Why don't I see anything worthwhile happening in the startup space?

[joelmaat]

In looking around scoping out competition, in looking for employment, and in looking for interesting startups to talk about, I've realized that I don't see anything worth mentioning. Maybe a few established players are gaining a bit of traction, but that's about it.

What's going on, is everyone hoping for a "talent" acquisition from a mid-sized company? It's kinda strange that with all the startup hype, I don't yet see anything that I couldn't piece together in my "mother's basement," and I don't see anything that will amount to anything more than a dissapointing acquisition-based money grab.

Am I missing something? Where are some examples? I think this is strange.

[mrkmcknz]

I have to agree to some extent.

When I was in the valley in October for startup school I was overwhelmed by the culture being form a small village in the UK. EVERYONE I came across was working on something; whether it be a photo sharing app or a air b'n'b for art. On numerous occasions without sounding condescending felt like asking you 5 super talented guys should get together and see what you could come up with.

I mean the users of HN are among some of the smartest and talented people on the planet and can get things done, so please tackle hard and difficult problems. Photo sharing isn't one, daily deals isn't one, metrics for dog walking isn't one, marketplaces for out of date food isn't one and X'ville games certainly isn't one.

I agree everyone is entitled to a quick cash out or to even work on a project they genuinely are having fun on while making some money. Half the time I guess this is a natural way to move onto the difficult problems. However, don't think of that "what will get me into YC" problem. Think of that: "What will make the world better" problem.

1. Education 2. Healthcare 3. Government/lobbyists 4. Not kill Hollywood but change Hollywood (Open up and challenge distribution) 5. Robotics

All the above are problems where I can see real opening for innovations where hard work and perseverance will change the world.

Oh did I mention that the first platform to nail the crowd-funding for businesses/startups can make a huge difference and make a load of cash.

Just my $0.02.

[ig1]

You see daily deals as a consumer product, it's not, it's a product for solve a business problem, the problem of yield management. Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost every year by wastage (everything from empty theatre seats to hairdressers sitting around waiting for customers on quiet days).

Pretty much anyone who raises more than a couple of VC rounds is working on a billion+ dollar market. It might not be your favourite problem, but it's a problem the free market has attached a high value to.

[sendos]

I think it's because recent trends (in computing power and costs) have made it very profitable to chase after me-too apps (photo-sharing being the poster child for this trend) and people are simply going where the money is instead of working on really hard problems that will likely never make a return on investment.

I can see both sides of the argument (i.e. whether it's OK that this is happening)

1) What the Wright brothers worked on meant that humans could fly for the first time ever. What Alexander Graham Bell worked on meant that humans could talk to each other over large distances for the first time ever. What the early PC/Mac pioneers worked on meant that huge computing power was put in the hands of the average person for the first time ever. These were history changers

I think many would agree that working on a project similar to one of the above is on a very different level, and much more satisfying, than working in a startup that is producing yet another photo sharing app.

What the OP may be lamenting is that so many bright minds are being "wasted" on yet another Groupon clone where no technical breakthroughs are being made, and not on useful projects where technical breakthroughs are needed, like renewable energy, natural language processing, etc. Whoever solves these problems will enable something that was not possible before and have an impact on the course of humanity.

2) On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, and wanting to make it in the most easy way possible. If so many other professions can make a lot of money without really benefiting humanity, why shouldn't engineers feel free to exploit the recent gold rush in their field and make as much money as possible, with little regard to how useful their product is to the world at large?

Finally, I wrote about this a couple years ago: http://www.startuptrekking.com/2010/09/web-startups-are-just... ["Web startups are just attempts at social engineering"]

[moocow01]

Completely agree. I worked in the silicon valley scene for about 5 years and left last year because after a while I saw little value in the majority of what was being created in the ecosystem. Note the word majority - there are some groups doing very interesting important things but they are few and far between in my opinion.

I think the culprit is the incentive system of SV - the rewards seemingly go to a number of trivial things and Im not going to pretend to be smart enough to know completely why.

Whats increasingly strange to me is when America and the world have such glaring problems, you really don't see many in SV directing their efforts towards these areas. I'm not expecting for entrepreneurs to single handedly 'fix' healthcare, etc. - but I'm surprised there aren't more chipping away at these things directly or indirectly In my opinion, much of society is struggling on multiple basic fronts and naturally thats where the really interesting and great opportunities will be. Meanwhile we have hoardes of extremely bright people in SV trying to cook up the new flavor of the month photo app.

[realschool]

My sentiments exactly, especially when I see people like Joshua Schachter, a brilliant entrepreneur creating stack overflow clones (jig) and companies like Instagram being valued at 1/2 billion dollars.

Surly I'm jealous of their success, but I still question the 'real' value they are creating.

[rdl]

I think there are a much larger number of seemingly-trivial companies than in the past, but a somewhat larger number of awesome, world-changing startups, too. I'm fine with this. One Tesla, SpaceX, Halcyon Molecular, etc. makes up for a lot of social Q&A sites or petfood portals.

There are also companies which start out as a photo book for a college and turn into a developer platform, plus build lots of cool tech along the way.

I've noticed more amazing 1-20 person startups in the past year than in 2008-2010 for sure, but this might be personal availability bias.

[wj]

I think a lot is happening with startups that service businesses. Stripe and Recurly in the payment processing space for example.

I'm sure there are thousands of startups trying to disrupt industries that aren't consumer facing so you might not be aware of them.

Also, the term startup is thrown around here a lot. There are a lot of startups outside of the web space. (Of course I prefer the term small company to the term startup.)

[chandlerpowell]

Well, last year, I started a social platform for my own neighborhood. Today, we are serving over 6k neighborhoods on a zero dollar, nights and weekends dev schedule, and are currently seeking seed capital to go full time. Compared to our closest competitor who started with a $17m infusion, has burned through half of that, with less than 1k neighborhoods. Yeah, we are passionate, we are entering uncharted waters, and have no idea what we are doing beyond dev. Hence the need for seed stage capital. FYI, we are Home Elephant.

[SamReidHughes]

Which examples don't you see?

[true_religion]

What exactly is it that you're looking for?

[eli_gottlieb]

IMHO:

Society's Big Problems today are largely political and structurally economic, not softwarical. No consumer-facing app or website will ever eliminate unemployment, for example. Nor will it desalinate and clean water.