
Meanwhile, just East of Silicon Valley, in Tupelo Mississippi... - jaf12duke
http://www.humbledmba.com/meanwhile-just-east-of-silicon-valley-in-tupe
======
mechanical_fish
I've worked on problems that are famously profound ( _cancer research_!) and
problems that people think are stupid, trivial, and ephemeral. I've also
worked for big, famous institutions, and I've worked for tiny companies.

And I caution everyone not to fall into the mental trap of overvaluing mass at
the expense of momentum. When Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML, it looked kind of
silly. And, actually, it has looked kind of silly ever since. But make no
mistake: The invention of the web is probably a more important human advance
than anything else that has happened in the last twenty years. It has probably
already saved more years of human life than the last twenty years of cancer
research, for example.

A lot of the problems that people think are important and profound are
intractable. Intractable problems don't go away, because they don't get
solved. They are around for the long haul. There's time to build institutions
around them, to build popular awareness of them, to get really good at
marketing them. When someone claims to be working on a Very Important
Intractable Problem everyone knows they are Smart.

Whereas many world-changing practical inventions are never profound. They are
always either silly or boring. They start off silly. When you first invent the
mobile radio people laugh at you, because you are a ham radio geek and you
carry around some big ugly boxes in a van. Then mobile radios become frivolous
things carried only by the CEOs in the movie _Wall Street_. Then they become
frivolous things carried only by hipsters. Then they become frivolous things
carried only by salarymen. Then they become frivolous things carried by the
young. And then... they become ubiquitous, no big deal, boring. In a handful
of decades we are going to equip everyone in the world with _a goddamn
tricorder_ and society is barely going to consciously notice.

 _That_ is a technology with momentum. Yeah, nobody takes mobiles seriously.
They're disposable, and they never work as well as you think they should, and
they're used for frivolous purposes like having fun and raising children and
reading tedious emails from your boss. But that doesn't mean they aren't
important.

~~~
ojbyrne
I'm not sure I agree, entirely, that the invention of the web was the key
thing. I think really the invention of the internet (TCP/IP, DNS, routers,
running cables) were the big thing. And it inevitably led to apps running on
it, which became gradually more sophisticated. Email, Usenet, Veronica,
Gopher, and eventually, the browser and HTML.

In a sense what you're suggesting is somewhat analogous to saying Microsoft
Word was more important than the PC. Though I guess you could argue that
Microsoft Windows was at least as important as the PC.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I agree about the importance of, e.g., TCP/IP. But we're headed for James
Burke territory now. It's ultimately kind of pointless to argue which
inventions in a chain were more important than others: What are the criteria?
Who is more important, Einstein or Einstein's mother? Where would Einstein
have been without his mother?

And inventions tend to come along when their time is right. Lots of important
things are invented simultaneously. That makes it hard to argue that, say, the
inventors of Gopher were significantly less brilliant than Tim Berners-Lee, or
that OS/2 was less significant than Windows 3.1 from any perspective other
than hindsight.

All of which ties into what I think is my greater point: Don't be too hard on
yourself about the apparent pointlessness of your work. A lot of pointless
things turn out to be worthwhile, and a lot of apparently important things
turn out to be pointless.

~~~
jaskerr
Thanks for the reference to Burke and "Connections".

I'm not sure whether you are using Burke as an example of over- or under-
weighting factors in history. I believe the latter, but can see either
argument.

No matter. "Connections" was worthwhile viewing.

------
rsbrown
I live in Memphis, TN (a couple of hours northwest of Tupelo, MS). I moved
back to Memphis in 2008 after a couple of years in San Jose working for the
Paypal and Microplace divisions of eBay.

One of the reasons for moving back was to have a meaningful and positive
impact through entrepreneurship. How much impact would a company (say, a web
startup) making $2M - $3M in annual revenues have in Silicon Valley? Very
little, in my opinion. However, the same company located in a community like
Memphis would have a tremendous positive impact -- not only on the local
economy, but on the local psyche. And this is important to me.

I often wonder if this is really important to others, though. It's an honest
question: do we believe that American society needs the Memphises and Tupeloes
and Detroits and Clevelands? If so, we really should reach out and do
something about it.

If not, fair enough.

