the idea of social entrepreneurs, applying a non-loss structure and energy to solving social problems. In my experience a lot of non-profits struggle by underfunded and not living up to their potential.

Eric Brewer (uc Berkeley) has been working on technologies for developing regions. Directional antenna for 802.11 so that villages can connect to Internet, software so that doctors can remotely diagnose patients. His presentation on his homepage is very inspiring. (sorry I am away from my laptop and can't provide a link.)

I really like the question in this thread and look forward to see insightful suggestions in the comments.

They say you don't need to do great things, just little things with great love. That's pretty true in my experience.

Also, there's always that snarky little angle when seeking for something meaningful to do: you're in effect seeking a meaningful life, or just a meaning, for yourself. So there's that selfish aspect there as well. And that sort of implies judgment: you decide it's wrong that other people are wronged; however, the world is often a bit gray and it is gray on that, too. You don't know what these people are going through by living their poor lives and great suffering. And you don't know why. And no matter who it is you can't just go out and decide some people need help: these people need to ask for help themselves, only then they can receive.

That's what I think the starting quote means: you can ask for being a helper yourself and then wait how that unfolds in your case. Most likely it's something that comes up in your everyday life, hence the little things with great love. That's where you have the greatest possible leverage to do good because it's your everyday life and you're invested in it yourself as well.

I think providing non-trivial information that can help people make decisions is important and something that CS people can do. I'm thinking of maybe open data from/about governments that would allow for greater civic engagement. I live in the U.S. so it's still not as dire as other places, but still it's something.

I'm glad that someone is thinking about this instead of a new way to sell ads.

And I think you're naive if you think that giants stand alone. They don't. They stand on the shoulders of the little people. Without restaurant finders, giants waste time trying to find a restaurant, instead of doing whatever world-improving they do.

It's a cumulative thing, and without all the little niceties, the important stuff doesn't get done.

Don't knock the little people. They're helping, too.

Giants, in my experience, don't spend a lot of time dithering about which restaurant to go to, organizing the photos on their hard drives, etc.

The "giant's" primary school teacher, sure. The guy that funded his first crackpot-sounding business. His admin assistant, etc. That forgotten 5th employee who wrote half the code... or all those other companies that the "giant" first bought and sold stuff to/from. But no - not generally a bunch of random 'lifestyle' startup guys peddling restaurant finders and photo organizers and casual games.

Even if you(or your app) could bring smile on someone's face or help to gain confidence then I think still you are going to make someone's life better. This is what I had in mind when I created my 1st iPhone app,"Am I Beautiful?"

http://mib.sidlabs.com

It is not necessary you get involved in something big. Start from small thing and then try something big.

My 2 Cents

I did lots of volunteer work for years. I was a homemaker raising special needs kids and wrestling with health issues. A real career was out of my reach. I was also a major bleeding heart, something I have worked to get over. I've thought a lot about such things. Some things I piddle around with part time (while continuing to resolve my own issues, that are supposed to be unresolvable):

I keep a small, out of date parenting and homeschooling site. It rarely gets updated. I still hope this will change someday. I also keep my toe in on a list or two. I believe firmly that if you want to see less crime, fewer people in prison and so on, you should put more societal resources into supporting families and helping people be good parents and helping kids get raised right. I think every little bit helps in this regard. So I continue to be a resource, on a small scale, for folks who have very challenging children.

I also run a health site. I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my oldest son. I have figured out how to get us well. I share that info to the best of my ability, in spite of huge negative reactions from the CF community. My thought is that I would like to write a game (aka simulation) to better share my understanding of what works. My approach is a diet and lifestyle approach which flies in the face of what most people know to be true about this deadly condition. I do not want to do this as a charity. Yet I can't do it as a traditional business model. Maybe something like a freemium model will work. I'm not sure.

I'm pretty disillusioned and disenchanted with the charity model. It tends to fundamentally assume that people cannot help themselves. I think this tends to cause big problems and you need to be very, very careful about such underlying assumptions. I have overcome some very serious personal problems. In the course of doing so, I have routinely run into "helpers" who had to be ditched at some point -- even if they were professionals. It is standard modus operandi of most such people to want to help you walk better but not want you to stand entirely on your own two feet because then they have no role in life as someone's crutch. My experience has been that such people have an enormous need to be needed and can't imagine anyone would genuinely "love" them or befriend them as an equal. It speaks simultaneously of both phenomenal arrogance (often rooted in being much more competent than average) and phenomenal insecurity (often rooted in having been given hell socially for most of their lives, in part for the crime of being too competent).

I would like to see the world be a better place. I consider that to be a form of selfishness: If the world is a better place, I get to live in a better place. I see no reason why a charity model is fundamentally superior to a business model for achieving such a goal. I see lots of cases where a charity model is part of the problem. One notable "exception" is Habitat for Humanity. Please note they are not really a charity per se: They do not give away houses for nothing. They sell the houses and recipients have to also provide labor beforehand. They just a) don't sell at a profit b) due to volunteer labor and donated supplies, not selling at a profit means selling a house for substantially less than it is typically worth on the open market and c) they don't charge interest on the loan. This combo makes the loan payments dramatically less than house payments typically are.

Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts while exhausted and foolishly posting anyway.

Peace.

I found this to be pretty interesting. I know someone with a little girl who has CF. The whole situation is just sad all around.

