
Startups I Want to Fund - vikrum
https://startupandrew.com/posts/startups-i-want-to-fund/
======
rajekas
I like much of this list - doesn't strike me as first world problems at all (I
am not from the first world).

Having spent the last two years building a climate action platform I have lots
of climate change problems with startup worthy solutions, but the item that
really struck me was the online zoo. As an animal lover, the very idea of zoos
- even the most enlightened ones - is problematic. Instead, why not let the
mountain go to Mohammed?

Who wouldn't want to be a blue whale for a day. Or an eagle? Or a tiger? What
might it be like to be an Octopus?

These are questions I have researched as a scientist, but in order to truly
revolutionize the science, we need data. Lots of data and the best way to
collect that data would be to create interfaces that allow people to
see/smell/hear the world from the animal's perspective. It's like anthropology
but with other species.

That's where the digital is actually better than the physical - while I can go
to a regular zoo to see a tiger pace up and down, I can't actually be the
tiger.

I bet people would be willing to pay money to be a tiger for a day. And you
don't want that tiger to be in a zoo when you're the tiger. Much better if it
was out there in the jungle where it was meant to be.

We need an unzoo.

Seems outrageous, but it's the one project I can see in this list advancing
the frontiers of knowledge, saving other species and creating a business.

~~~
malux85
I know that hacker news is a place for serious discussion and memes are not
appropriate, but there really isn’t a sentiment more fitting than:

Shut up, and take my money

~~~
rajekas
I will come for your money, but I might want your brains first :)

~~~
Arkight
Brain zoo when?

~~~
zamber
Right after a brain rollercoaster and a brain brothel ;).

------
zackmorris
I just want to second Andrew's list. I'm a developer with probably 1/100 as
much money as he has, but this is the first list I've seen in a long time that
mentions specific low-hanging fruit that has the potential to actually improve
lives (vs the mostly vacuous or profit-oriented areas I've seen in other
lists).

I look at problems in the world as a series of solutions built from first
principles. So if you want a distributed mesh network, you need a supplier
that can make millions of boxes for roughly 1/10 their retail price, or you
need software that can run on existing phones/routers/computers. Then you need
open software with tests for all the edge cases so you know it's free of bugs.
Then you need an algorithm for things like web of trust or onion routing. Then
you need a compelling use case (easy, no more internet and/or cell phone bill)
and a way to prove it's safe so it goes viral. And so on. No one step of the
process is insurmountable, or in many cases, especially difficult.

Once we have that box, other ideas like content-addressable memory (things
like IPFS) become feasible and we end up with an internet running thousands of
times faster than what we have now, because media can be seeded once to each
city and then cached by downloaders.

So of course that's a barrier to entry, because few players in the existing
paradigm want to disrupt the status quo. But that's no reason to settle for
the wildly expensive and slow technology that we are stuck with now. Pretty
much every item in his list works along these same lines.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Start with the routers. Build a better home router. Sort of like Ubiquiti kind
of is doing. Build one that does

\- local caching and P2P sharing of media / photos etc

this gives ISPs a genuine incentive to use it - if routers can build a mesh
network (or at least not push back to ISP core) for 20/30 % traffic will that
be savings?

\- Router acts as first responder to bot nets / malware from within the house

Another good isp feature but great for the rest of us. IOT devices are only
going to get worse and more vulnerable- but an intelligent router would be
able to stop it sending ACK packets at cloudflare or whatever at source. And
let you know that your fridge has been hacked and what to do about it.

\- Actually get updated with new firmware ... ever

I think the household router / household hub is an important leverage that is
under looked a lot.

~~~
andrewflnr
What I've been told is that ISPs could easily stop most ddos attacks now, but
simply don't give even the tiniest crap about it. Also, they tend not to like
p2p, so I don't think you can sell this to ISPs.

~~~
Kovah
Absolutely, why should they bother? They make more money by routing more
traffic - no matter if that's an YouTube video or a botnet request.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I'm pretty sure (exISP) that routing _costs_. At a minimum you have to
maintain free peering infrastructure at IXs perhaps, or if you are not a Tier
1 you basically pay for upstream access.

Its why cacheing is all ISPs really care about. Its why Akamai makes ISPs
happy by adding a edge router in their network. Presumably netflix too.

