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"Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

peternixey.com

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Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#111

Post by patio11 »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #78
patio11 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, just throwing this out there as an option, you could solve any problem for a physician's practice -- like, say, patients not complying with their treatment regimen by failing to make scheduled check ups. You might even be able to do that with a SaaS app. Granted, it won't cure cancer, but you'll save more lives at the margin than doing Zynga ads. (And, n.b., healthcare clients often have more than $500 available…

How? Making software for government is like a two year bidding process. The barriers to entry are incredibly high when it should just be a case of, "Okay, you want X Y and Z as your most critical features, let's keep the initial product small, we can add features as we go along. It'll be done in two months and then we'll iterate." Instead it's more like, "We're going to have bids for two years for the project and the…

How?

The not-so-subtle subtext was that "I, erm, actually sell software which does pretty much exactly this." The how, in relevant fashion: create software which does appointment reminding phone calls for, without loss of generality, HVAC contractors. Read up on HIPAA requirements and talk to people who've done it before. Do some very boring paperwork and not-all-that-impressive technical work for ticking off the boxes. Start landing hospital clients, through a combination of slackadaiscal meat-and-potatoes SEO and being a lot more hungry for their business at the low end than the competition is.

I don't typically compete in or win two year bid cycles. I go after smaller projects in the $X,000 to $X0,000 a year range. The sales process often involves convincing a single nurse or office manager that I'm not some slick sales guy from the big city who is going to sell her $10,000 of software where she needs $2,000 and then never be there for her if it breaks.

Your mileage (kilometerage?) may vary in the United Kingdom.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#112

Post by Dewie »

16s wrote: post #3

I call it the Fart App Generation. Triviality rules the day. People make money selling whoopee cushions too. And if you find meaning in that, then more power to you. It's not for me though.

How is this a generational thing, in the social sense? Maybe it's just the fact that as we manage to get more and more productive and automate more and more of our work, we have to invent more and more needs for people to spend their money on, to keep the majority of the adult workforce employed. Eventually we get really diminishing returns, providing services and products that seem frivolous to most people at a second glance.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#113

Post by xaa »

lkrubner wrote: post #83
nicholassmith wrote: post #66

Don't forget as well, the barrier to entry for solving cancer is non-trivial compared to the barrier to entry for creating Angry Birds. It's significantly easier to develop an app than solving cancer in terms of the equipment, research and background you need. I haven't seen many 'Learn cellular analysis in a week' books floating around.

But big problems are usually solved as a series of small problems, yes? It's unlikely that one day some researcher will combine a few chemicals in a new way and shout "Eureka! I have found the drug that cures all cancer!" A problem as complex as cancer (and diverse too: meningiomas are very different from, say, basal cell skin cancer) is something that will probably be solved by a 1,000 small breakthroughs, rather th…

I agree that there are boundless opportunities for skilled developers in bioinformatics --- IF they are willing to work for free or a substantial pay cut.

The problem is that there is a big mismatch in expectations between developers and researchers: researchers are not accustomed to paying for software. Most developers in bioinformatics are other researchers, who are self-taught programmers paid by their grant funding or university, not by software sales. The quality of software is usually quite low, but it is at least free.

But I still think there is a large pool of developers out there who may work for BigCo during the day, but want to tinker on something meaningful in the evenings or weekends. Biologists and bioinformaticians need to get better at advertising needs and harnessing the kind of community involvement that has made Linux/Apache/etc so successful.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#114

Post by Dewie »

So, what can the average person do? Since this seems to be a deficiency of the market, it seems you have to vote with your wallet. How about using a percentage of your income to donate to worthy organizations? Maybe instead of giving a tithe to the poor, you give a tithe to causes that try to improve the whole human condition? Start communities (not hierarchical, political organizations: simply communities) that discuss this type of philanthropy. Maybe you could get a critical mass of people to donate to things that require a modest amount of funding.

It's not like anyone hasn't already thought of this, but what other choice does the inidividual have if they doesn't want to dedicate their whole time to fight very systemic and perhaps even an inherent human shortsightedness?

