Idea Generation

The "used a little by a lot" people don't have the attachment or deep need to work through issues and they give up after some time. They also can't be bothered to evangelize for you.

Of course, sometimes there is no market beyond the small group. Even then, it is easier to make a business (revenue > cost) in the small "used a lot" market than the other case where people won't pay.

Here's an idea - if most people are world-weary (not true in my experience), maybe you should go and find out why and then try to figure out what you can do to make it less so (get therapy in your case Sam Altman).

What's your track record Sam Altman, besides burning through other people's money and thinking most people are world-weary and need to be distanced from?

Here's from his wiki:

In 2005, at age 19,[9] Altman co-founded and became CEO of Loopt,[10] a location-based social networking mobile application. After raising more than $30M in venture capital, Loopt was shut down in 2012 after failing to get traction.

So his track record is creating yet-another social-network, how original, burning through someone else's money and failing.

Please tell us more Sam, you've clearly proven yourself to be an original thinker and capable operator of burning through other people's cash.

What's the alternative? To wait for tectonic shifts in overall environment and circumstances, look for vacant ecological niches and pounce when you see one. To the outside view this will look exactly like a founder who doesn't know what to start up.

Here is an example I like: John Carmack. The conventional view is that he is a brilliant game programmer (which is undoubtedly true). But the alternative point of view is that his shtick was to capitalize on the period of incredible advances in consumer hardware. Each of his games fully showcased what the best hardware of that time was capable of (order of magnitude more than the previous generation) which made them instant hits. Not coincidentally, he quit making games around the time this period of advancement stopped.

Here is a post by @defmacro making a similar point: http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html

Interview with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, Altman goes more into his reasoning [0]

https://mastersofscale.com/sam-altman-why-customer-love-is-a...

Reason is that you work very closely with companies, often many different in the same sector, and get to see all the various aspects, quirks, and flaws at nearly every level of operation. Just the act of getting exposed to all this, can work as a great catalyst for ideas and brainstorming - much better (imo) than just sitting around and trying to think up something, where one can easily fall for the "solution looking for a problem" trap.

Now, unfortunately, most people can't just walk into those jobs - and you're not there to brainstorm solutions for every flaw you see. But if you ever get the chance to be in such a position, do try it out.

A lot of profitable entrepreneurship revolves around "boring" business problems.