------
Jun8
Some ideas:

1\. Social Silo-busters: Couple the evils of the garden walled social network
approach with posts on how hard is it to make friends later in life, add a
pinch of all that useless time spent in the car commuting (scraping the bottom
of Spotify or Audible) and you arrive at: ad hoc voice-based social networks
based on proximity, e.g. through limited range (100m) FM transmitters (one
cheap way would be to use a rPi: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-
pi-fm-transmitte...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-fm-
transmitter/))

2\. "Why can’t I manage waste pickup from an app? What might a re-invented
garbage truck look like?" These are spot on! You see news of these everyday
but they are _very_ slow to appear. Make a DARPA like challenge to sort waste.

3\. Sleeper Markets. Again, he's right in that there are _vast_ markets
relatively untouched by technology. Examples: The buzzer for restaurants, why
can't it have a screen to display menu, or let your preorder? At a restaurant,
why can't I see the most ordered 5 items and have to go through pages of menu?
Similar idea for supermarkets: why not have a giant screen at the entrance
showing most bought products, interesting product pairings and other data that
may be useful?

~~~
tomjakubowski
> ad hoc voice-based social networks based on proximity

At the risk of being whooshed (the other points do seem sincere and "real"),
do you mean... conversation? Like, you know, encountering another person in
meat space and speaking to them?

~~~
Jun8
Yes, but scope could be larger: If you like chatting with someone you can add
them to your contacts.

Another take on this would be voice-based reddit, e.g. voice chat rooms
organized around topics, similar to subreddits. Everybody takes turns to talk
with voice activated microphone on their phone while commuting.

~~~
atomical
I don't believe one can build lasting relationships like that. A lot of
communication is non-verbal.

~~~
julsonl
True. A lot of my closest friendships came about from me just being in their
repeated general proximity for a long-enough period of time.

------
phlowbieuq
How do you see these two sentences resolving into a single company that you
would fund?

> A normal first check from me ranges from $50k to $250k.

> I’m very bullish on a capital-heavy, asset-full future for startups.

~~~
mayop100
(author here)

Angel investors almost never provide the bulk of the capital for a startup. We
provide initial money, advise, and introductions to help raise more. So, yes,
I expect the bulk of the "heavy capital" to come from institutional investors
in later rounds.

Also note that I invest in follow-on rounds, so my total investment in a
startup might get much larger than $250k.

~~~
yazr
Could you comment on what increases seed funding chances when pitching a "big
hairy goal" ?

Team? Progress so far? Clear road map? PoC & tech feasibility?

~~~
mayop100
All of the above. Prove your team is credible and your idea is solid and the
only thing holding you back is the money. Even if you don't have the capital
to build the full-scale thing, you can still make a lot of progress on the
cheap: conduct research, model your business, test components, do user
testing, get LOIs from customers, line up your first few hires, and so on.

~~~
pharouk90
Interesting, We have done that.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Then, send him an email with details, and I would bet if he's interested he
will respond and ask for more details.

You might have an opportunity to get funded by him. Don't rely on this comment
on HN to hope he asks for details; go get him :)

------
roadbeats
Waste management is a huge issue in the developing world. During my world
trip, I observed that even a remote fisherman island in the middle of nowhere
has a lot of plastic thrash dumped into the nature. It might be hard to
believe for you, but here are some observations I had:

* Most people don't even know difference between plastic and compost thrash.

* Most governments in developing world are dysfunctional. They can't organize for collecting thrash.

I wonder; would it be possible to enable waste management entrepreneurs all
around the world with an app? Could people get paid for cleaning up thrash ?

~~~
loceng
Until a society experiences negative consequences of environmental pollution
(generally a long-term but sometimes a short-time issue) then there's no
incentive or impetus to not just dump things anywhere. Part of the solution is
only allowing goods to be supplied in certain packaging. Not creating waste is
the best solution.

------
DevX101
For federated databases, one of my favorite project I've come across recently
is: [https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)

It's a distributed database that uses similar algorithms from git and
BitTorrent to support syncing across multiple nodes.

------
desireco42
Ha. Package manager, I was thinking how we should have a single package
manager that would just do it's think no matter the language, and you can just
plug in new languages and it would know how to handle them (resolve
dependecies etc).

I think it would be worthwhile project.

