[supahfly_remix]

> A lot of people are homeless. Every year I visit it’s increasing. Maybe I am using the wrong streets. I am surprised there’s no startup to fix this.

Does he mean a startup to help him avoid streets with homeless, or a startup to solve the homeless problem?

[beat]

"A startup to solve the homeless problem" is the Golden Hammer Antipattern in action.

"We have software startups and they're amazing, so they can solve any problem".

[icebraining]

Being surprised it doesn't exist is not the same as having faith that they could definitively solve it.

[josefresco]

I certainly hope we wasn't referring to a startup to help you avoid the homeless. Taken in context, I believe he's referring to the widening income gap and would therefore not be advocating simply avoiding them.

A startup to fix the homeless problem? Good luck.

[the_af]

Agreed about the "good luck" thing. I wonder if this is a common reality disconnect thing going on in the SF startup world.

Homelessness and poverty aren't entrepreneurial problems to be solved by a startup. They are profound socioeconomic and mental health problems that require a big change beyond what's possible with a new social app thingy or an iOS gadget or an agile web framework or whatever. It probably requires country-wide or world-wide political and economic policy change. It's also something that has been going on for centuries, and I doubt this was because there weren't enough enthusiastic startup entrepreneurs in the world.

That I have to even say this makes me wonder if the startup guys in SF are actually Martians experimenting on us Earthlings.

[happyscrappy]

Homelessness is an amazingly intractable problem. In Boston even though crews are dispatched to bring the homeless to shelters during cold snaps they still die on the street because you can't forcibly make them get into the van.

[brixon]

Probably avoid streets since his next bullet is "A lot of socially driven business is just pure BS."

Solving the homeless problem would be a socially driven business and that would make it BS and not worth doing.

[icebraining]

I think you're reading it wrong.

What he's saying is: many socially-driven businesses are pure BS. That doesn't mean he doesn't believe that a genuine socially-driven business can be built to solve that problem.

[sirkneeland]

I think what the author means is that a lot of the businesses CLAIMING to be "socially driven" are pure BS, not that the very idea of a socially driven business is inherently BS.

Which would make sense to me.

[whbk]

lol wat?

That's an..'interesting' parsing of what he's saying. Is it just me or is it fairly apparent to most others that he's likely saying he's surprised that homelessness in general isn't being tackled (without speaking to the likelihood of success) by a startup, and he then follows by stating the obvious: that most startups who talk about 'changing the world' are blowing smoke. Of course, the unstated insinuation being that a startup aiming to reduce homelessness would actually be worthy of that title. Not sure why you jumped to the least generous interpretation possible but I'd bet a lot of money that there's no there there.