And for what it's worth, the move back to Memphis has been incredibly
enriching for me. I'm very happy I did it. The relatively low cost of living
has provided an excellent opportunity for me work on various projects and live
a much more balanced life than I felt was possible when my family lived in the
valley. I'm currently working on my second startup attempt here and I'm
thrilled about it. Look for a "Show HN" post soon.

~~~
pchristensen
"do we believe that American society needs the Memphises and Tupeloes and
Detroits and Clevelands?"

American society doesn't need any city. Outside of the city they live in and
those they visit, the whole rest of America (and the world) is an abstraction
to any given person. I don't ultimately care if my car is assembled in Detroit
or Ohio or South Carolina or Mexico or Japan - I mainly care about build
quality, reliability, price, etc. Despite repeated campaigns to "Buy
American", people favor local and personal interests over national ones.

Now if X,000 productive people decide they need a place, they can turn it into
something meaningful. If Memphis had 5,000 new businesses generating $3M, then
Memphis will live and prosper. Sounds like it's one down, 4,999 to go :)

~~~
rsbrown
"American society doesn't need any city"

I agree that American society doesn't need any one particular city, but we do
need a healthy ecosystem of urban areas.

My question is: are the smaller, lower-tier cities necessary in order to have
that healthy ecosystem?

~~~
anamax
> I agree that American society doesn't need any one particular city, but we
> do need a healthy ecosystem of urban areas.

Do we?

I'm happy to assume the benefit of a couple of finance-urban-centers, but it's
unclear that there's a huge benefit from having finance, art, and fashion in
NYC. If fashion and art were elsewhere, NYC would be significantly smaller,
but would we be worse off?

My point is that the big urban areas in the US contain aggregates that may not
be particularly synergistic. If they're not, then its the "lower-tier" cities
that are actually important, and that we happen to co-located many of them.

------
pwang
The core problem is that you can't solve a problem you don't understand.

I imagine that a large number of the twenty-somethings lured into the Valley
to build the next wave of YC startups have just finished or dropped out of
college. Very few of them will have worked at large companies with real sales
revenue. Of the ones who have, most of their "real company" experience is
still in the tech sector.

That's why there is this growing sense of cloneliness: you build an area that
attracts people of roughly the same demographic, who have been exposed to
roughly the same kinds of life experiences, and you whip them into a frenzy to
be entrepreneurial. The hypersocial tech scene breeds a monoculture whose key
mantras include "do something now/fail fast/pivot-pivot-pivot". Is it any
wonder there are so many photo/social/messaging-oriented startups?

Every person in every company in every industry in the entire world needs
better tech, software and hardware. I'd wager that many of the bright-eyed,
bushy tailed entrepreneurs in the Valley are not even aware of the existence
of 99% of those people, to say nothing of their domain problems.

Stop monetizing eyeballs to get a bigger valuation. Start solving real
problems and adding real value.

~~~
sd273
Great comment.

------
adelevie
The sentiment of the post really reminded me of this Bukowski poem:

    
    
      with an Apple Macintosh
      you can't run Radio Shack programs
      in its disc drive.
      nor can a Commodore 64
      drive read a file
      you have created on an
      IBM Personal Computer.
      both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
      the CP/M operating system
      but can't read each other's
      handwriting
      for they format (write
      on) discs in different
      ways.
      the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
      can't use most programs produced for
      the IBM Personal Computer
      unless certain
      bits and bytes are
      altered
      but the wind still blows over
      Savannah
      and in the Spring
      the turkey buzzard struts and
      flounces before his
      hens. 
    

(<http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/16-bit-intel-8088-chip/>)

------
synnik
There is an underlying demographic issue here. Startups tend to cater to
people who have already made a lifestyle choice to embrace pervasive
technology in their lives.

I am likely an outlier on HN, in that I consciously do not use technology for
my "life". I go home to my kids, we play in the backyard, we go on walks, we
mow the lawn, we play board games, and read books.

So do you want to know the 2 startups that DO help me?

1) Mint.com - I do need financial management, and I love mint.com for that.

2) ServiceMagic.com - I spend 5 minutes online, and within a couple hours have
someone doing home maintenance work for me. THAT simplifies my life.

So whose life are you really trying to improve? Mobile hipsters? Or working
folk? The problems are very different.

------
timjahn
I love this post, because I feel exactly the same way. And maybe it's because
I'm from Chicagoland and currently live here.

I feel like often times, the majority of startups in Silicon Valley are
working on really cool ideas, apps, and solutions, but for problems that very
few "everyday" people have.

And that's not a bad thing. Solving a specific problem for a specific (big or
small) group of people is great.

But part of me wishes sometimes that more folks in the traditional Silicon
Valley startup ecosystem would use all those resources to make real change in
other parts of this world.

Yeah, that's probably naive.