~~~
amdelamar
If its a cross-platform CLI it would be fantastic. Combine brew, chocolatey,
yum, apt-get, snap, docker, git... you name it. Surely there is someone on
this already?

~~~
amdelamar
Once saw someone build a CLI tool and distribute on npmjs. Their install went
something like `npm install -g mycli`. So in a way, they already are cross-
platform.

------
delinka
Someone help me understand this one:

> _A new developer-oriented touchscreen OS_ – The number of touchscreens in
> our daily lives is exploding. Android and iOS are optimized for consumer
> tablets and phones, but what if you’re a developer building a non-consumer
> product? What if you want to build a cash register, or a digital menu, or an
> in-flight entertainment solution, or a vending machine?

Does he mean an OS with these kinds of solutions in mind? Maybe I need to
understand where Andrew feels the shortcomings in Android and iOS lie that
prevent his what-ifs currently.

When I see the phrase "developer-oriented," I'm thinking about dev tools ON
the touchscreen OS. And for that, I do indeed have some ideas...

~~~
joezydeco
I've worked for a few companies and startups trying this kind of thing. It's
the wrong question.

The software side of a touchscreen is solved. You can run a number of
operating systems and develop in whatever you want. Embedded Linux
framebuffer, OpenGL, WinCE, Qt, WindRiver running a military GUI toolkit like
VAPS, Ubuntu running GTK, hell - my Mazda's infotainment system is simply
Opera running a bunch of Javascript code.

The problem is the _hardware_. There is no universal platform that can satisfy
all of these ideas.

The cash register needs to be thin and stylish in a custom case. The menu
board needs a weatherproof rugged box to hide behind a panel display. The in-
flight system needs to be FAA-approved. The vending machine needs vandal-
resistant glass that still works with a capsense system. The bulldozer needs
industrial temperature ranges _and_ IP67. Every customer is a special duck and
it's going to be a custom build.

It's just one of those problems that looks easy on paper.

------
viach
One thing wonders me - why angel investors bet on the fact they occasionally
find the right team for an idea which already exists and proven in their
heads? I can understand when you don't really know where to put your money and
spend all day deleting emails with weird pitch decks pdfs, but if you _do_
know what's the problem which needs to be solved?

Is there a need for "outsourcing founders team" thing?

~~~
TekMol
The problem is that you need one guy in the company that pushes the vision
forward. Constantly. For years. Somebody who is intrinsically motivated to
bring that thing to life.

In my experience, you do not find such a person for hire.

To an outsider startup ideas usually look like barking up the wrong tree.

Good luck finding a talented, motivated CEO willing to enthusiastically bark
up the wrong tree for years.

~~~
viach
A motivated and experienced product owner with shares in company, won't this
make a deal?

Again, isn't it easier to find an experienced person who likes your idea, than
find a person who both has the same idea and experienced and motivated enough?

------
robax
I love lists like this for getting the creative gears turning. Paul Graham's
old blog post is another example, if a dated one:
[http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html)

------
lifeisstillgood
Waste pickup - someone posted recently a blog from Taiwan, where they have 4/5
garbage collections per day, people simply wait till they hear the truck
outside and walk out with their bag and chuck it in the back

Now this really only work in a city that is compact, and quiet enough to hear
the garbage truck music

Which leads me on to Strong Towns, where the argument is that the sub-urban
sprawl model is unsustainable- and that might be another indicator, a code
smell if you like, that it's hard to alter your suburban model compared to the
city model.

~~~
wink
I also read that, but I don't see them separating their trash, so what does it
actually do? It solved the specific problem of trash piling up, and people
have to pay for the garbage bags. But in towns where people don't just usually
throw their garbage anywhere and the trash is collected in a timely manner...
where is the benefit for this? I'd rather pay the garbage collectors via taxes
than run out and chuck the garbage into a truck myself.

------
exabrial
Startups I'd want to fund if I had the $:

* Flow batteries

* Hydrogen research (production, distribution, home & automotive fuel cells)

* Stronger permanent magnets

* Cost effective superconductors (rather than room temperature semi-conductors)

~~~
exabrial
I think hydrogen should get a huge push because it completes a zero impact
ecosystem.

If the hydrogen is powered from solar/wind, then fuel cells process that into
heat for homes, electricity for lights, and purified water for drinking.

~~~
kjksf
Hydrogen is not economical for most use cases.

For example if you have solar/wind energy, you can transfer it very
efficiently over existing power grid to provide energy for heating or lights.
Transmission losses in power lines are 8-15% so the efficiency is 85%+
([https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-
energy...](https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-energy-
efficiency/2013/03/25/how-big-are-power-line-losses/))

If you do the same via hydrogen, you have to convert solar energy into
hydrogen. That conversion is only 16% efficient i.e. you loose 84% of solar
energy ([https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/1117-nrel-
establishes-w...](https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/1117-nrel-establishes-
world-record-for-solar-hydrogen-production.html)).

Then you have to transport the hydrogen from where it's made to where it's
used. That's additional expense and efficiency loss.

Then you have to convert hydrogen back into energy. Additional loss of
efficiency.

It just doesn't make sense economically
([https://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-
doesnt.html](https://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-doesnt.html)).

Hydrogen is not an electricity source. It doesn't compete with solar or wind.

It's electricity storage. It competes with batteries and it's not winning
there either because of much greater efficiency losses and the fact that you
would have to build (expensive) infrastructure (think network of gas stations,
except for hydrogen).

