Are you going to change the world? (Really?)

Saving time is to me the most important point of doing a startup. You compress the tedious business of making a living into the smallest number of years, instead of letting it drag on through your whole life.

Startups often do dramatically novel things, because that is the way to create a lot of wealth fast. But that benefit is extra.

"Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools."

One problem that will continue to need solving is finding better tools to organize and search through all the information out there. That's more of the problem Google solves, as others have mentioned above.

Another, related problem is finding better ways to get the information into our heads. To give you an extreme example, coming up with a way to access a hard drive directly with our brain could potentially allow us to tackle harder problems. That's pretty hard and probably a long way off. But you can probably imagine baby steps toward that.

There's also the whole AI problem but the media has covered that one enough that it doesn't really need mentioning.

liquidity.

> So, if anyone here has any ideas to save lives > or make a massive improvement in the world, give > me a shout.

Find a way to destroy copyright and other attempts to allow people to own ideas. These laws are both bad for the economy and directly damage the ability of people in third world countries to get a leg up.

I am working on a somewhat educational software, Ajaxified and all that, which I believe could make a difference while being possibly profitable (perhaps not high-margin enough to attract VC investment, but if it can provide a stable income I'd work on it with no complaints). It seems to me that traditional teaching institutions, or the general public, seems grossly uninformed about the theory behind it -- which to me seems to be the only, theoretically and experimentally, universally solid method that guarantees learning results, as far as my exposure to relevant material is concerned.

I assume there lacks satisfactory implementations because those who understand the theory don't bother making a product that is accessible to all; I am simply tired of waiting.

I believe a good number of participants here are also not exactly short on the starting capital. The difference is in the mentorship and extended reach.

One reason why web-based educational software is absolutely necessary, in terms of making a difference, is that you can connect with users anywhere in the globe. Kids who use cheap laptops. Once you guarantee your learning method is good, you're on track.

At least I believe so :)