There is a long history of selling dietary advice in book and newsletter form. Hard to say without knowing the details but if you feel like you have something to share it's worth seeing if anyone cares to find out about it. I'd be willing to try just about anything if one of my daughters had CF. Price isn't really a factor to people in that frame of mind.

A blog, forum, and one on one advice site for this seems like it could work assuming your results are real and repeatable (not saying they are or aren't just saying really). Seems like that'd be worth a monthly subscription.

My estimate is that the US currently spends roughly $3 Billion (with a B) on medical care for a mere 30,000 people with CF. This is mostly covered by insurance, state aid, federal aid, and charities. The families are typically under enormous financial stress and can ill afford to spend money on some risky unproven source of advice, which is the category my experiences fall into. I think it's very repeatable and people who have chosen to act on even limited bits of my advice have reported very good results. I have so far not had anyone tell me "I tried that and it so failed". Given the degree to which I am routinely vilified by the CF community (for advocating "dangerous" things like eating better), I strongly suspect if there were any significant failures of my approach, I would never hear the end of it.

The fundamental problem appears to be that people define CF in the following manner (quote from a doctor): "People like you don't get well." Since I got well, I must be lying. I can't really have CF.

I have no plans to charge money for information. I have no idea how it would be monetized. I generally assume I am better off pursuing other things for money and keeping this fairly low on the radar. Attempts to shout it from the rooftops has only served to convince people in the CF that I am a liar, a charlatan and a snake oil salesman -- that I suffer from Munchhausen Syndrome and am doing this out of a sick need for attention rather than a sincere desire to help other people like me.

Anyway, there is a link to my site in my profile. It's the one with the word "health" in the URL. :-) I have no idea how that $3 billion could be tapped into to support a saner, more humane and cheaper treatment approach. God knows I would be on it in a heartbeat if I could figure that out as I have a pile of debts from getting myself well.

Peace.

While I appreciate the sentiment, I have to take issue with your comments here. I have cystic fibrosis, and have been diagnosed since I was 3. As you surely know, this disease is not the same for everyone, since it is caused by a wide array of genetic defects that manifest themselves differently in each patient.

Beyond this, the major health effects of CF are not directly due to these genetic defects. The main symptom of CF is the build up of thick mucous in the lungs, however the battle against CF is a battle against infection, not against mucous. It's only recently that the role of the immune system has started to be understood. Needless to say, CF is a manifestation of a large, complex system of things, all of which vary from patient to patient, and change dramatically as the patient goes through life.

It's taken decades to unravel the puzzle thusfar, with many roads leading to dead ends. As you surely know, CF was a disease that was supposed to be cured 10-15 years ago. But, it's proven difficult.

There are reasons for hope. The truth is that your particular struggle with CF may have made it possible for you to get well through certain dietary changes, but the fact is this is a complex, ever-changing disease and dietary changes, while helpful, certainly are insufficient for most CF sufferers to feel well.

Decades of medical research have brought about drugs that, after years of study, have proven reliability in increasing FEV1. (I was one of the patients in the Phase II trial of Pulmozyme many years ago.) These have been a godsend for myself and other CF sufferers.

Your blog seems to make many claims unsupported by medical research, and has a long series of hypotheses and theories about how certain things affect yourself and your child. There are a few things that I see in your writing that I suggest you reflect on as part of the reason you are having a time being accepted by the CF community:

- You seem to have an attitude that your solution is so simple, "boring", and hard work, that you've managed to figure out the solution when all these foolish doctors and researchers have had their heads up their asses. It's not easy, and they haven't. This attitude manages to tell CF sufferers that its their laziness keeping them sick. I can assure you all of us work hard and would gladly do what we need to get well if we knew it was possible.

- You play the victim card, alienating anyone who hasn't heard of your blog before.

- You make logical fallacies. You claim that nobody telling you your technique failed is proof-positive that it probably works. You claim that people tell you that they have had success as proof as well. These are classic fallacies in medical research, and is part of the reason medical research is so hard to do correctly.

In order to make a positive impact on the CF community, I'd encourage you to attempt to reach out to researchers and collaborate with them in a constructive fashion. I'd suggest you do the research on what has been learned so far about CF. I'd suggest you educate yourself on biology, genetics, immunology, and basic medicine as much as you can. I hope you can channel your energy into organizing information in an honest, informative manner without having it be tarnished by the various things I mentioned above. Good luck, and I hope you and your son continue to see good health.

Edit: for those interested, I'd encourage you to check out the CF foundation's drug pipeline:

http://www.cff.org/research/DrugDevelopmentPipeline/

The CF foundation has done some good and some not so good things in the past, but this page at least is accurate and up-to-date. VX770 right now stands to be the most promising path to alleviating the symptoms of CF sufferers in a large way.

Thank you for your reply.

I am guilty as charged of thinking that the whole thing is rather stupid. When I discovered that addressing excess acidity was effective in helping me need less medication, I thought this was some major revelation. It turns out it is rather well established in the CF community that CF leads to very extreme excess acidity. Yet it goes largely untreated, in spite of acidosis being a known serious medical problem. Additionally, the salt issue is so well established as an issue for CF that a sweat chloride test is the single most common initial test for CF, yet nothing is really done to address that issue. Both seem very obvious for anyone in the know yet both go largely ignored in treatment modalities.

As for victim card, I've really had the crap kicked out of me for trying to share info. I have no doubt that at this point that negatively impacts the way I come across when discussing the issue. I don't have some magic wand for how to make that go away. I think the ugliest thing said to me publicly was that someone implied that my son was the product of an incestuous relationship. Moderators routinely side with my attackers and act like I have some unreasonable expectation for thinking I should be able to participate in conversation on the same footing as other members where such attacks would not be tolerated. I have left lists over such incidents.