~~~
exabrial
Great points, but don't lose the trees in the forest: This isn't about
efficiency, it's about convenience. Fueling a car for 400miles in 2m is
acceptable at 16% efficiency if the energy wasted is "free". That's not
possible with battery technology.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's possible if you allow for battery swapping.

~~~
exabrial
I think that'd be cool! The problem is batteries are worth so much $ the
accountants get a little uppity when we stay exchanging a warranty part that
costs $8k

------
yc-kraln
Super interesting to see space make the list. I've been involved with "capital
intensive" aka hardware startups for the last seven years, through my
involvement in HARDWARE.co. I see a _lot_ of these companies that the author
is looking for, and they struggle to find funding. Maybe we need a startup
discovery platform?

------
anonytrary
> What if a social app was optimized for the creation experience rather than
> the consumption experience? What if the goal was to minimize time-in-app
> rather than maximize it? What social products would people pay for? (note:
> Google Photos is the closest I’ve seen to this so far)

Interesting. Facebook is like a camera that has an internal overlay over the
lens, saying "Wait! Don't stop looking through the lens, stay, I promise --
there's more!". Maybe social sites really are just tools and not things to be
spending time on, but more like recording devices for our lives and personal
history. Then again -- what is HN? Is writing a comment a form of consumption
or a form of creation? It would seem like the latter, but it's very easy to
stay on HN for an hour.

------
somebodythere
Charm Industrial seems interesting. How can I learn more about this company?

~~~
uptown
[https://www.charmindustrial.com/contact/](https://www.charmindustrial.com/contact/)

------
gwbas1c
> An open app runtime

The .Net / Mono / Xamarain toolchain try to do this.

WebAssembly also tries to do this, but it's so premature it's almost
impossible to do anything with it.

------
lazyjones
I‘d love to see something that makes development and deployment on touchscreen
devices practical. Node-red, Retool are going in the right direction, but
aren‘t powerful enough to be complete solutions. I‘d favor a visual dataflow
language/environment with easy sharing/extensibility like node-red that
compiles to wasm, C, other languages and deploys to the cloud, to App stores
etc. with one press of a button.

------
CyberDildonics
> An open app runtime

I disagree with the assertion that web pages are losing because of security or
utility, and that any open app runtime is going to be better than the browsers
already on every phone.

I think the majority of apps could be made as web pages, but I also think that
many are not because having an app installed is an opportunity to grab more
data, have more permissions and bait and switch your users at any time using
updates.

------
moorhosj
Once upon a time I was working on a network of TOR routers. The idea was that
I could go to a coffee shop and filter their wi-fi through my personal TOR
router for enhanced security. Taken to the next level, you could link many of
these together for a mesh network of sorts.

The problem I encountered was explaining the concept to laypeople. This can be
an issue in the "capital-heavy" and "sleeper" markets.

~~~
icebraining
What's the difference from how Tor already operates?

~~~
moorhosj
Today, I need to connect my device directly to the wi-fi source, then I can
use a TOR browser (same goes for VPN). I am still connected directly to a an
unsecured wi-fi network.

In my scenario, you would use a mobile router to make the initial connection
to the open wi-fi, then connect your personal device to the TOR router.

Open wi-fi -> my device

versus

Open wi-fi -> TOR router -> my device

------
jarsin
> An open app runtime - Proprietary app stores are winning too – and in the
> process, they are distorting markets and censoring apps.

> Could a browser be built that provides an actually better app experience and
> performance than native apps?

And how exactly do you get that browser past apples review process?

~~~
desireco42
This should not prevent you from thinking and building it.

Browser that captured my imagination recently is this guy:

[https://beakerbrowser.com](https://beakerbrowser.com)

It supports genuine distributed apps.

------
vagab0nd
The list got me thinking, why aren't there more biotech startups in Silicon
Valley? Not to discount the importance of other things but I'd really love to
see we put more resources into improving the human body. Maybe US regulation
is the obstacle here?

