I think the point is more that "finding another way to connect with merchants" really isn't that important or useful in the scale of things. The problem has been artificially created so that it can be solved for profit.
Solving problems that humanity really faces with tangible innovations rather than inventing slightly different ways to top slice cash using virtual real estate is much more important.
A million shitty rails apps yet nothing which truly changes the human experience.
My father once said (whilst slaving over PDS7.1 writing yet another payroll system in the late 80s): "I feel guilty sitting here taking money from people for this. It genuinely doesn't improve their lives."
Believe me, I'm familiar with the idea that there are two kinds of ideas, big ones that change the world, and little ones that merely make money. But this distinction isn't borne out empirically. In fact the space of ideas is a very highly connected graph. You can get almost anywhere in a few hops. And that means it's almost impossible to tell at first where an idea could lead. Big things start as little things. And conversely starting with a "big idea" is often a mistake, because when people have such ideas they tend to be pretty blurry.
Empirically (unless you're a government) the way to do something big is to start with something small but definite, then keep pushing its scope.
If your goal is to get to big + definite, it's easier to start with definite and add big than to start with big and add definite.
I agree with this 100% but would add that once you understand this concept, it becomes possible to prune down the space of potential ideas to ones that you can most imagine could lead to a larger scope. I realize this is often hard to see up front, but it seems more like a way to rule out short-sighted ideas completely than to decide which ones are most likely to turn into world-changing things.
It is with this lens that I was finally able to come up with an idea for a company that was actually interesting to me. Before, everything I came up with was pretty one-dimensional. I couldn't get excited about building them because I couldn't ever come up with a satisfactory answer to "What else could/should this company do?" I found it hard to find the motivation to work on something that I didn't see growth potential in. Once I landed on an idea that had room for expansion, the code, designs and ideas just started to come.
> I'm familiar with the idea that there are two kinds of ideas, big ones that change the world, and little ones that merely make money.
I have a better dichotomy: striving to make a difference, vs striving to make money. Those who strive to make money often end up making a difference, but the consequences are often not pretty.
By the way, didn't you say yourself that the purpose of a startup should be to improve people's lives? That's good, even if the improvement you seek is small. From there, one "just" needs to know what one goals are, what one should do to achieve them, then do that.
The sales from your Father's payroll system paid the taxes which paid the salaries of rocket scientists and medical researchers.
There is all too often an indulgent strain of self flaggelating snobbery on hacker news about what matters and what doesn't. "what matters" is the subject for an entire branch of relativistic theses and not an absolute designed to hold aspiring entrepreneurs to.
> ""finding another way to connect with merchants" really isn't that important or useful in the scale of things"
No, it really is enormously important. See for example eBay, Amazon (with third party sellers), Yelp, and Craigslist, all of which have created enormous societal change by changing the way consumers find and engage merchants.
Imagine if we removed all of the above from existence today!
The problem is not that "connecting with merchants" is a relatively unimportant field (it is very important), but rather that most of the startups who claim to be in this space actually aren't really.
If I had a dollar for every time I've been introduced to a service that "connects consumers with merchants" and find out they're really just another daily deals site. Or worse, a daily deals site that doesn't even have their own deals, instead they just aggregate.
How much are they actually improving the "connecting with merchants" experience? Marginal at best, and their performance shows. They don't have a product, they have a feature nobody asked for, solves nobody's problem, and they're wondering why they're pivoting constantly.
And this is the problem I see with so many startups floating out there right now. Forget moral judgments on how "humanity-worthy" their fields are, I'll settle for startups that actually solve someone's problem and actually produce a compelling product.
If you find yourself saying "we're like X, but...", just stop.
If eBay, Amazon, Yelp, and Craigslist all disappeared today the only people who would be really affected are on the selling side of those services. That would have some ripple effects to be sure, but most consumers would, at most, be mildly inconvenienced.
When you divide the world into "selling side" and "buying side" in that way, you end up defining most of the world as passive consumers. Part of what people like us value about the Internet is the way it disintermediates people, (very) gradually leveling the playing field between institutional sellers and individuals.
To say that new ideas on connecting buyers and sellers are unimportant is to surrender commerce and thus much of modern life to Walmart. Good if you want to pay a lot less for mustard, ketchup, and low-quality lawnmowers. Bad if you ever thought of starting a business or selling something via Kickstarter.
I doubt the fall of Amazon would be as slight as you say it is, but for the others I agree that it might ruin your day/week, but it wouldn't end your life.
The loss of Craigslist and eBay would be deeply felt by normal people. But it sure would be good for huge companies that profit by locking up the retail channel and ensuring that most durable goods are seen as disposable.
