> "It is not about class, it is about solving a want or a need in a sustainable way."
Of course it's about class. YC (and everyone else in this industry) is very good at solving a want that they understand, and very bad at solving wants they don't understand.
And our industry is consisted almost exclusively of upper-middle class white urban men. In fact, this demographic is even more prominent in the entrepreneur class than it is in the general tech worker population.
So quelle surprise when the only wants we seem capable of solving are the wants of upper-middle class white urban men: instant deliver-anything, means of private transport, outsourcing household chores, newfangled ways to display conspicuous consumption...
All progress is aimed at the rich. The first people with light bulbs were rich, the first people with indoor plumbing were rich, the first people with cell phones and automobiles were rich, etc, etc.
It's not nearly as much fun to solve poor people's problems since often the solutions already exist; they just can't afford or otherwise access them.
Well no, for quite a few inventions, the first creation is a toy and the important inventions and actual progress are those that make it cheap enough.
The first cars didn't change the world. The first cheap cars did - Ford deserves more credit than Benz's Patentwagen.
The invention of lightbulbs at early 19th century wasn't a significant progress and didn't solve any significant problems - the cheap lightbulbs that came a generation later, involving Edison among others, did that.
Making stuff possible is just a tiny part of the total solution - making it cheap is what matters. If "solutions already exist" but aren't affordable, then those are not solutions - those are unsuccessful attempts at solving the real problem; and the world is still waiting for a proper solution of doing X in a way that scales efficiently and becomes affordable.
Oh what tosh. Most of brand new inventions might be aimed at the rich. After that, most iterative improvement is aimed at making the invention cheaper, more reliable, and easier to manufacture - i.e., gradually more accessible to poor people. What separates a Benz Patent Motorwagen from a Civic today if not a whole ton of progress?
You're right, I used the wrong word. Doesn't change the fact that working on something revolutionary is a lot more fun than working on something iterative. It's also more accessible to individual entrepreneurs whereas iterative progress is more of a bigco domain.
> Doesn't change the fact that working on something revolutionary is a lot more fun than working on something iterative. It's also more accessible to individual entrepreneurs whereas iterative progress is more of a bigco domain.
Must be news to all these tinkerers playing with and improving their toy drones and people contributing to Linux rather than writing their own kernel
Of course it's about class. YC (and everyone else in this industry) is very good at solving a want that they understand, and very bad at solving wants they don't understand.
And our industry is consisted almost exclusively of upper-middle class white urban men. In fact, this demographic is even more prominent in the entrepreneur class than it is in the general tech worker population.
So quelle surprise when the only wants we seem capable of solving are the wants of upper-middle class white urban men: instant deliver-anything, means of private transport, outsourcing household chores, newfangled ways to display conspicuous consumption...
Deliberately or not, this is all about class.