~~~
beokop
I can’t speak for the Valley but there’s not been many real breakthroughs in
this space to innovate on. Apple, a trillion dollar company, still can’t bring
something more exciting than the Apple Watch to market.

------
phkahler
My concept really wants to be a non-profit to avoid probable corruption in the
name of making money. But it solves a significant real-world problem of global
scale. Thoughts on something like that?

~~~
narak
Share it here!

------
radicalbyte
AI is already being used in waste management; specifically image recognition
to help sort plastics. This is similar to techniques used in fruit/veg
production to grade/bucket produce.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
One of the biggest problems in waste management (from dimly remembered
podcast) is that the contracts handed out are on hugely long timescales. A
Norwegian company has great sorting capabilities - just have organic and non-
organic sorted at house holder and they can take recycle anything.

It's great, eco friendly and cheap. But local governments are locked into
10-15 year contracts to take day cardboard and only cardboard to a specific
factory, which factory has no incentive to upgrade facilities as they do fine

So waste management change is likely to be slow

~~~
eldavido
Yeah, anyone trying to disrupt waste pickup, construction, concrete, pretty
much any local services had better be ready to fight well-entrenched
incumbents.

Not that it can't be done but it's important to acknowledge local governments
have many competing objectives beyond "providing the best service possible at
the lowest cost", including promotion of diversity, creation of jobs,
supporting local businesses, the perception of fairness, etc.

~~~
mikeyouse
Reminds me of this story about a better construction crane that was killed by
the existing industry:

[https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160515/REAL_ESTATE/1...](https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160515/REAL_ESTATE/160519910/dan-
mooney-s-skypicker-crane-could-save-millions-in-construction-costs-here-s-why-
it-s-gathering-dust-in-a-war)

------
ggm
"federated databases" is not low hanging fruit, its CAP theorem decision time.
If he means that he wants the interconnection logic to let _him_ pick which
two, and how to homegenise the glue between competing implementations, well
yes, that would be nice, but it doesn't "remove" problems from CAP, it
probably adds a useful layer of indirection which then incurrs its own
asynchronous, transactional, complete, sequenced problem-set.

I feel that its jeremiah like, but it is probably time-machine and cure-for-
cancer stuff. You get bits of it.

------
Beefin
I'm surprised there is no mention of healthcare...

~~~
neumann
definitely lot of opportunities there, but a big factor is regulation. Most
people who haven't been exposed to the healthcare market are understandably
cautious about funding a start-up in a highly regulated field.

~~~
Beefin
But he mentions insurance which has just as much regulation.

------
casegold
For “air conditioning” there are still opportunities for truly intuitive and
intelligent HVAC controls systems that integrate with legacy hardware.

------
dgudkov
It's interesting that his list is rather long but it doesn't mention
enterprise at all.

------
nsx147
I’ve fantasized about the delivery to a person idea for a while. The next
frontier after last mile - last foot. I figure drones will do it one day. Also
sounds like something Amazon would do.

------
heedlessly3
>it’s a chance to be a part of the solution to some of the world’s biggest
problems.

This statement is completely out of touch with reality.

~~~
lgregg
What do you mean? How is being apart of (creating) a solution to a problem the
world faces is out of touch with reality?

~~~
heedlessly3
because the world faces problems with package managers, app runtimes, social
calendars?

Real world problems are humanitarian crises, economic development, and
political reform. How can you say "world’s biggest problems", yet exclude all
the actual important problems?

~~~
lgregg
Sounds like you skipped half of the article.

------
jaequery
interesting that i've just started working on one of his ideas (social
calendar)

~~~
colinwilyb
How's that working out so far?

~~~
jaequery
it's going well. the ambition is large but i'm trying to keep it as simple as
possible.

------
whamlastxmas
"New insurance companies – renters insurance, title insurance, business
insurance, etc have yet to enter the 21st century"

I feel like a more creative and productive question is, what can we do to
eliminate the need for insurance? Can we have a network of doctors offices in
major cities that we pay a monthly fee to access, where the billing and costs
are transparent and sane? Can we approach home owners insurance the same way
we have community credit unions and reduce the admin overhead and the profit
cut of the middlemen?

"New staffing agencies"

How about eliminating the need for staffing agencies? Let's get platforms like
Task Rabbit more ubiquitous and inside niche industries that haven't adapted.
Labor on demand without as much of a middleman. There's obviously issues with
the current iteration of ride-share apps etc, but it's something that can be
improved and it obviously works better than the traditional industry (taxis in
this example).