Researchers and doctors have expressed no interest in what I am doing. My doctor's response to my dramatic improvements in health was to schedule me fewer and fewer appointments and express zero curiosity as to how I was doing so much better. For the most part, people on CF lists are also not really interested. Their primary response is to be very defensive and default to accusations that I am a charlatan and a snake oil salesman. I find this personally very difficult to comprehend or deal with. I have CF. Why on earth would make any of this up? People are suffering and dying and begging for a cure. One would think that my testimony about my experiences would be warmly welcomed rather than viciously attacked. I am both baffled and hurt by this consistent response over the past five years.

I didn't get myself well in order to impress anyone. I am willing to help if I am able, but I am not interested in martyring myself. I got well to get my life back, not to find new ways to be tormented by life. If getting my life back is all it accomplishes, that is enough in my book. (I have heard similar stories of health improvement due to diet/lifestyle changes about other people. I am apparently not the only one who made significant changes to diet and lifestyle and saw major improvements. Most people apparently just go on living quietly rather than fight with other people about it, an approach I continue to work on in spite of my big mouth.) The degree to which the CF community plays the victim card and expects other people to pay for their survival and very high on-going medical expenses is something that looks to me like a big part of the problem, both in terms of mental models and logistically.

As for the "excess mucus" theory, I do not buy it. I have seen more than one public discussion about women with CF suffering vaginal dryness, in some cases so severe it ruined their sex life. I see no reason why one set of mucus membranes in the body would work the opposite of the rest for a genetic disorder that impacts all cells in the same manner. One study I ran across indicated that it was not excess mucus clogging up the lungs of people with CF, it was phlegm -- ie infection -- and that, in fact, people with CF produce too little mucus, not too much. This fits with my experience that when my sinuses are too dry, that's when I have more lung issues and sinus issues. I have seen women with CF complain of "goopiness" (vaginally). I see no reason to believe that isn't also a form of drainage from infection, similar to phlegm build up in the lungs. It seems to me if it were mucus, then women with CF shouldn't have any of the difficulties with sex which they report.

I am not claiming that lack of reports of egregious problems is proof positive that it works, much less that it would work equally well for all people with CF. I am claiming that people who have tried some of my suggestions and also reported back have indicated surprisingly good results, often in quite a short period of time (for example, one parent whose teenaged child was supposed to be listed for lung transplant put them on supplements I suggested and in a very short period of time -- something like two weeks -- saw such dramatic improvement in lung function that listing for transplant stopped being a consideration). I am also indicating that while people in the CF community are very critical, often in a very ugly fashion, none of the criticism I have received so far has come from someone who tried my ideas and got sick from it. It seems to come from people who reject all of it out of hand as "too good to be true" without further investigation.

Peace.

It sounds to me like your physician is a poor one. One of the first rules with CF is to embrace what seems to work well for the patient, and try to understand it. I'd suggest you attempt to find a new one, or at least contact others in better clinics if you wish to share your story with someone who might be more interested to listen. I've had a lot of success at the CF clinics at Johns Hopkins, VCU, and Stanford.

I actually haven't seen a physician in roughly five years. So that doesn't happen to be a concern for me. However most people I meet, you included, are simply dismissive. I appreciate that you haven't been ugly about it but your response -- that I have an attitude problem of some sort, that my views are filled with logical fallacies and so on -- is the typical response of the majority of people in the CF community whether they are patients, family members or professionals. So I really see no reason to believe that getting a different doctor would make some sudden, radical difference in that regard.

Folks who are genuinely interested in my experiences and my understanding of the problem space are few and far between. I leave the site up for the benefit of the small number of people who are interested in the information. These days, I spend a great deal less time posting on health lists than I used to. It accomplishes very little and gets me loads of very negative attention. So I see little point in pursuing such activities. Having gotten myself basically well, my main focus is on other things these days.

Take care.

I'm a skeptic, as anyone who has CF should be. As I said, I am happy for you, but you need to be very careful when making claims as you do since lives are at stake. If you are going to post information that CF patients might act upon it is your responsibility to put it into appropriate context, try to disprove it yourself, and be open to alternative theories as to why your approach worked other than that you have cured your CF through consuming sea salt and tonic water.

The history of CF is full of stories like yours where people seem to be onto something only to find out that it was circumstantial or not scalable to the rest of the CF population. This is still a very mysterious disease. My point is that a large part of the reason you might not be taken seriously is due to your tone, your apparent skepticism of western medicine, and your lack of expertise on the fields you are making claims about.

If you do not want to try to use the information you have to help others, so be it. But if you do, posting on health lists and arguing over the internet is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to educate yourself enough that you can hold a real discussion with medical researchers, and find medical researchers (or become one yourself) who would be willing to test your claims empirically. You've positioned yourself as a champion against the establishment, and this is not the way to actually get anything meaningful accomplished. Posting anecdotal evidence, contradictory claims, and lots of random speculations about the effects of various foods and dietary changes without accurate measurement and study does little good towards this end, if the goal is to help the wider CF community, despite your intentions to be helpful.