After all, at the end of the day, it is business.

~~~
alain94040
I spent 10+ years of my life working on technology that makes cell phone chips
better and your processor in your laptop faster. But you never heard of that
company, because it's obscure, hardcore tech that no media will ever cover (if
you are curious, read <http://www.eve-team.com/demos/linux_boot_demo.html>)

Now I work on fluff ideas, consumer Internet concepts. It's flashy, people get
excited about the space. It probably has less impact. But it's more visible.
I'm not the only one in that situation. Even within large companies like
Intel, Microsoft or VMWare, the products that people discuss the most are not
usually the ones that bring the most revenue, or impact more people.

------
scelerat
IMO, if you want to affect people's everyday lives in meaningful (but possibly
unglamorous) ways, take your wit and your problem solving abilities and your
leadership skills to local government. City, county. School board, PTA coach a
youth sports team, or teach a class.

The fact is that the startup world is one where extremely rich people give
money to already pretty wealthy people (in relative terms: not just money, but
education, social standing) to find ways to make them richer. Usually in the
form of some kind of mass entertainment experience.

I don't meant to diminish the positive and transformative effects many of the
inventions of the startup/Internet age have had on society and people as a
whole. But if you are really primarily interested in making people's lives
better, start with the real social network first. In the hierarchy of needs, a
better photo sharing service is way down on the list.

~~~
scythe
>In the hierarchy of needs, a better photo sharing service is way down on the
list.

The problem with this line of thinking is that needs are a vector, not a
scalar, and while one form of contribution may have a larger norm, all forms
of contribution are eventually important. Irrelevant of considerations about
the precise norm of the contribution-vector, soceity thrives on having people
contribute in loads of different ways; if we were all oncologists there would
be nobody who could treat heart disease, etc.

I say do what you're good at, mostly, and charity where you can.