"What does the internet-native version of the WSJ or The Economist look like?"

Reddit, clearly.

Air conditioning: A problem easily solved by getting people to live in better
climates. With more jobs becoming decreasingly location dependent, this makes
sense.

Some of this list seems silly and easily dismissed as "because physics".
Electric aircraft don't make sense and I doubt they ever will. Space launches
will always be expensive due to fuel (I realize as of right now, fuel is a
very low percentage of cost - but theoretically even if everything else was
free, fuel still makes it too expensive for consumers). Alternative energy is
an extremely expensive field. I could go on.

_______________

Problems that I think are worth fixing:

Make a small dent in societal progress to change how people interact and view
strangers. Make a small step towards everyone not dehumanizing each other.
Create a movement to bring people together and lessen the attitude of people
living in big cities having to keep their eyes down and not interacting with
others. Pokemon Go is a great example of this.

Make the government more accountable, make people more involved in elections.
The amount of misguided or wasted taxpayer dollars is staggering. Even small
improvements in our representatives could easily mean billions of dollars
going towards things like schools, healthcare, and basic needs of citizens
rather than buying missiles and $10,000 bolts.

Instead of focusing on new ISPs, focus on new methods of distributing traffic
that prevents the erosion of privacy and the rise of censorship. Take Freenet
and make it mainstream. It won't be the solution to everything but it can
solve a lot. It will require a lot of changes and new tools/applications to
make this happen but it's possible.

Help employers make the shift towards remote workers. Let people live where
they want. Don't make them tied to a chair for 9 hours a day. Don't make them
sit in traffic for an hour a day. The impact on the environment and mental
health would be huge.

Help people disconnect from technology. Fund activity centers in big cities
that provide attract options and attractive social groups. Board game meetups
on meetup.com are super popular. So are the dancing ones. Bringing in more
people and providing better spaces for this would help a lot of people much
happier. It provides a lot more opportunities for socializing and finding
meaningful connections, which I think most or many people lack.

~~~
narak

      > what can we do to eliminate the need for insurance?
    

You can't eliminate the need for insurance. As long as there is risk in the
world, there will be the need to insure against it.

    
    
      > Air conditioning: A problem easily solved by getting people to live in better climates.
    

Yup, let's move billions of impoverished people living in tropical countries
to cooler climates up north. Maybe we can fit them all in Denmark.

    
    
      > Some of this list seems silly and easily dismissed as "because physics". Electric aircraft don't make sense and I doubt they ever will.
    

Elon Musk seems to disagree. And so do all these folks:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/08/the-electric-aircraft-
is-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/08/the-electric-aircraft-is-taking-
off/)

It's so easy to be an armchair critic and be dismissive of other people's
ideas. The only difference is, some people break down large problems step by
step and overcome obstacles for over a decade to solve them.

------
atomical
It's hard to get excited about these potential startups. Most of these ideas
are not going to make my life any better in a major way and yet the author
claims he's excited by "big, scary problems."

~~~
codingdave
I'm not excited by them either, but it is his money, not mine, so I don't
really see that my lack of interest is relevant. If those are the topics he
loves, and he wants to fund them... more power to him.

~~~
atomical
Yes, no argument that it is his right to do what he wants with his money. I'm
thinking about it in the context of Tyler Cowen giving smart people money for
moonshots. In his book Complacent Class he touches on how there are less big
ideas now and that is leading to stagnation.

------
carapace
I haven't been able to find a lot of information on him, does anyone have any
good links to background info?

This is going to sound both arch and snarky, and I apologize in advance for
that, but I have a point to make and I think it's topical. I'll stay civil.

Has he purchased a beachfront property and then denied his neighbors their
accustomed access?

Has he used any of my childhood heroes as a legal blind to secretly sue an
obnoxious media company into oblivion?

What's his attitude towards the Republic of China (Taiwan)?

I started to read about his experience during the Haitian earthquake, but I
had to set it aside, to read at a time when it would be more appropriate to
bawl my eyes out. (No one wants to see a grown man cry. I somehow didn't
understand what had happened and learning about it now is just devastating. My
God! Poor Haiti!) He stuck around and helped out, so I'm thinking he's an
incredibly good guy. Can anyone help me with that?

~~~
eldavido
I lived with Andrew in a shared apartment for several years. He is one of the
kindest people I've ever known, as well as a little quirky in an old-school
Silicon Valley sort of way. He grew up in Minnesota, is really into
gymnastics, and is one of the hardest-working people I've known.

~~~
carapace
Thanks!