I would be very concerned if you were not skeptical. I have no issue with skepticism. My experience has been that individuals new to the CF community or individuals who have long pursued alternative approaches are the most able to understand and act on the information. I have come to believe a more information dense delivery mechanism would be helpful. I don't personally see any reason to believe that normal research channels are the way to go with this. I like being helpful. I just don't feel obligated to cram my views down anyone's throat and most members of the CF community have made it abundantly clear that they have no interest in what I am doing. I see no reason to either fight with people or martyr myself. The information is there if someone is interested and has already helped some people. So I see no reason to defer to your opinion that sharing it online is not the way to go.

Take care.

Thanks a lot for this very interesting message, especially the part about professional helpers. I would second your opinion there - that's where I found the most broken people, who seem to prefer to live in a word of suffering - a good place for their bleeding heart!

I'm the co-founder of TechiesGiveBack (techiesgiveback.org). We are aimed at helping the NY tech community give back to charity. We've considered different ways for how to approach this problem. I've also been approached or spoken to a variety of different companies looking to make a difference - Crowdrise, IndieGoGo (which we used for a recent fundraising campaign), Let's Give, and others.

Just spoke to Gabriel Weinberg about his open source tithing effort this morning (http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/help-me-start-a-...).

We are working on our own new initiative which will allow mature startups and tech companies to let their employees donate a little bit of their paycheck to charity. I'd be happy to talk about that over email...

(We don't take any money for ourselves - we do it pro bono and all work in tech. We raise money for other charities).

The company that employs me creates devices that help make electric power safer, more reliable, and more economical. We're not a startup, though. :-)

In my immediate memory, we've been working with electrification projects for two different Third World countries. Our technology has helped bring electricity to places that never had it before.

I'm proud to be a part of that.

Find a mentor. If you're serious, and not just 'going through a phase', you'll need people to spur you on with this. Find some organisations you admire, eg kiva, and email the founders to see if they'd mentor you or if they could recommend anyone.

Some friends and I have been going through these issues lately, and we're desperately trying to find out how we can change the world. Here's what we've come up with:

* Do what you can now. Start small. eg Don't put it off until "one day when i'm rich". * Work with what's in your hands, in your sphere of influence. If nothing is in your hands right now, you can change yourself. * Find friends who are of the same mind, and spur each other on. * Read LOTS. Grow yourself. Read about leadership. That's the starting point. Start by reading seth godin, i'd recommend. * Change the world for the better in one small way every day. * Learn how to take initiative, start things, and complete them.

If you're in the US, take a look at jobs in the DOE National Lab system. There are many of good hackers working on real problems. Bioenergy, materials science, systems biology, cyber security, supercomputing, and computer science are all happening at the Labs. It's a little like academia, but much more applied and practical.

This really resonated with me.

While I do appreciate the sentiments expressed below (that we're doing good by doing our daily work) I do think that we can take an extra effort to make a positive contribution to the world. Yes, doing your daily work and doing good aren't mutually exclusive, but dedicating yourself to doing good explicitly is better than plugging away at something that coincidentally creates social value along with the main goal of corporate benefit. And yes, that does matter.

It's definitely difficult to fix injustices. It's definitely not as easy as creating the next iPhone game or daily deals site. Nevertheless, it needs to get done, by someone, and I think it's wonderful that you want to be that person. Step up to the challenge, you're one of the few.

I can't give that much tangible advice-I'm trying to do the same thing and am fairly clueless. Nevertheless, here's my (up)vote of confidence!

You're probably best off making as much money as you can and putting it to work via an efficient charity than trying to save the world yourself.

This post spells it out via endless links of endlessness: http://lesswrong.com/lw/373/how_to_save_the_world/

The best thing you can do is probably to donate a significant percentage of your income to an effective international aid organization, like VillageReach or Oxfam. The money you're earning performing your standard job is simply able to produce more good than having you fly around the world attempting to do things to help (usually in an inferior way to locals) would.

I've been doing this for a few years: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2010/11/26/giving-thanks

And I've come to rely on GiveWell, which is an organization performing quantitative review of which charities produce the most good per dollar donated: http://www.givewell.org/

Good luck!

While I'm not currently at liberty to discuss the specifics a start-up I'm involved with, Social Fortress[1], is working with several human rights organizations to implement aspects of our technology for the purpose of allowing individuals to communicate privately, using open communication channels, without having to fear that their government can see / access the content of those communications.

To answer your question directly:

Find a problem that affects people of all 'levels' of society and do your best everyday to solve for it.

[1] https://www.socialfortress.com - The site is sparse on technical information but expect that to change in the coming weeks. Any specific questions can be directed to feedback@socialfortress.com

A common misperception is that you need to be a non-profit in order to pursue a social mission but this is not necessarily the case. As a charity you can raise money but are limited in your ability to generate revenue. A for-profit organization is self-sustaining and doesn't have to rely on grants or donations.

Here are a few links: Unreasonable Institute http://unreasonableinstitute.org/ Ashoka http://www.ashoka.org/ Social Edge http://www.socialedge.org/ B Corporation http://www.bcorporation.net/

1- Help others do something meaningful to them.

2- Or do like Billy. Create a monopoly in an industry and rip most of the benefits. Then take the profits and eradicate Malaria.

Note: It is arguable that Bill Gates alone does more good than all the charity donated through DonorsChoose or Kiva etc..

I just want to say that if you can't think of something substantial or meaningful to do, don't get discouraged. Trust me, I'm in your boat and don't know where to start. While I try to find that start, I'm also trying to focus on a startup I do believe in but I know is no charitable 'game-changer'. It's easier to have that bright idea or enforce some charitable influence once you have personal influence and resources (cough, cough..money). If you're in that position, you can make substantial difference much easier (and yes, you don't necessarily need those things either, but they do help)

Start by doing something small. Do it well. Do it again and again and again. Until you think you can scale it up and it doesn't interfere with any of your personal commitments or dreams.

