<story><title>Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venture-seedfunding-idUSKBN1AH31J</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kylehotchkiss</author><text>Probably an unpopular opinion, but when the startups receive $120,000,000 to make a juice machine that is only really accessible to the top 1 or 2% of the USA, it&amp;#x27;s not a bad idea to give funding a reset and give people a reason to step back from trying to raise funds and more time to work on more innovative ideas. America has it&amp;#x27;s fair of crises now, yet a good chunk of people have a smartphone. How can startups help people in the midwest and the coasts? Or what interesting things could be done given most of the world is online now? I&amp;#x27;m sure we&amp;#x27;ll see some cool ideas and another funding boom again with some cool new ideas soon.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwthisawayt</author><text>I think people forget that vc backed startups are profit and greed driven (like all free enterprises). We all like to drink the cool aid and think that a startup&amp;#x27;s purpose is societal impact but really they are engineered to make $$$.&lt;p&gt;As such, it makes sense that people pour millions of dollars to target the 1%. They&amp;#x27;ve got a shitload of more money than the rest of the country. Seriously, if you&amp;#x27;ve got an product that every rich person wants but that no other person cares about, you will have vcs knocking on your door. We need to think of vcs as building cash machines, not as the money behind &amp;quot;changing the world&amp;quot;. Yes occasionally vcs fund companies like Google that have broader impact but that&amp;#x27;s not their primary aim.&lt;p&gt;If we want more people building ventures that impact society we need to either
* change the funding model
* build bootstrap ventures
* build non profit ventures
* ask the government to step in (a socialist approach)&lt;p&gt;A good example are institutions like the Gates foundation and WHO eradicating polio in the last few years. Yeah it&amp;#x27;s not sexy but organizations like that are making real societal impact.</text></comment>
<story><title>Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venture-seedfunding-idUSKBN1AH31J</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kylehotchkiss</author><text>Probably an unpopular opinion, but when the startups receive $120,000,000 to make a juice machine that is only really accessible to the top 1 or 2% of the USA, it&amp;#x27;s not a bad idea to give funding a reset and give people a reason to step back from trying to raise funds and more time to work on more innovative ideas. America has it&amp;#x27;s fair of crises now, yet a good chunk of people have a smartphone. How can startups help people in the midwest and the coasts? Or what interesting things could be done given most of the world is online now? I&amp;#x27;m sure we&amp;#x27;ll see some cool ideas and another funding boom again with some cool new ideas soon.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pm90</author><text>Its not an unpopular opinion, but that Juicing thing was definitely an exception, not the norm.&lt;p&gt;As to why everyone is chasing unicorns, one of my friends who&amp;#x27;s actively trying to get funding for his hardware startup sums it this way: VC&amp;#x27;s would make more from 1 unicorn than 50 other mildly successful businesses, and the other 50 businesses would probably require just as much work as the unicorn.&lt;p&gt;Its a really fucked up calculus to be sure. I&amp;#x27;m not sure what the solution is though. How do we encourage VC&amp;#x27;s to invest in more meaningful startups?</text></comment>