Bread and Circuses: The State of Web App Startups

Except, that's not the point - on anything beyond the personal scale the question is not, "which of these two do we want?" but "how much of each do we want?" She asks: "How well are our resources allocated?"

I think there's a strong case that we're under-invested in some of the largest problems of society - personally I'm working towards reforming government http://votereports.org/, and I can tell you the government directly spends some 40% of the GDP, and indirectly affects every other bit of it. Do we have anything close to 40% of developers working on disrupting our stodgy old government? How about 5%? 1%? I know of 3 good folks I work alongside (including these folks: http://circlevoting.com/), and a handful of other part-time, side-job efforts. But is that a proper reflection of the relative return of the problem, when compared to hundreds of facebookers or dozens elsewhere?

Health care is 17% of GDP. What are the big, disruptive health care startups? Who is going to build the tool that enables doctors and patients to circumvent the worst of the system? Or something that serves the economic purpose of insurance while avoiding the onerous regulations thereof? I've had the pleasure to meet with Jay Parkinson of http://thefuturewell.com, and I'll bet he could put the 30-some foursquare developers to better use.

Again, this isn't an either/or question, but a question of resource allocation.

Perhaps what we've done so far has made sense because those are the easy questions to answer - the money is there and the consumers are willing. But sooner or later we're going to have to recognize that the biggest problems of society deserve more of our attention.

Personally it struck a chord with me.

In a previous life I worked at a non-profit aimed at doing 'R&D' in a social context (yes, this is vague and that was just one of the things making me leave...). Although I've left this organisation disillusioned and a lot more cynical about non-profits and their methods / goals, I still strive to use my skills for the betterment of all. Not that I always succeed (I'm by far not a saint), but I try to give something back. In my case I do this by offering a lot of my stuff under a open source license or Creative Commons license. Still, I sometimes wonder if I could/should strive to do more in the real world with tangible / physical results. Staring at a screen all day long and hoping my virtual work will lead to some positive results in the 'real' world and be meaningful for people occasionally makes me feel like I'm fooling myself. Therefore I think that the gist of Jolie's article hits the nail right on the head and asks the difficult question (for all of us regardless of skills or area of expertise): what have you been trying to do not just for the betterment of yourself, but also for the betterment of other's? Trying to combine this in your work is something I belief is worth striving for, even if we cannot always achieve it.

Stage 2: Give back

at Stage 1.5: Jolie complains that we aren't doing stage 2.

Well for most of us we aren't at stage 2. Didn't Zuckberg who has just finish stage 1 give 100 million to education? Didn't Bill Gates, another stage 1 success, get 40 billionaires to give away most of their wealth to charity?

The question arises why don't start at stage 2 first. Well, sequence matter. Think of stage 1 as taking off your clothes and stage 2 as bathing. You do stage 2 first you end up without your skin being washed and wet clothes.

So far there isn't much technology that has been successful in those areas Jolie think start-up should focus, but with the apps you criticize, they have been making loads of money. In terms of risk, it is better to choose the latter type of business and then seek to help solve the other problems with the money generating from the first, same outcome but lower risk.

As Jay-z would say:

"And the music i be makin

I dumb down for my audience

And double my dollars

They criticize me for it

Yet they all yell "Holla"

If skills sold

Truth be told

I'd probably be

Lyricly

Talib Kweli

Truthfully

I wanna rhyme like Common Sense

(But i did five Mil)

I ain't been rhymin like Common since

When your sense got that much in common

And you been hustlin since

Your inception

Fuck perception

Go with what makes sense

Since

I know what i'm up against

We as rappers must decide what's most impor-tant

And i can't help the poor if i'm one of them

So i got rich and gave back

To me that's the win, win"- Moment of Clarity

Paraphrase, if solving homeless problem made money that is what entrepreneurs would be doing, but since it is not they choose problems with lil significant and give back that is the win,win. They are still changing the world but in a different sequence that reduces risk and ensures changing the world is more likely.

Why hadn't anyone gave a damn about it? Because it's hard, take time and you simply don't know how to start and how to monetize.

I'll give you another problem: Google don't happen to give the best search result. You'll (in many cases) get SEO spammed results. Why not re-invent a new search engine? Sure there are SE startups, but not enough for the solution to get solved.