I was really impressed with this video by Derek Sivers about how startups don't need funding to start. Though in a different context, it puts the point across. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KLnXjqKL5g) If you want to make a big difference, start by doing smaller things and scale up.

I think your answer is within your question. Do what the charity water guy did. Go volunteer abroad. Maybe 1 month or 2 months to start with. If you dont like it then at least you've helped out for 2months and you'll know your not meant to volunteer fulltime.

As you see how these people live and their problems you'll come up with a solution because your a software engineer - thats what we do.

About time this topic came up on HN. The reason this matters is that lots of really smart, driven engineers are being taught that the way to be successful is to make a buck on a quick flip of a consumer web app -- rather than making an impact on the world. Places like Ycombinator that have the most cachet should be leading the charge on reversing this trend.

Don't make it so complicated. Look at life through a child's eyes. If you see something wrong - think about the most obvious solution, and take basic steps to solve it. (i.e. People are dying of disease from dirty water. How can I get them clean water or a water purifier? I will raise money, buy 100 water purifiers and fly to that country and deliver them.)

Step one: Do something.

Step two: Just take it from there.

I'm involved with a company here in New Zealand called Enspiral. I'll take no credit for much of anything as my involvement is mainly through their contracting arm, however they're a great example of using entrepreneurship to try and effect social change.

Check out their website here: http://enspiral.com

About four years ago, I started to get restless. I had been working for a large fruit company for quite some time. I had done pretty well in my job and learned a lot. I was a better engineer, better communicator and better person.

While I felt proud of the fights I had won on behalf of users (every time you type command-comma and it works…), making them more productive at their jobs, I felt I wasn't doing enough to help people directly. I didn't want to just make tools to help other people work on big important problems or give them money — I wanted to work on big, important problems.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to volunteer for the Obama campaign in 2008. What started out as a couple of phone calls turned into two months of solid work, helping register hundreds of thousands of voters and making sure folks found their polling places. I didn't lose touch with the grassroots field volunteer in me, either: I was on the phone, too, talking to regular voters.

I wanted to be this inspired by my work all of the time. After shipping another big cat, I left. I spent a month helping Engineers Without Borders Canada (important: not all EWBs are created equal), and went through a leadership development fellowship.

While my number one passion is for the environment and energy efficiency — and I'm not doing that — yet, I have been fortunate to pick and choose some really cool projects:

  - creating an online application process for college and university scholarships
  - helping EWB Canada win $50,000
  - doing strategy/UI/fundraising for a network of student-run food co-ops
  - building a text messaging-based tool to remind people to vote

Now I'm working on TurboVote, a nonprofit service that makes voting by mail as easy as renting a DVD from Netflix. If you've ever tried to track down an absentee ballot request form, voter registration form and county clerk mailing address, you know what a hassle that is. We make it easy.

Where this becomes a big deal is not in presidential elections, where turnout is 50-60% (which is pretty shameful), but in local, primary and special elections, where it drops to 10%. But once you're signed up to vote by mail, you just get the ballots … and you vote … and maybe we get turnout to 15%. It's not a lot, but relatively speaking, it's a big deal.

If this sounds like fun, we're hiring a rails developer: http://blog.turbovote.org/2011/07/were-hiring/

I like how everyone is addressing the core problem. However, to give a more superficial answer, have you checked out http://www.causerific.com? Some of the causes on there might be right what you're looking for, and could potentially employ you as well.

I'm creating an app for folks to get together around these issues and actually start doing something or discovering where action is possible. in a life-game action-sharing way. so all you searchers out there are my ideal target. (but i'm doing it alone the last ten months and could really use some help...)

If that really motivates you, go for it. If you think you can make a difference in communities struck by poverty, start a company. A few ideas are a simple social donation service with a spin or a site that allows you to send items easily through the mail (eBay for charity).

Check out companies certified as B Corporation. (Google it). In their own way, they are demonstrably making the world a better place. It's basically an objective standard for "social enterprises" - almost any start up can implement these benchmarks (if they're really committed to it)

I recommend you read "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas" for inspiration. It is filled with some incredible stories of people who were able to have an incredible impact with only a little help.

Reading this, I had this thought:

The internet is my world. Therefore all my ideas are The Next Better Widget (tm). I think I need to go on an internet diet for a month.

Will have to think about this, thanks for giving me personally dangerous ideas DotOrg.

Nice topic.

Though not related solving these basic need problems, I'm working on providing very low cost (free) communication for people far away. Hopefully I'll get something to show soon.

Thought it may have been from my post a few months back:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625009

it's interesting that no one mentioned the good produced when a company that does not do "good," per se, makes good money (for profit) and then donates some of it to worthy causes. I personally think this is the ultimate win-win situation: you provide a service people want (that is, increase of happiness), but at the same time also help those who cannot afford you service (increase in good).

The question is now "how", but "should you".

Doing something meaningful, in the way you described it, looks a lot to me like guilt over a perceived unfairness of life. Yes people are dying in remote places, yes people need healthcare in the US, and yes not everyone has a job. You want to try and fix the situation, but many others also have tried, and failed.