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#115

Post by zeteo »

It's a systemic problem. We can be fairly certain of it because the system used to work differently. Past decades saw major national projects that were successfully undertaken e.g. the Tennessee Valley Authority in the '30s, the WW2 effort, the interstate system in the '50s, Apollo in the '60s.

This all came to a halt in the '70s (just as the baby boomers were starting to be in charge - coincidence?). In the '80s, "greed is good" was practically a campaign slogan. The ideal of public service (make the world a better place, even at great personal cost) is still as strong as ever with many young men and women. But its proper outlets are sorely missing. You can e.g. join the Peace Corps and work to improve another country with hardly any resources allocated to you. Or, if you want to follow greed instead, you can join Wall Street and have discretion over millions of other people's money.

It's certainly not become impossible to improve the world in significant ways, but you just have to become very wealthy first; see Elon Musk, Bill Gates. So every young entrepreneur has to squeeze out some money at a low investment cost first. The route to great public service has thus become: 1. spend the most energetic and productive years of your life to build Angry Birds 2. make lots of money in subsequent financial and legal operations 3. balance family and retirement with building and running a foundation to cure cancer.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#116

Post by thenomad »

patio11 wrote: post #111
6d0debc071 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Making software for government is like a two year bidding process. The barriers to entry are incredibly high when it should just be a case of, "Okay, you want X Y and Z as your most critical features, let's keep the initial product small, we can add features as we go along. It'll be done in two months and then we'll iterate." Instead it's more like, "We're going to have bids for two years for the project and the…

How? The not-so-subtle subtext was that "I, erm, actually sell software which does pretty much exactly this." The how, in relevant fashion: create software which does appointment reminding phone calls for, without loss of generality, HVAC contractors. Read up on HIPAA requirements and talk to people who've done it before. Do some very boring paperwork and not-all-that-impressive technical work for ticking off the box…

Mileage. We still use miles over here. :)

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#117

Post by petenixey »

300bps wrote: post #61
james-skemp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. My first gen Nexus 7 suffered from half the content being cut off. Having read the comments here, though, I won't be reading the article on another device.

Similar problem on WP8. About 80% of the content was cut off and not visible. On my Acer Iconia tablet running Jelly Bean it looked mostly OK maybe because it has a 10.1" screen? iPad looked fine. I guess we know what device OP has.

An old Macbook - someone stole all my other ones :(

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#118

Post by bayesianhorse »

People don't appreciate that science is not an embarrassingly parallel process. Some steps have to come before others, and each of those take time.

There is a ton of money being thrown at "cancer", which is a large set of incredibly complex problems. I even believe that there is never going to be "a cure for cancer", while we will be able to manage and even "cure" most types of cancer during the next two decades (IMHO).

But it's a tough problem which doesn't lend itself to YC-style founder teams or extreme implementations of lean entrepreneurship.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#119

Post by acjohnson55 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #93
jballanc wrote: post #85

I think the author is close, but doesn't quite capture the entire reasoning behind "cure cancer" versus "disrupt dry-cleaning" or "new car manufacturer". The disparity between these things is not just a matter of probability of success, but also of the timeline over which success is realized. When I was just over a year-and-a-half into my Ph.D. training, I had something of an epiphany. At the time, I was designing an…

This is actually the best reason for government funding of basic and applied research. Society has to take the long view since individuals and corporations can not. This is why it is scary that politics has degenerated to the point where even 4 year plans are becoming difficult.

A refreshing comment on a message board where it's so fashionable to write government off as inherently corrupt and inferior. It's corrupt because we allow it to be, and its inferiority/superiority vs. the private sector is situational.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#120

Post by acjohnson55 »

zeteo wrote: post #115

It's a systemic problem. We can be fairly certain of it because the system used to work differently. Past decades saw major national projects that were successfully undertaken e.g. the Tennessee Valley Authority in the '30s, the WW2 effort, the interstate system in the '50s, Apollo in the '60s. This all came to a halt in the '70s (just as the baby boomers were starting to be in charge - coincidence?). In the '80s, "g…

I like where you're coming from, but I'm not sure our foundation system is as altruistic or effective as we're led to believe. Peter Buffett wrote a great op-ed the other day on this topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-ind...
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