

Don't just build things, help people - Peteris
https://medium.com/on-startups/7196bbd2508b

======
brucehauman
The title should probably be "Don't just build things, make things a little
more convenient for people". Yplan is your example. Really? That is
tremendously disappointing.

Is it possible that we can aspire to create better things than that? Can we
bring food and shelter to those who don't have it? Can we bring counseling to
the those who need it? Can we support and create real face to face local
community? In other words can we take our gifts and the tremendous leverage
that software and technology provides and actually help people? Can we fly in
the face the current economic incentives and actually help people?

Otherwise we are just creating things that may be popular/successful in the
the short term but die in the long term because they have no "real" value. And
we as producers suffer under the truth denying myth that we are doing
something of value when we actually know that we are just trying to cash in on
a tiny worthless market wrinkle. We might as well be playing the stock market.

~~~
meowface
>Can we bring food and shelter to those who don't have it? Can we bring
counseling to the those who need it? Can we support and create real face to
face local community? In other words can we take our gifts and the tremendous
leverage that software and technology provides and actually help people? Can
we fly in the face the current economic incentives and actually help people?

While these are great pursuits, unfortunately most of these things aren't the
best for profit generation.

Many startups are in fact non-profits, but a lot of the biggest innovation you
see is in the for-profits (for obvious reasons).

>We might as well be playing the stock market.

I disagree. Intel and AMD were startups at some point; Google was for a while.
Amazon, ebay, etc. While these don't give value in the sense of providing food
or homes, they add a lot of value to the current kind of world we live in.

------
arbuge
_Build it and they will come? No, ask them if they would use it — in fact ask
them if they would buy it right now and for what price — then build it._

Any talk is cheap. Charge them for it as a pre-sale to really lock this down.
Give them a reasonable discount if they prepay during the development period,
of course, and refund everything if you can't deliver as promised for any
reason.

------
unknownian
Is it just me or is Medium becoming self-aware? Many of the posts bash the
culture Medium is a part of.

------
selfexperiments
Animals are deserving of help and need voices in their defense as well. Even
house pets aren't safe.

I just submitted
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307569)
but I don't think it's going to make front page.

Direct link: [http://opensuffer.com/](http://opensuffer.com/)

EDIT: Sorry for piggybacking on the post. Important cause though.

~~~
sillysaurus2
I upvoted you not because of the moralistic call to action ("save the pets" is
as old and tired as "think of the children") but because it's true: my
indoor/outdoor cat was stolen by someone who seemed to then be in process of
selling him. The only reason I got him back is because I kept a GPS tracker on
his collar for just this reason, and it led me straight to her house. She was
very surprised when I showed up at her door.

So yes, it happens and it's very sad. I don't know whether there's anything to
be done though. Bad things happen all the time.

~~~
meowface
Out of curiosity, what did the person have to say once you showed up?

This is effectively kidnapping and should be prosecuted as a felony, really.

~~~
sillysaurus2
I had been wandering around my neighborhood for 48 hours calling my cat's name
looking for him after his GPS mysteriously shut off. It was about 2AM and I
was walking past his last known location according to the GPS. I called his
name and heard him meowing. The meowing was coming from the sunporch of the
house at that location. I was so relieved to find him that I went up to the
house and opened the door of the sunporch to let him out. Luckily the door was
unlocked otherwise I would hav cut the screen to get to him. He was very
groggy and his collar was missing. After I got him home I discovered that he
had been neutered. I came back the next night and confronted her about it. She
wouldn't open the door for me, saying she "never opens the door for anyone she
doesn't know." I was recording on my phone but it ran out of space about 8
minutes in. She was obviously guilty but there was no hard evidence and I
never pursued the matter. He recently died of the cancer he was born with, and
the reason I don't have any kitties is because she neutered him. Otherwise his
legacy would have survived, because I was going to breed him and raise his
kittens myself. Now all that's left of him are my memories and my photos. I
love you scuzzle.
[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/scuzzle.JPG](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/scuzzle.JPG)

~~~
Tycho
So someone abducted your cat, imprisoned it, mutilated it and... You didn't go
to the police?

~~~
sillysaurus2
What was done was done. I looked it up and most legal cases of this type are
concerned with awarding property damages. The damages top off at around $2-4k
iirc, and that's for special cases like breeder animals (used in the context
of a business) being harmed, or show animals. Pretty much any animal that
you're making money from, you can get damages for. Society doesn't value pet
life like human life, and wasting my time exacting revenge on that worthless
excuse of a human wasn't my priority, no. At least I got to spend another 1.5
years with him before he died of cancer.

One argument is that I should have gone to the police to make them think twice
about doing this to other cats. But paying $1k worth of damages would not
dissuade people like that.