Maybe you want to do that to be relieve of your guilt, to try and find happiness instead. I mean it's very popular to say that you are trying to change the world, making it a better place, and so on, but then in the end, will it make you happy?

And even worse- what is your final objective? Being happy?

Maybe you perceive a dysfunction is the way the world works vs how you think it should work. Then your goal might be to "remove biais", or be "less wrong". Some blogger might help you in your path.

If your goal is finding consistence, there are many ways which do not always involve doing "something meaningful" in the sense of charity work. Abstaining from charity and being vocal about it, trying to make more people join such absentionist movements, might be very positive. A lot of people believe the problems for exemple in Africa are due to foreign involvement creating a long lasting dependance on aid, food, and so on. Basically, it might not be good to have more people on a continent that can be fed by the production of this given continent. Here the lack of action would have dire consequences in the short term, but would improve the situation in the long term - and it would be self consistent.

If you goal is happiness, a better shortcut might be finding happiness without having to resort to such a guilt-ridden trip of charity, ie learnt to not care anylonger!

If your your goal is being popular, ie respond to peer pressure which views charity work in a positive light, maybe you could find some other way that is also well received - say american idol, a free software project that'll make you famous, fight again racism/global warming/whatever is popular these days.

But from what I have read in your message, I would sincerily question your premises.

Instead of doing what is better "for the world" or "for the global good", have you considered the possibility of doing "what's fun", "what you like", or "what is important to you"? You do not need justifications or moral endorsement to do that. Yet it requires some serious introspection.

If you do have considered these alternatives, and if you are sure of your premises, have you identified limitating beliefs, ie the reason why you consider these alternatives not to be worth your limited time on this earth?

I think people want a sense of purpose in their life, and being part of something grander than themselves. That's different than happiness. It's more like inner peace

I've been struggling with a similar question to the author lately. For me, what it boils down to is this: I have to spend 8 hours a day working on something. It seems like better value to be working on something beneficial to humanity than something meaningless, or even detrimental.

I would answer the question of "should you?" with a resounding yes.

I've been finding it difficult to match up my skills as a software engineer to a project with meaning as a lot of them are in the hardware or humanitarian aid realm.

Your point of doing "what's fun" or "what you like" is also an important factor and almost goes without saying. The ideal job for all of us is doing something we like that pays the bills and has a tangible benefit to humanity (not a made up one).

I wouldn't give a yes. If what you are doing is meaningless for humanity or detrimental (for the sake of the example, let's say your work is on anti personnel mines), but that you find a great fulfillment in doing that, good for you!

I have always thought very disturbing in the occidental culture the notion that there are "unworthy" occupations, and some people "waste their life" doing something different that they could in someone else's opinion.

But that's just applying peer pressure to make such people comply to our (skewed?) visions of how life should be, and when failing, using guilt to try to destroy the joy they find in doing what they do the way they do.

Maybe because I grew up watching too much anime and reading too many mangas I admire whatever people are, in any field, trying to remove my own bias.

Like - you don't have to be a Nazi to admire what Roemmel (sp?) did in north-africa. A true military genius of the time. Or how a handfull of guys armed with box cutters social-engineered they way to massive destruction and terror. And also it's hard not to admire the beautiful job of some people in charity work - eradicting polio, wow. Using cellphones to develop microcredit and banking in countries with little infrastructure - that's beautiful!

But unlike you, I would but the fun part above the "important" part, because what's important is a personal opinion. If someone find something important, it's important.

If designing and testing landmines aimed at killing and maiming people is fun because, I don't know, the mathematical challenge behind it, the noise of explosions, whatever - it's a worthy endeavour. If you make good money because you're good at the job you love, even better.

BTW the knife cut both ways - my training has been mostly on the medical field, but someday I realised the humanitarian field no longer meant anything to me. I'm not feeling any greater purpose or anything, and I don't believe I ever did. Maybe I tried to fool myself thinking I did. Maybe I resent the fact that's it's difficult to match up my skills to what's usefull in the industry, but I doub thatt and I don't think it's clouding my judgement too much. Anyway it is just no longer fun and that's what matters.

I don't feel bad about that. It's not good or bad - just an indication that's it's time to do something else now, and that as usual change is hard. If I listened to what people would think about my move, I'd up for one another good guilt trip :-) Like why don't I go to some poor country to save people? Because I don't care, don't see the point, and while the visiting part might be fun initially, it would be boring and I may not like the food and the culture :-)

What I fear is many people are doing this for a time in their life - sometimes their whole life - without realizing how empty it is, until it bites them back, a la Lars Von Triers' "Dogville".

Maybe I grew out of the guilt trip that's forcing of lot of people into such training and studies. I'm just sad to see such post and comment, including people downvoting the not politically correct things to say.

Do what you like, and figure out justifications later.

PS: You don't have to spend 8 hours a day working on something BTW - slavery is gone is most part of the world. Economic slavery however remains, and if you want more things than you can affort, yes, you will have to spend your time this way, and might resent it.

Some people, mostly in europe, figure out how to strech their money and benefits to live without doing any purposeful work. I would find that sad - unless they enjoy the "game" part of gaming and abusing the system. In that case maybe a worthy endeavour to them, rest of mankind be damned.

I guess if you're happy building land mines and blowing people up then that's your prerogative. We are all different and for whatever reason these jobs are staffed by people willing to work them.

I can only talk about personal experience; that is, if I meet someone in need, am able to help them, and as a result they are in a better position than before, it makes me feel great.