------
dr_
But aren't there services that address their needs. Groupon, despite all it's
criticisms does that. It gives people a deal on local goods and services. Mint
helps them get a better overview of their finances. Airbnb may help them find
a reasonably priced place to stay should they travel. This is just a short
list. There's more out there than photo sharing apps and social games. In
fact, I think some of these tools serve people in places like these better
and, at least in the case of Groupon, may do more for a merchant in a small
town than a big city. Personally I've never understood why someone would want
to pay high rents to live in a city like manhattan and then look for a deal on
a sandwich.

~~~
jcampbell1
His friends are a lawyer and a teacher. There are also tons of startups in the
education space, and a few relevant to lawyers. I think it is a good reminder
that photo sharing gets a disproportionate amount of coverage inside the echo
chamber relative to its actual importance.

------
jashmenn
I feel the same way. Recently I've been studying up on humanitarian and
developmental aid. I'm new that field and I've heard a lot of criticism about
how "aid doesn't work" and so on. I recently learned about the Poverty Action
Lab [1] which focuses on using data to discover what "works" in aid.

Fwiw here are four books on my reading list:

* Making Aid Work & Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee

* More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty by Dean Karlan

* Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed by Thomas W. Dichter

* The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers

Some outstanding questions I have:

* I've read there is a "negative correlation with success" when many of the major international aid organizations get involved (world bank, etc) [2]. Is this because they only take on really hard problems or is it because the organizations actually make the situation worse?

* Everyone is going gaga over micro-credit. Is it really helpful for getting folks out of poverty or are we just bringing america's bad debt habits to the third world?

* What can I do to help reduce human suffering in the world? (e.g. How can I end human trafficking, provide clean water, protect ethnic groups from genocide [rwanda etc.])?

[1] <http://www.povertyactionlab.org/>

[2] <http://www.globallawbooks.org/reviews/detail.asp?id=234>

------
mikecane
Sorry if this sounds snarky, yet I think it's true: If you have to leave an
area to be reminded what everyday people are like, your business is already
handicapped.

------
arunbahl
Brilliant post.

Wouldn't it be something if the frantic term-sheet-chasing energy we have in
StartupLand could be applied to the world's truly interesting problems?

There are people working on things like this (myself included) -- the problem
is that many of the "real problems" out there, the ones that are really worth
solving, don't have easy economic arguments. Dollars/euros/RMB are a rather
unidimensional metric for value, and what the economy values and what humans
value don't generally match up very well.

It's challenge enough getting potential investors to see the ROI in your
webapp with well-known paths to monetization - try making a case for a project
with social ROI, and very little economic return in any reasonable timeframe
(by our short human attention span standards).

I would love to see (and be part of) a broader solution to this.

------
qas
Having worked for several big companies, I moved to the valley last year to
work with a startup that uses technology (big data, cloud, hadoop) to solve
problems for farmers. Now I feel like I am putting my time and energies to a
better use - solving real problems for a multi-trillion dollar global
agriculture industry, while having fun and continuing to get a real paycheck.
For those interested, come check us out
<http://www.weatherbill.com/about/careers/>

------
VladRussian
>How many of us are doing something that is going to improve the lives of
Henderson and Rebecca in Tupelo, Mississippi? How many of us are making
something that is going to help them save money or help them make money or
help them increase their quality of life?

Henderson and Rebecca are able to pay for the services, directly or indirectly
(by, for example, having ads being displayed to them from businesses who make
money by selling stuff to them)

Unfortunately there are no money in solving these problems:

[http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...](http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm#Number_of_hungry_people_in_the_world)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Characteristics> :

\----------

...

Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth
birthday.

...

According to a UN report on modern slavery, the most common form of human
trafficking is for prostitution, which is largely fueled by poverty.[57][58]
In Zimbabwe, a number of girls are turning to prostitution for food to survive
because of the increasing poverty.[59] In one survey, 67% of children from
disadvantaged inner cities said they had witnessed a serious assault, and 33%
reported witnessing a homicide.[60] 51% of fifth graders from New Orleans
(median income for a household: $27,133) have been found to be victims of
violence, compared to 32% in Washington, DC (mean income for a household:
$40,127).[61]

\-----------------

These children aren't a feasible market. Too bad for them.

------
wallawe
I love this post simply because I am from the south, in the midst of a
startup, and have had similar thoughts from time to time. But there are a
couple of things to remember. The free market forces are determined by the
demands of the people. We need reality but we also need entertainment and
escape every once in a while. That's what the twitters, facebooks, etc. of the
world are for. They provide an outlet to socialize and connect and are
beneficial in those ways. And while many of these startups probably won't
benefit a couple in Tupelo, MS specifically, I guarantee you they are okay
with that. The man in the article had a law degree and was doing what he loved
and the woman teaching, which she presumably chose out of passion, not the
desire for money. This couple could be as happy as any. It is not our job to
focus our creations on benefitting them, because they are perfectly happy with
their lifestyle. If they weren't, they would change it. Creations of new
enterprises, no matter the focus, creates jobs and tax money for those less
fortunate. That is enough in my opinion.

------
kylemathews
I'm a developer looking to join a startup that's working on problems that
matter. I'm in Palo Alto. Contact me if interested.

------
tpatke
A big part of the problem is differing degrees of technical sophistication.
Both in the design of applications and the understanding of where problems
exist. One person sees the need for photo sharing, and the other doesn't even
understand they have a "photo problem".

------
endtwist
I understand this concern and think about it quite a bit myself. Is whatever
I'm working on worthwhile? Who does it help, exactly?

The fact of the matter is that the problems people have in Big City, CA may be
vastly different than those in Small Town, MI. Proximity, salary and culture
can all vary so widely that you can't necessarily solve a problem that is
shared between these two groups.

Personally, I think you just need to work on what inspires you. Photo sharing?
Go for it. A new way to deliver groceries in small towns and disparate areas?
Dig in. But don't hate on yourself because you think your problem is
insignificant to someone that isn't your target market; that's just silly.

------
PanosJee
There was an ignite talk called "nobody cares about your crappy web app"
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bZKPPw4w2c> It really complements this post

------
delinquentme
'unvacation' = awesome

I don't want to stop working, however I do want novel visual and situation
input.

Brilliant.

~~~
jacques_chester
This used to be known as "working vacation", or alternatively "travelling for
work".

"Unvacation" sounds like something the Griswold family does.

------
alex_c
For some reason, I got a strong "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance"
vibe from that. Thanks for sharing.

------
yesimahuman
One of my dreams with building a startup is to be independent and pour my
energy and passion into something that I own. I don't perceive that as
unsubstantial.

------
woodhull
If you're looking for meaningful work (and a rollercoaster ride as fast as any
startup) Barack Obama's re-election effort is hiring for their digital team:
<http://www.barackobama.com/page/jobs>

~~~
eropple
Pretty sure he's talking about meaningful work, not politics.

(Thank you, thank you, tip your waitress.)

------
guelo
At least those photo guys are trying to innovate and solve new problems. Think
about the thousands upon thousands of engineers that spend their lives
tweaking seo knobs so they can serve up a few more ads.

