Our Best Entrepreneurs Should Be Solving Real Problems, Not Creating Apps | Hacker News Reader

Our Best Entrepreneurs Should Be Solving Real Problems, Not Creating Apps

businessinsider.com

21 pointsjsherry11 comments

I would say the best entrepreneurs should be out doing whatever it is they wish to do. If they want to work on creating the next fad app in the hopes of making money then that's their business. If the market wants a crap app that does something incredibly silly for no real benefit to society then there will be someone to make it for them.

This isn't always a bad thing. James Cameron makes millions from movies that adds little to society and then uses it to build a submersible that takes him to the deepest spot in the oceans. Maybe the world's mysteries/problems can be solved with money made from useless entertainment?

As for the hardware innovations coming out of China and the area; I would think part of the reason is they don't have a government with increasingly tough regulations to deal with. Take for instance the recent policies of the US government towards internet-based companies or its tough stances on pollution-creating energy production which could provide power issues for manufacturing. Granted the tough regulations could be considered good in some cases (look at the beating Apple is getting on labor treatment) but if it's possible to leave for easier/cheaper areas, companies will leave. Griping about the lack of hardware innovation in one area when it's easier/cheaper to innovate in another seems kind of missing the point territory.

Ease of innovation does not necessarily correlate with value (in a long-term/social sense) of innovation.

As you point out that can be worked around by taking profits from easy innovations and using them to fund hard-but-valuable ones, but people like Elon Musk and James Cameron are notable because of their rarity. A lot of the money just dilutes and/or vanishes back into the pot.

A certain amount of entertainment is necessary (even good!), of course, but we only have to look at the drug industry to get a picture of how bad things can get if people stop solving hard problems. The 'everything done ahead of time' nature of high-technology civilization just exacerbates things.

>The 'everything done ahead of time' nature of high-technology civilization just exacerbates things.

Could you elaborate?

High-technology civilizations rely on a more-or-less constant stream of innovations (or solutions to hard problems) in order to maintain a reasonable equilibrium in all sorts of areas (economy, environment, society). That reliance increases with the degree of high-tech, but also provides the benefits of high-tech.

A failure of that system can lead to much worse than just a lack of progress.

>If the market wants a crap app that does something incredibly silly for no real benefit to society then there will be someone to make it for them.

Who says the market wants that? Right now, VCs want that. VCs != customers.

Are you suggesting VCs just toss money away on projects they don't expect to have any return? If a product turns a profit it's because the market wanted it, not because someone invested in it. Of course you have to understand when I say crap app that's a matter of perspective.

>Are you suggesting VCs just toss money away on projects they don't expect to have any return?

Yes. Their entire business model is built around start-ups having a 90% failure rate, with the remaining 10% being such massive successes that they make up for everything.

I mean, look at the facts. VCs invested in Groupon, Yahoo, and Pets.com. They are expecting that some start-ups in which they invest will not ever make a profit and will go under.

I'm a bit confused by lumping Yahoo in that group (unless your goal was to show a sampling of companies including one big win, in which case I apologize for misunderstanding).

Yahoo was surely a resounding success for the VCs who backed them, and has been a major contributor to life on the internet for over 15 years (so it's not just a financial win). They've also outperformed NASDAQ since 1998 despite being a poster-child for overvaluation, so they've been a (comparative) win for retail investors as well.

That's kind of my point. In fact, let me go back and add another company from that era: Netscape. VCs backed Netscape, too. Their whole model includes a built-in failure rate.

Hacker news needs to see more of this.

"I believe this current crop of entrepreneurs might actually be hurting America - and perverting the very idea of innovation in the same way Beyonce’s Run The World is like kicking Aretha Franklin in the ribs…repeatedly."

Realize that this IS the issue of the fortune 500 companies. Too busy worrying about small returns to dig in an innovate.

>The latest US generation has led a life of leisure. Arab protesters carry swords and machetes, ours carry iPhone 4S’s in pink, personalized cases.

Look dude, if it wasn't quite explicitly against Massachusetts weapons laws, I would go protesting carrying a sword. Also, if someone would teach my swordsmanship. And if swords were actually viable weapons in modern times, rather than nice symbols of Arabs' chauvinistic, honor-based culture.

>From computers to desks to chairs used by cute digital startups like Oink or Bizzle or FoSchnizzle, – it’s all made possible by better, more substantive innovators. This superior breed of entrepreneurs and inventors toils away in relative obscurity, often in Asia, solving real, complex problems. They squeeze 32GB onto something the size of mint strip. Or, they make un-killable batteries that let us Tweet deep into the night. They make solar cells worthwhile or water out of thin air.

Did you know? There's actually a whole economic sector to this stuff. It's called research, it's practitioners are called scientists and, often enough, grad students, and the United States of America treats them/us like crap. Science is chronically and endemically underfunded in the United States relative to most other developed countries, and several less developed countries such as India, China, and Israel.

Come on, people. I agree VCs are too quick to jump for the cheap, easy trivial "innovation" rather than the fundamental invention, but if you want fundamental invention, stop kvetching and figure out how to fund a university lab for the next 6 years to work on your truly important, fundamental scientific problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com