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You can also learn what problems are worth solving by talking to people (ie: customers). How many customers have you talked to today?
That's why so many startup books talk about customer focus, customer acquisition, erc. Someone needs to buy it. Who is that someone?
The problem is that a purely innovative technological change is usually tiny and incremental. Most existing technology is more than good enough for most people most of the time.
The really important problems that hold back progress, or oppress people's lives, cannot be solved by a quick-fix startup.
There is bureaucratic bloat, regulatory capture, crony oligopolies, over-regulation, vested interests, rent seekers, oppression by crisis, cover-your-ass management, negative sum legal action, nimbyism, planning quagmires, hyperactive enviromental zealots, bad zoning laws, silent majorities, corruption, luddite unions, private equity rape & pillage, dysfunctional politics at every level, propaganda, people that fervently believe propaganda, arrogant elites, useful idiots, incompetence as a badge of honor, capture of education/media, unaccountable globalism, sociopaths in power, aspirational victimhood, hypocracy, too much debt, economic obfuscation, government intervention, lack of common sense, too much individuality, lack of community, family breakdown, sustained irrationality, consumerism, distortion of the property markey, printing money, government setting interest rates, too many laws, too much surveillance, too many taxes, executive orders, two-party systems, deep state, military-industrial complex, nanny state, poverty trap, atomization of society, drug addiction, opiate deaths, over-incarceration, prison-industrial complex, war on drugs, espionage, excessive copyright protection, intellectual propety theft, nepotism, extrovert dominance, urban decay, litter, noise pollution, light pollution, modern architecture, processed food, particulate pollution, crumbling infrastructure, advertising billboards, did I mention too much debt? ...
... profit over truth, efficiency over beauty, feelings over facts, posture over competence, cheap talk over real commitment, do-what-I-say over watch-what-I-do, abstraction over practicality, focus groups over philosophical coherence, partisanship over leadership, and championing failure over success.
More fundamentally, there is the doom loop of democracies voting themselves more printed money for social welfare, while distracted by hedonistic bread and voyeuristic digital circuses.
Startups can't fix that.
P.S. Except maybe, er, bitcoin :)
If you find a novel problem, there are two possibilities. The first is that people have been living without a solution to that problem for 100,000 years and never noticed. It doesn't matter how life changing your solution might be, you will need to convince people that their lives need this particular form of improving. The other possibility is that people are well aware of the problem and everyone before you that ha…
There are at least two other possibilities. First, the problem may only have started to exist (or to become a real problem) in the relatively recent past. Carbon capture technology is a good example - 1000 years ago we didn't need to capture carbon. Maybe 100 years ago it would've been a good thing to get started on, but we didn't know the underlying problem was a problem yet. Second, the problem may have existed for…
Your second option is part of my second option - some new technological development may allow you to do what no one has done before, but you must still convince people that you have this capability. As we see with self driving cars, many have claimed that hardware had reached the point it was achievable only to realize the problem is harder than they thought.
Most founders of startups only want money. They do not care if they make other people's lives better or worse.
This started with ethics laws. Ethics only means following the law and making money.
Seeking the greatest good for the greatest number was aborted when ethics became mandatory.
Ethics literally turns people into sociopaths. They are legally prevented from considering the welfare of others if corporate profits are on the line.
I am NOT an ethical person. I am a moral person. I work for the greatest good for the greatest number.
It is not a lack of diversity. A homogenous group without women or older workers is still capable of trying to improve the world for everyone.
Having said that, cutting costs is a moral thing to do. That eventually improves everyone's standard of living. Capitalism is better at cutting costs than it is at anything else, and capitalism has pulled more billions out of poverty than any other economic system ever.
It is perfectly moral to disrupt an industry by introducing a better product at a lower price and driving the incumbents to innovate or go out of business.
I wish we taught morality in schools.
I could say that not everybody is enough of a problem-solving leader, but realistically it's almost nobody who is enough of a problem-solving leader.
And those that are, they have been systematically blocked by an institutional structure overwhelmingly built & dominated by those having much less leadership ability, with most of the upper echelon having merely prevailed during occasions of good fortune through reactive financial manipulation as opposed to gifted visionary problem-solving.
Seems like it's now a majority around the world who are settling for a declining caliber of leader, lower than would have been acceptable when inherent greatness was more often a characteristic of top decision-makers.
Those hollow suits have really proliferated in recent decades, odds are getting worse that those who aspire strongest to organizational leadership are usually the least suitable for the job. Especially when it comes to problem-solving of any kind, much less groundbreaking progress like was seen so much more in the past.
And you would like to see novel problems being solved?
Major problems? Lol.
The system would have to be reversed dramatically just to overcome some well-recognized nominal snafus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but surely the point of a startup, with real investors is to make money, not "save the world" or "get your ass to mars". Disappointing really.
Most people aren’t well off enough to live to work on what they want, so they have to work to live and the outcomes follow that.