I actually think that you're both missing the point. Marius isn't arguing that every startup needs to change the world. He's arguing that if you're going to be making something, you should be making something new. I think pg touched on this in his post.
The problem is that most of the time, startups who say that they're inventing a new way really aren't. Look at all the Facebook-like attempts at social networks. Or all the Farmville clones in the social games space. The vast majority of those products are basically "me too" attempts that really haven't invented anything.
Marius' point isn't that people should assume that all the ways of doing (insert thing here) have been invented. His point is that if you're going to challenge an already established space, you need to actually invent something new.
Look at Paypal, Square and Stripe. All three, at a very high level, solve the same problem: They allow people to pay other people. But each one had a very unique pitch at the beginning: Paypal was the first to allow people to pay each other over the internet. Square, through a rather nifty little hardware dongle, allows people to take payments on their smartphones. Stripe provides a full API for developers to integrate into their products(and cut out the middleman of Paypal or Google Checkout).
People idolize the breakthroughs but tend to discount the 99% of the work that comes afterwards to turn the initial breakthrough into something fantastic. The first versions of the internet, car and plane were pretty poor and unusable by today's standards, it took a considerable amount of time and effort to make them into what they are today.
Whether or not "finding another way to connect with merchants" or connect merchants with users is "important" is pretty subjective, wouldn't you agree? Considering that the most well known options out there have essentially degraded into yoga/spa coupon services, and have left both vendors and users pretty dissatisfied, I'd say there is plenty of room for improvement.
Also, have you considered that it may be a different class of problem solver with entirely different skill sets that should be solving these "real problems"? I think that trying to find a way to better connect vendors and customers is a problem that I could potentially solve. Getting people into outer space? Not so much.
Furthermore, I would argue that overall, something trivial like facebook has had a greater impact on "the human experience" thus far, than Space X or Tesla motors. Maybe not a popular opinion, but it's probably true.
This sort of selfishness is really not something you should expect people to applaud. We all do things to improve our lives, but thinking only of ourselves is nothing at all to be proud of.
He never claimed he was proud of his selfishness or expected people to applaud. What he's claiming is that others shouldn't look down upon it. There's a difference.
pg has a lot invested in the idea of startups. He doesn't have anything invested in what they create. That's the disconnect you're seeing here. That the startup world permits such a disconnect is another problem entirely.
To downvoters: how many times have you heard that startups are about people? Why does YC take people who don't have an idea yet? "What you create" isn't really relevant here. It's just a vector, it lacks standalone value.
>My father once said (whilst slaving over PDS7.1 writing yet another payroll system in the late 80s): "I feel guilty sitting here taking money from people for this. It genuinely doesn't improve their lives."
Your father did not see the big picture and your notions are wrong. If it did not improve someone's life (even if only by a small amount) - then they would not justify paying your father to write it.
Most of the time innovation is an evolutionary process. The software that your father worked on probably added some features that are still in use today. Each generation of software improves on the last (iteratively). Eventually things evolve and do change the human experience.
Let me give you an example. I am self employed and have several employees. I use payroll software but I am not an accountant or book keeper by any means. Without the advancements and features in this software, I would have to pay someone to do this for me. This may not seem like a big deal to do, but if payroll software did not have the features and automation level that it does today, I would have to pay MUCH more to have it done by an accountant. I work on a narrow margin and this may put me out of business altogether. So I certainly think that payroll software evolving over the decades has changed this humans experience and MAY even enable a leap in innovation that comes out of my business - partly thanks to your father.
Why does every startup have to be something innovative? I say that even if it is a copycat - it will probably have some new ideas to throw into the pool. Things that have not been thought of before. Lessons will be learned from their successes and mistakes. Lessons that those who follow them can build on. Even if the business fails, the ideas it contributed will live on and help with the evolution.
It is not conceivable that more than 5% or people will have a groundbreaking innovative idea. This has been the same throughout time. That does not mean that we should not try though.
BTW - I find that people with attitudes like the author and you are usually the ones who sit around and do nothing. Nothing that is but criticize and find fault with others ideas and efforts. Do you know where the human race would be if everyone was like you and not like those you are criticizing?
I think the point is more that "finding another way to connect with merchants" really isn't that important or useful in the scale of things. The problem has been artificially created so that it can be solved for profit.
Solving problems that humanity really faces with tangible innovations rather than inventing slightly different ways to top slice cash using virtual real estate is much more important.
A million shitty rails apps yet nothing which truly changes the human experience.
My father once said (whilst slaving over PDS7.1 writing yet another payroll system in the late 80s): "I feel guilty sitting here taking money from people for this. It genuinely doesn't improve their lives."