It's a selfish proposition, by helping someone, i'm essentially helping myself. Having said that, it still feels right and I have a compulsion to extend that to my life's work.

I don't think we're are doomed to be narcissistic, but it's very easy to be so. This is a question which deserves to be taken seriously. The author is expressing a position that a lot of people fall into without actually being comfortable admitting it.

It's not a matter of being happy or not. I believe the desire to redress injustice or unfairness is an evolution trait, just like altruism. Fairness ensures limited resources are distributed to the biggest population in the group, thus increasing the number of members getting the benefit. It helps human as a species to survive better.

1) Find a resource of necessity to the human condition. 2) Make it abundant through technological innovation. 3) Repeat.

I'm doing a project that I think will help globally albeit it's a hobby project (as long I finish it, haha). The thing about my project is that it's not about altruistic desire to help people, it's about building towards something grander for me, a home in space.

The YC and other entrepreneurs ALWAYS help people. If they didn't, their business folds. Because simply: it's not useful to people. eg They created an app to put moustaches on every picture; you may think it's not helping people but it'll give a smile to families who see the wedding pictures with moustaches everywhere. So, help to people is quite subjective.

On the other hand, it sounds like you're doing a 'numbers of helping many people for as little work possible'. This is incredibly hard. For example, if you give water to communities but you also have to deal with culture that creates inefficiency issues. eg Corruption, malice, war and population issues. Yes, you could be exacerbating the problem by making their lives easier but in long term worst as so many people are reliant on you giving water. Don't always assume that helping many people at once will be the best solution.

I hope you seek something that's very helpful and is long term solution for them. Even if it's only helping one person. If that person lives to wealthy world life expectancy, that's better than many suffering at once because that person can pass on knowledge, etc.

If you want to get some ideas, listening to problems is usually helpful, then brainstorm with it. eg over a million children are trafficked; maybe create cheap GPS transmitters for children so parents in home countries can track their children's 'work opportunities' and report discrepancies. Bonus: There's an awful lot of lazy people or people with not enough time that talk about ideas but never execute them. Since you want to execute something, you have a lot of research and brainstorm material done for you!

Some directions to go from:

http://www.good.is/

http://itstartswith.us/

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-08-13/12m-children-trafficke...

Last tip: Try to release your project! It's time wasted if you let it be in obscurity. If you don't want to do it any more, release it anyway. eg free code repositories, free blog post with project notes and research, etc. People like me who want to do something similar to you will be able to make use of it.

http://medicmobile.org/

Epic question for humanity but I would phrase the question as, "how do I do something with meaningful [impact]?"

Currently I think of meaningful impact as:

-The depth of behavioral change you create in an individuals' lifetime

-The breadth and scale of behavioral interactions created eg you use Instagram for 1min/day for a month with 100 friends vs a computer for 12hrs/day for life with millions of people (note: I'm not saying one is more or less meaningful than the other; small/simple interactions can turn into something big)

Secondly, I find it difficult to do something "meaningful" without a clear purpose or intention to create impact...(while admitting that at the early stages, visions are often opaque and intentions change)

How entrepreneurs respond to "how are you creating meaningful impact?" helps me decide which startups to invest in...wish I could write more but need to go back to DOing...

Others say: "Impact is a change in the state of the world brought about by an intervention. It’s the final result of behaviors (outcomes) that are generated by activities (outputs) that are driven by resources (inputs)." -Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation

Notes: -Know your mission (in 8 words using verb, target, & outcome) ex. save pre-mature babies in poor countries http://embraceglobal.org/

-Measure the right thing (the single best indicator)

-Measure it well (the right baseline & interval + show that it was you eg tight story, matched control, randomized controls)

A little algorithm to think about the impact you're creating: Is it needed? Does it work? Will it get to those who need it? Will they use it right?

Text: http://www.mulagofoundation.org/ideas/r/how-we-think-about-i...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMEpvxGBkFU<br/>;

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/aynne/design-for-real-impact-0610

Other points of view: -"A change in purpose changes a system profoundly, even if every element and interconnection remains the same." Donella Meadows http://thinkinginsystems.org/

-"Purpose first, then profit" as part of Umair Haque's New Capitalist Manifesto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz2Zc9UJFUo

-"Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations." http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact/

Before you can make something meaningful, you must immerse yourself in problems, either yours or someone else's. You need to learn what the ailments are, then find a cure. It's easy to see when someone is simply targeting a market they think is ripe for exploiting, and are not really immersed in solving problems.

Totally agree, immersion (plus interviews & observation) is often essential to discovering insights, especially for changing behaviors and solving latent needs.

I've learned first hand immersing myself in communities like East Palo Alto with http://muralmusicarts.org and in nations like Myanmar, South Africa & the White Mountain Apache tribe with http://extreme.stanford.edu.

Reminds me of a ME310 project we did at Stanford. Problem statement was so vague but it was around disabilities and keeping people active in the winter. What was my first reaction? Step into a wheelchair and spend the next 4 days in it completely playing the role. 100% immersion! Then made a list of every possible experience i could go through in this situation and did as many as i possibly could. Now that is immersion my friends and it was key to our team really understanding the problems and building rapport with some of our users. I have to say it was also a magical, eye opening experience.

Careful, you might make new YC companies' head explode.

