[pron]

I don't think you must necessarily "solve problems that people already have", nor that startups don't do that. I think the article is just a call for startup founders and investors to think first about how meaningful their product is.

But it's not that they don't do that already. Many know damn well that their product, though very cool, has little "true" significance, and they do it anyways. Why? Some of the reasons are mentioned in the article. The startup economy pushes founders towards products that could reap quick exits, so many startups just try to solve smaller and smaller problems. It's not that they're not real – they're just very small. Also, in most cases, these are the only problems a small company has the resources to tackle. This economy, in turn, makes it socially acceptable, and even respectable, to address all of those minor, "meaningless", issues.

There's no one to blame – it's just the market (said with some irony). If we must blame someone, though, I think it's the big companies. Instead of putting a lot of money into research (and only they have the resources to solve the big problems), they prefer – because it's much cheaper – to wait for a startup to successfully solve a minor problem, and then acquire it. Those acquisitions make the prospects of founding a startup to solves a minor pain-point less risky, and so more people do it.