(YC S11) Interviewstreet is disrupting the recruitment space and create a place where the best hackers get the best jobs

(YC S11) Splitterbug private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

Munch On Me (YC S11) Helps You Discover Tasty Dishes

Stypi (YC S11) Is Etherpad Reborn

Parse (YC S11): A Heroku For Mobile Apps

Envolve (YC S11) Launches An API For Real-Time Chat

Kicksend (YC S11) Launches To Make Sharing Big Files A Breeze

Snapjoy (YC S11) Will Organize Your Photos For You

Leaky (YC S11) is Hipmunk for Car Insurance

Picplum (YC S11) is automatic photo printing service created to help you easily share your best memories with friends and family

Plus about 10-15 (YC S11) Advertising companies (a guess)

And.....drumroll........

ZeroCater (YC W11) Raises $1.5 Million For No-Hassle Office Lunches

Numerous of your comments have a very mean tone, can you remember that the companies you list each have numerous people all of whom have spent many years of brutally hard work to get to where they are today, in fact, can you just be much nicer?

Parent could have just quoted the slogans without further comment and it would have implied the same. Let us not be nice simply because folks work hard, a certain Adolf had very good work ethics. Even though I think parent has a point, I do not think said YC start-ups are obliged to give a fuck about what I, or parent think. I hope they succeed.

Criticism and even a spoonful of cynicism does not kill dreams. If they do, it was a lousy dream.

Godwin's law!

Umm...while I don't necessarily agree with the original comment, just because a company has 'numerous people' who have worked really hard does not mean you should be sympathetic to those companies or people. Hell, Enron, Lehman Brothers, and numerous others had hard-working people...doesn't make their cause noble nor does it mean they should receive sympathy for their hard work.

The different seems obvious to me, we are a community.

They were communities too.

I agree overall though. Some of the criticisms here have just been needlessly venomous. If I was in YC I would definitely appreciate feedback that was more professional.

I don't get why internet start ups should be expected to change the world. The vast majority of businesses ever created don't really do anything most would consider truly meaningful or world changing.

I suppose they are not, but we expect more of YC because it is supposed to be funding the best of the best, and people are noticing a decrease in quality over the years. But maybe they are not sharing their big visions with us as much, so we can't appreciate the latest YC batches as much. Nonetheless, I can see some grand visions in the list provided above without much scrutiny. Take car insurance for example, it may not sound like a worthy cause, but the economic efficiency gains would be huge if someone disrupts the car insurance industry! Maybe people can't appreciate the domains as much as before.

And maybe a better way to judge the market is to look at what Sequoia is funding over the years.

And.....drumroll........ ZeroCater (YC W11) Raises $1.5 Million For No-Hassle Office Lunches

Thanks. My head has not exploded. Here's why:

- Employees love us. Often they go from getting no free lunch, to getting daily hassle-free meals without having to lift a finger, just because we make it so much easier for the companies we serve.

- Companies love us. See above. Often we enable free food as a completely new employee benefit. Other times we free up an hour or so of an admin's time every day.

- Restaurants love us. We give them a large predictable stream of food orders, and work closely with them to improve their service. We pass on the feedback we get from employees (comments and ratings on each meal), so suddenly our vendors are getting a very strong direct signal telling them what people like and dislike.

We're not curing cancer, but I'm happy.

"I couldn't believe some of the responses. There were tons of people saying that their iPhone apps were because they made it easier to find restaurants.. or that their B2B social media marketing startup was because it was improving productivity for marketers. I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of many of the responses. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for people who have successful typical startups. But that said, I think people sometimes are extremely sheltered if they think that those sorts of problems are really impacting lives."

Make an app that somehow pushes US politicians to see the merits of a reality based worldview?

That's about what it would take for small towns to start doing well in the US again. It's a matter of political will, not technological progress.

Ross Perot predicted what you're seeing in small towns today about 20 years ago. He called it, the "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving America if NAFTA was passed. That's exactly what you're experiencing today.

TL;DR: Trade deficits matter.

You're trying to make your problem at home look bigger and more significant by using third world problems you guys used for hypocrisy. US is still the vanguard of human economy.

Your existential crisis is nothing more than a product of typical shift in international economic power balance.

What was the thread you read? I don't think I recalled it.

This one; http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2668346

There are actually a few startups mentioned there which fall in the category that the poster is looking for.

Step 1: learn about what is and isn't meaningful, instead of uncritically assuming altruistic morality is true and devoting your life to doing what is "meaningful" according to some other people. Be your own guide instead of just assuming charity = meaningful.

Read Atlas Shrugged.

how do you know he assumed? maybe he arrived at that point of view...

I cant stand libertarian equivocation on the meaning of 'selfishness'. If your 'ethics' is predicated on not putting a high personal value on the wellbeing of others, you are the problem. If your 'selfishness' is seeking the fullness of your values while recognizing this needs to be reciprocated and you happen to not be a psychopath, good.

Definitions are not simply a matter of taste. They aren't validated by popularity, or authority, and we're individually responsible for the definitions we hold: each of us is the ultimate authority on definitions, in a sense: we each bear the responsibility for our own conceptualizing.

But that doesn't mean that concepts or definitions are subjective. Quite on the contrary: in order to be correct, definitions have to be induced from reality, just like like any true scientific concept (such as momentum, for example). The purpose of a definition also has to be kept in mind: definitions are what we use to mentally distinguish one concept from another.

Once you understand the above, you can see why it's really sensible to take the Objectivist stand on the word "self."

And for the same reason, you can see why we had to take words like "gay" and "queer" away from the bigots, who used them as epithets to smear hatred on good people. The bad rap that selfishness has with the culture today smears everyone. I think it's high time we fought back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com